Moodmat dropped what they are calling a “one question interview” with Theo Parrish, and of course he has some interesting things to say about the question of race and gender in dance music. It annoys me to no end that they are not allowing comments on such a piece of writing As per Theo’s request, they turned off commenting, but I am more than willing to allow any discussion about it to occur here. So let’s talk about it.
Aside from a pretty ridiculous mistake in calling Rage Against the Machine an all white band (Tom Morello and Zach De La Rocha, the two dominant creative and political influences in the band are of mixed racial and cultural heritage including African and Latin American roots) I think he is 100% spot on. Being involved with the underground soul, hip-hop, and dance communities, I see the kind of pigeon-holing that bigger labels and the media pin on black artists who want to do something outside of the “acceptable” range. I think his argument can even be pushed further when you look at the kind of watering down that even the “conscious” rappers like Mos Def or Talib Kweli have had to do to achieve major label success.
The marketability of white artists mimicking black music and being more successful at it is also quite obvious. This is one of the most major problems in all of popular music today, but as he points out it is especially prominant in dance music even though there is less corporate pressure to do so. The lack of perspective in the media is one of the reasons we started this blog, to remind people of the roots of dance music and to try to do our best to not allow this mistake to perpetuate itself any more than it already has.
You guys don’t appear to allow comments either without some hojiggery.
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Oh hell, figures that my first one gets eaten by SpamBam and disappeared and my grumpy-ass bullshit gets through.
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pipecock reply on July 14, 2008 2:42 pm:
hmm, seems like a couple people are having some problems with commenting all of a sudden. i’m going to disable and re-enable spambam and see what happens….
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Some great points, but… Moby is from the US - not the UK or France!
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pipecock reply on July 14, 2008 2:43 pm:
he looks kind of french though…..
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as a caucasian who grew up listening to what he later discovered was “black music”, there are some very uncomfortable assertions in theo’s comments. many of which i agree with, many of which i do not.
theo has beef with the mainstream music business. theo? welcome to the line. it starts way the fuck over there. i can’t say it’s not a “black versus white” issue. but i CAN say that it’s just as equally an art versus business issue.
where it becomes insidious is when, as theo says, the business side capitalizes on the negative cultural aspects (sex, money, “get krunk”, smoke weed, deal some ye) and the desire to repeat success narrows the scope of the “decision makers”.
however, the concept of wagging his finger from the outside does about as much good as taking a drinking glass full of water out of downtown new orleans in september 2005. (in other words: nothing.)
in this context, his comments, while the hold some shades of truth, are absolutely divisive and defeatist. instead of trying to affect change, he merely levels his condemnations.
think about it this way: marvin gaye wasn’t singing “mercy mercy me” in 1963.
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Unfortunately, fixing these problems is not a simple matter of smashing the music industry and rebuilding it. The only that racist marketing could succeed is with a racist market, however much people would want to deny it.
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He’s barking at the wrong dog, I’m afraid. “The industry” is hardly the powerhouse it used to be. Only make money off tours? Is that the record label’s fault or the downloaders? The idea that major labels control anything these days is pretty laughable…
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pipecock reply on July 14, 2008 9:39 pm:
is it? i look at the recording industry and i am still not seeing these bands having major label success without having been previously on a major. where are these people if they exist? who has the power then?
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This is really interesting to me. I’ve been listening to Black music ever since I can remember. It makes me feel alive in the way that good music does. Does that make me a tourist or some kind of culturally illegitimate offspring of tourists? I don’t think so. I believe that it is important to try to know your musical history if you’re interested in it. The fact is that I exist in a musical world and I embrace and acknowledge black music as being particularly good. I don’t condone plagiarism although some of my friends do.
I agree with most of what TP is saying here. However, I also think that people put too much emphasis on the music that they don’t like (for whatever reason). Many of my friends do this and I always wonder what their point is. Yes often times the dance music industry is racist. Often times all Art can really do is mirror society. My point is not to dwell on what you consider a bad reflection and concentrate on the good, forward thinking and truly innovative.
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pipecock reply on July 15, 2008 11:57 am:
“I’ve been listening to Black music ever since I can remember. It makes me feel alive in the way that good music does. Does that make me a tourist or some kind of culturally illegitimate offspring of tourists? I don’t think so.”
i don’t think so either, and Theo makes a point of distinguishing that as well. it feels to me like many white people are offended at the idea of house and techno being black music because they perceive that as meaning that they cannot be involved with it. that isn’t the reality though, it is all about having perspective and knowing where the line that shouldn’t be crossed is.
“My point is not to dwell on what you consider a bad reflection and concentrate on the good, forward thinking and truly innovative.”
i think that we at ISM do that, and no one can honestly argue that Theo doesn’t so the same thing. the problem is that people have no context in which to put much of this music to understand why it is black music and why that matters. i think our coverage reflects that regardless of whether we are covering good stuff (which is what we spend most of our time on) or the bad stuff (which does need to be called out! that is also important). Theo’s deejay sets and the tunes he samples from are his way of putting his music in a positive context, but i also see why his opinion being voiced is another important outlet for him.
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Apologies Pipecock, having read back I realise that as usual I’m not making sense at all. I totally agree with you and that is why I read this site. As well as finding it informative I also agree with the basic values held here. Of course the bad needs to be called out at times and fair play to TP for doing that.
I remember when I was 14 in 1992 and there were no black people in Ireland at the time, all the kids in my neighbourhood loved Carl Cox. When I mentioned that he was black a lot of them didn’t believe me. I don’t know if that is racist but to me it says a lot about how much cultural weight people place on music.
This is just a thought; if music is a powerful ingredient of cultural makeup it makes sense that Europeans will subconsciously want to take the blackness away by whitening black music through plagiarism etc. It’s natural cultural assimilation. It happened when the normal middle classes accepted Punk. At one time Punk was considered dangerous to the establishment and now it is used to sell cars.
I hope that through discourse I may come to understand these things better. I can only speak from a European’s perspective and I guess things are different in the US.
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pipecock reply on July 15, 2008 3:03 pm:
“Apologies Pipecock, having read back I realise that as usual I’m not making sense at all. I totally agree with you and that is why I read this site.”
i didn’t think we were disagreeing, i was just trying to clarify what i think theo was saying.
“I don’t know if that is racist but to me it says a lot about how much cultural weight people place on music.”
i think a misconception about racism is that it needs to be perpetrated by guys in white hoods who burn crosses or guys sporting swastikas and whatnot. that isn’t really the case. obviously, what they call “institutional racism” has become more widely recognized recently, but that isn’t even really the end of it. there exists what i guess you could call “cultural racism” (which is close in relation to just plain old ignorance) which also doesn’t necessarily require active participation by the people guilty of it.
the only way to avoid racism is to be aware of it and to try to understand other peoples’ cultures. i think there have been plenty of white musicians throughout recent history who have played black music and have been able to do it well, including within the techno sphere. but i think that a large number of people seem to just not even care to understand the history of the music, nor why what they are doing might offend people.
“This is just a thought; if music is a powerful ingredient of cultural makeup it makes sense that Europeans will subconsciously want to take the blackness away by whitening black music through plagiarism etc. It’s natural cultural assimilation.”
this is true, i also don’t think it necessarily means that the people doing it are bad people. they are just ignorant and/or motivated enough by money that they don’t care. i think there is room for a dialogue between cultures, but that requires a specific kind of attitude. it is easy to keep looking at Tresor or Hard Wax as good examples of how that exchange can be done so that it is beneficial for both sides, even Rush Hour or Clone could be seen as more recent examples of how to do it right.
“It happened when the normal middle classes accepted Punk. At one time Punk was considered dangerous to the establishment and now it is used to sell cars.”
you’re right, that same kind of watering down is not limited to black music only. but you can at least maybe understand WHY punk was originally considered to be “dangerous” and in need to be watered down for the masses. black music, on the other hand, doesn’t have much going for it that is “dangerous” outside of being unfamiliar culturally to white people. which is of course the problem!
“I hope that through discourse I may come to understand these things better. I can only speak from a European’s perspective and I guess things are different in the US.”
the cultural difference between Europe and the US are huge in dance music. in fact, at times i struggle to even see *any* relationship. i have been and continue to be a big fan of some non-US dance music like jungle, 2-step, even some european techno electro and house. but mostly i understand the stuff that has US culture as a touchstone. what irks me is the laziness of some producers, that “Moodymanc” record stands out as one that was particularly irritating to me. it seems like we are seeing more of that kind of derivative stuff that is knocking off Detroit house now than ever before!
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TP doesn’t like much white people, does he ?
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pipecock reply on July 15, 2008 5:57 pm:
if that is what you got from what he said, you should work on your reading comprehension.
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b0b reply on July 15, 2008 6:35 pm:
Upon rereading it’s not clearly stated he “don’t like” white people. But reading between the lines you can feel a lot of bitterness towards white producers “stealing” and “copying” black music (4th paragraph), with what I think is a gross generalization as if it black producer land everybody loved each other.
Then following paragraph, we get something to make us white readers happy: “here are a few non black underground dance artists that simply have gravitated to the form because its as free a musical form as you can get. [snip] They are rare and appreceiated”. As if every black producer was the best thing since sliced bread. Guess what ? Talent is irrelevant from race and for 100 so-called artists of today, there is maybe 5 of them that have real talent, dedication and vision that make them not copycat of anything else. TP is one of these. Convextion is another one.
Let’s get back to the first paragraph: “Black men and women(musicians) tend to provide the labor(talent) that makes the product(songs)”.
Another gross generalization.
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pipecock reply on July 15, 2008 8:02 pm:
“But reading between the lines you can feel a lot of bitterness towards white producers “stealing” and “copying” black music (4th paragraph), with what I think is a gross generalization as if it black producer land everybody loved each other.”
what does it have to do with loving each other? black music was the start of nearly every electronic dance genre, whether they like each other or not is irrelevent. white artists being cultural pirates is what he is talking about.
“As if every black producer was the best thing since sliced bread.”
again, i am not sure what this has to do with anything.
“Guess what ? Talent is irrelevant from race and for 100 so-called artists of today, there is maybe 5 of them that have real talent, dedication and vision that make them not copycat of anything else. TP is one of these. Convextion is another one.”
i could make a list of my favorite producers, there would be some white people in there (Recloose, Basic Channel, etc) but by and large the list would be almost entirely black.
“Let’s get back to the first paragraph: “Black men and women(musicians) tend to provide the labor(talent) that makes the product(songs)”.
Another gross generalization.”
the idea is that those people never control things at a large level. let’s make lists of major producers and see who pops up more, white men or women and people of color. same goes with label owners and engineers and everything. he is not saying that ALL musicians are black, only that the black people are kept largely as “entertainers” and nothing more serious. even the few exceptions (Clive Davis, Jay-Z, etc) are held in a different light and really show exactly how big of a problem this is.
I dunno man I think it’s kind of stoopid to talk of ‘origins’ or the ’start’ of music genres otherwise you trace everything back to folk songs and tribal drumming, you know. Also, do you need to start saying that Japanese culture was at the ’start’ of electronic music because Roland made the 808 and 909? Or that white people invented electronic music because of Elisha Gray? Was Juan Atkins a ‘cultural pirate’ of Kraftwerk’s aryan brilliance? It all gets a bit ridiculous really…
Sure if its something that is obviously jacked, and obviously a cash-in that’s one thing. But calling out, oh I dunno, Dan Bell as being a cultural pirate purely on account of race is a bit unfair.
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platinumray reply on July 16, 2008 8:37 am:
Sorry if this seems off topic but I think it’s relevant;
http://music.guardian.co.uk/electronic/story/0,,2289052,00.html
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Wow! I could really go on about this all day. I’m just going to rant for a bit.
I start off by saying that I think European and American perspectives on Black music are very different. I mean for one, some of the greatest jazz musicians had to go to Europe to play their music because Americans thought it was just “crazy Black shit” You can say the same about ‘Blues’ and ‘Rock N Roll’. (and yes African- Americans invented both, along with country, ragtime, swing, Disco, and most ideas of minimalism in composition) In America it took someone like ‘Elvis’ mimicking African-Americans to push Rock n Roll into American mainstream. Eminem for hip - hop. In Europe bands like Cream, Led Zepplin, and the Rolling Stones were outright ripping off black American music. The difference was is that they admitted it. All those bands were fans of what they were hearing from Black musicians in America, in fact it was what was inspiring them! They were not pretending to have come up with Rock N Roll. With Dance music its a whole other ballgame. Simply because Americans don’t know or give a shit about dance music weather it be Richie Hawtin or Derrick May. But I must admit that it took someone like Moby (white guy) to even begin to push it into the American mainstream culture. So when electronic music becomes mainstream in America you can count on it being a white boy who is the center of attention. I believe that a lot more Europeans know who Derrick May is. With that said, I believe Europeans know a lot more about African- American music. Check pop charts in England and France during the 60’s/70’s. (I could be wrong about all this)
Major labels push white artists in America due to the value of their marketability. African-Americans only consist of 11% of americas population. Who do you think makes Jay - Z rich? Certainly its mostly white people. In fact why do you think it is that a African American rapper who talks about clubbin, money, and fuckin bitches makes more money then a rapper talking about the war in Iraq or social justice for African Americans? Most of white America doesn’t want to hear that shit, they want something that you don’t need to think about, something that is about what they like. Clubs, fucking, and money. Let’s face it, American mainstream culture would completely not exist without African-Americans yet American mainstream culture would never except African-Americans being responsible for creating it. White Americans have virtually made no original music, they have only twisted or copied African-American music. Who the hell wants to admit that? Certainly not the ‘greatest nation on earth’. Well I’ll tell you who wants to acknowledge it, Theo Parrish and many other African-Americans creating and inventing music. Also, I do! I was inspired all my life by music that Black people in America created and invented. I copy and mimic Black music every time I make music. I want my music to be like their music, and why wouldn’t I, its the root of almost all music I have loved my entire life .
It was said that talent is talent. This is very true. White people make good music, Black people make good music, Latino, Middle Eastern, etc. All are capable of making good music. Every last culture and color can make good music. In fact the worst shit is as good as the best. It makes someone somewhere happy. It also teaches me what I don’t like and what I do like. The main difference is who has the money to market it to, and who is most marketable to a target audience.
Is Richie Hawtin’s music uninspiring, unoriginal, and soulless because he is white? Fuck no, its inspiring, original, and soulful! Its black music! Don’t believe me. How is it that a blues song could be just a few tweaked A-scale notes that provoke so much emotion, that resonates with so many other human beings sadness. Its so minimal yet reaches the most complex inner workings inside a human beings soul. Is it not true that a few minimal notes tweaked on a modified 303 also resonates with so many human beings souls. Ritchie just feels what he does. You have to respect anyone white or black for creating (even if they are coping or mimicking) what is inside their soul.
I gotta run… [Going out for beers] I hope this isn’t to sloppy. I was just mainly stating that I agree with mostly everything Theo is saying as well as you guys commenting but felt I needed to add my 2 cents.
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gmos reply on July 16, 2008 5:28 am:
excellent post
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noleian reply on July 30, 2008 3:29 am:
yup, excellent.
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To be perfectly honest this whole thing bores me. I find Theo far more interesting when talking about actual music - like in his redbull academy interview. Moodmat were blatantly just looking for controversy with this. Yes the argument can be made that some of what he says needs to be highlighted, but Theo also has to understand that the rest of the world is not like America.
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pipecock reply on July 16, 2008 8:43 am:
so you can list those countries in which black musicians are on equal ground in terms of label ownership, control over their music, the way artists are portrayed, and the way their music is marketed?
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Martin Dust reply on July 16, 2008 11:36 am:
Any artist with there own label for a start, I wonder what Theo think of Motown?
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pipecock reply on July 17, 2008 9:38 am:
is that hard to guess?
Motown is one thing (and of course one of the few examples of a good sized black owned label), Joe Blow owning his little tiny label is not even comparable in any way.
Jacob reply on July 17, 2008 4:46 am:
How can anyone possibly answer that? You want statistics? I think you could make a good argument that the UK is like this, however.
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pipecock reply on July 17, 2008 9:40 am:
can you? name those big UK labels owned by black people. one of my favorite UK labels is Island records who of course sold tons and tons of music by black artists of all types, owned by a white guy. you can keep on thinking that “it isn’t like the US everywhere” but that doesn’t change the reality of the situation.
I think the point that Kenny is making is that appropriation of underground subcultures isn’t necessarily an exclusively race-related phenomenon. The underground seemingly exists to be stolen from by the mainstream who present watered-down product as the “new sound” while the originators sit at home and eat spaghetti hoops on toast. Ronan nailed this in his post on HIAF when he alluded to the theft of Disco from gay culture. He doesn’t get much love on here but he’s right on point in terms of untangling the issues that Parrish raises.
The issue of the cultural appropriation of afro-american culture by whites isn’t up for discussion. It’s an indisputable fact. The big question for me comes with whether a person (black, white, whatever) uses the ideas to create art for its own sake or to create fame and money. But that’s my own personal barometer, sometimes it’s on the fritzz, sometimes it’s on the money.
I’ve seen KDJ & Theo spin at Triptych in Scotland the last 2 years running and the way they play is so inspiring, the one lesson I’ve taken from their sets is that it’s the music that matters. There are people who get that and people that don’t.
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Interesting debate on our forum too if anybody wants to have a look … http://www.bodytonicmusic.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=31751
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Sometimes guys like Theo in the US don’t realise that we’re all black over here in Europe !!! Yes there are the people that steal but it aint cos of race … check out the isreali guy who’s gone and lifted ‘groove la chord’ … shocking
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First of all, having in mind that ‘black’ music is axiomatically superior than ‘white’ music IS discriminative (and it’s a constantly repeated motif in the above comments, by everyone). If someone thinks Stockhausen sounds better than Marvin Gaye or vice versa, it’s just personal taste. PERSONALLY I’m into techno and dub mostly, obviously of Afro-American and Caribbean origin respectively, but that’s again just personal taste. And there was a “mostly” there. Most of the people reading this blog also “mostly” like ‘black’ music, but there is no natural law to deduct from this. And don’t get me started on the “white guy samples black guy makes money” thing.
So what we are really talking about here is not quality of music race-wise , it’s about the US market and whether afro-americans have the same opportunities with white americans. All bitterness on behalf of the first is totally understood, cause they’re either neglected or culturally castrated and forced to play the white man’s game, with few exceptions. Still, let me ask a question. Can you make a living out of it? Do you have to make the money Eminem does to live OK? Do you think you can play the music we all like and have the target group of Avril Lavigne at the same time? I don’t think you can. And if you wanna go for the big money then run, it’s over there.
There are people who sell and people who sell out and you have to choose where you stand. Everybody sooner or later gets pissed because some lame guy actually GOT rich by doing something more or less similar to his thing. So what? Do you want to be that guy? Where I live, less than 5% of the population listens to some style of foreign dance music. In a 5 million city it’ll be a miracle if you gather 1000 people together twice a year to listen to techno. In a typical European country. Do you think it’s easy to make a living by performing or DJing? Well it’s not. I’m on a morning job just to survive and be able to buy a vinyl or two. Do you think there are many artists in Europe as well-known, respected and well-paid as an average US artist (especially from Detroit or Chicago)? Or do you think Tiesto is an typical guy and we’re all like him? Well, same shit is everywhere and for everyone. I’m into music since 1989 and NEVER made money out of it. Should I blame the goverment/ the corporations/ the nazis/ the immigrants/ some god? Or the man next to me? I choose not to.
I totally respect Theo Parrish but artists sometimes lose perspective. Sorry for the long comment.
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pipecock reply on July 17, 2008 1:11 pm:
“First of all, having in mind that ‘black’ music is axiomatically superior than ‘white’ music IS discriminative ”
but who is saying that? no one in the comments, not Theo Parrish (though he does intimate that all music originated in Africa, which is different from saying what you mention).
“Still, let me ask a question. Can you make a living out of it? Do you have to make the money Eminem does to live OK? Do you think you can play the music we all like and have the target group of Avril Lavigne at the same time? I don’t think you can. And if you wanna go for the big money then run, it’s over there.”
this was not always the case. Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Miles Davis, etc all were able to make money, push boundaries musically and socially, and all got paid and respected for what they did by culture at large. in dance music, you have these black artists who can’t even get love or much money from their own small “scene” much less anywhere outside of it. why is there such a discrepancy?
“Do you think there are many artists in Europe as well-known, respected and well-paid as an average US artist (especially from Detroit or Chicago)?”
i think that there are TONS more, simply based on how many US artists have moved there to try to make enough money to live comfortably since they can’t do it here. even when they live right in the middle of the European techno scene, are they making bank like Sven Vath, Ricardo Villalobos, Richie Hawtin, Luciano, etc? of course not. they still get less gigs, less pay, less love no matter what they do.
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Jacob reply on July 18, 2008 4:16 am:
Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Miles Davis, etc all were able to make money, push boundaries musically and socially, and all got paid
It’s not like for like to compare those guys to TP. A much fairer comparison would be Timbaland, Outkast, Lil Wayne. Who are, lets face it, making bank.
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nightlight reply on July 24, 2008 12:56 pm:
Man, EVERYBODY is thinks that ‘black’ music is ‘better’ than ‘white’ music. And if it’s not put in actual words (it’s not pc) it’s there between the lines. It’s true for most of us, regardless of where each one of us lives, especially during the last five decades. I do it too. I don’t read into it more than what I already mentioned.
Miles Davis was a demigod incarnate. If HE didn’t get love and money, we’d have to cut off our ears and hands. Still, SO many demigods died poor or were never even heard by anyone, regardless of ‘race’, so we should consider the above lucky.
As for the Cocoon team you named, these are hardly your typical european DJs as they are THE most hyped guys around, all Ibiza, marketing and art crap flooding over their undeniable yet overstressed talent. They are not the underground. They are not the everyday people. And if you use them as an example you don’t know Europe well man, sorry. Do you think Ewan Pearson and A Guy Called Gerald in Berlin have different opportunities? Guys from Detroit move here cause there’s (’mostly’) better quality of life and they get the respect they deserve, of which they ‘re obviously depraved in the US. And yes, they get paid better. They make enough money to live and travel around the world because they DO get gigs. Which very few europeans can claim to have succeeded without compromising their work/ having beforehand a shitload of money to invest on their artistic ‘career’/ attaching themselves to a group as parasites/ sucking genitalia/ etc, etc.
I guess you don’t see it that way and I don’t blame you, you’d have to live here to know that. As I know I don’t understand racial discrimination problems in the States (or France, for example) in their fullness, cause I’m not there. But same shit IS everywhere. Focusing on bitterness is easy. Overcoming problems is the hard part.
It’s not my thing to judge someone from a line he spoke or wrote, I don’t quote and analyze words and stuff. I think TP bitched about a bit, but I don’t really care about it. Opinions like yours and mine and of all the others expressed here are more important.
“All other music is originated on african/black experience…”
You really want to defend this? This isn’t an intimation that “this music, like all other music originated in Africa”, it’s not historical, he’s talking about music now. On top of that the first part of that sentence reads:
“This mere notion wasn’t even circulated until some white folks were made to feel uncomfortable at a party they had no business being at…”
I don’t see a qualifier there for discerning white folk, white folk who are leftist, white folk who love techno or whatever. It says “white folk,” period.
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pipecock reply on July 17, 2008 3:17 pm:
“You really want to defend this? This isn’t an intimation that “this music, like all other music originated in Africa”, it’s not historical, he’s talking about music now.”
the first humans are from Africa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_humanity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_Origin
can you say that they didn’t invent music? it is not something that can be specifically pinpointed by historical data:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_music#Origin_of_music
but it seems to make sense that humans would invent music wherever they existed first.
i think that it may be more useful to think about the current forms of popular music that all are easily traceable to African music for the purpose of this discussion.
“I don’t see a qualifier there for discerning white folk, white folk who are leftist, white folk who love techno or whatever. It says “white folk,” period.”
there was no “white folk who loved techno” at the first techno and house parties. these were widely Black events at Black clubs and spaces, this is all available in books and pictures that cover that time period. it was not some kind of community outreach program, if there were white people there they were people who were part of the Black community, not tourists. i don’t see how this can be argued.
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Perhaps it’s more useful to you to talk about “current forms of popular music,” but that’s not what he said. He said “all music.”
Your argument concerning music being invented by protohumans in Africa is just nonsense, as it’s pretty clear he’s saying “african/black experience” in opposition to european/white experience, while the protomusic you’re appealing to would be a shared history. We all, black, white or not, descend from that early african population, thus no distinctions can be based on it.
This really isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things, so I’m not going to drag it out, but I do find it galling when people make essentialist claims like this.
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pipecock reply on July 17, 2008 4:13 pm:
“Your argument concerning music being invented by protohumans in Africa is just nonsense, as it’s pretty clear he’s saying “african/black experience” in opposition to european/white experience, while the protomusic you’re appealing to would be a shared history.”
he said all music is “originated in african/black experience”, i don’t see how that goes against what i said or can be interpreted as what you said.
“This really isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things, so I’m not going to drag it out, but I do find it galling when people make essentialist claims like this.”
i find it annoying when people start using words with “-ist” at the end. “rockist”, “essentialist”, how about some “suckmydickist”?
really you can try to nitpick his points (there are some things in there that aren’t 100% accurate), but whatever. he is not a musicologist, it isnt his job to live up to an academic standard when discussion music on the internet. the large picture of what he is saying is 100% on the money.
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For your education,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism
I’m not nitpicking anybody’s points. He says some good things, makes some excellent arguments, and then he claims that techno, like all music (and he gives rock, the blues and jazz as other examples), was originated by black people. He may be right about techno, but that point itself gives the lie to what you’re claiming, i.e. he is talking about specific musics, not music as a whole. Rock music, the blues, jazz, etc, he’s right with all of these too, but there’s plenty of music besides those. The claim is irresonspible, and that’s that man. If you want to contextualize it as others have, go ahead, but don’t pretend he didn’t say what he explicitly did.
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pipecock reply on July 17, 2008 4:59 pm:
“For your education”
hey thanks, i didn’t know how to use the internet and i have never read any philosophy. thank god for that link, otherwise i might not know anything.
let me be a little more specific in what i was trying to get across: knowing your history is important, understanding the flow of musical styles is great. what i dislike is making music discussion too academic, that is where the disdain for “-ist”s comes from.
and you *are* nitpicking that point. you are complaining about one small statement in a larger whole which even if it was totally incorrect (i am still not 100% in agreement on that) doesn’t change the main crux of his argument. you could leave that fragment of a sentence off his entire post and it would not change the meaning.
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Theo is acting like a right tit.
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Does teddy not realise without his ‘white folks’ audience he has nothing , black america wants hip hop not smelly old disco re edits … many of the samples from white musicans.
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I agree with a lot of what theo says. I even assumed when he said ‘white folks at a party they didnt belong at’ he was being metaphorical rather than literal.
But to suggest (all) music is of a black origin is patently stupid. Im not sure if theo said that or someone here.
Firstly the ‘we all from africa’ comment is daft. So white people just forgot all they learnt about music in africa once the pigment faded a bit?
Theo doesnt live in africa surrounded by other black people. He lives in the USA. He watches American TV. He buys American food. He uses japanese synths and ‘white’ recording technology.
We exist in a shared consciouness. Theo may have more black experience than some because he lives in detroit but a lot of his experiences are still filtered through ‘white folk’. Would he be making the same music if his ancestors hadnt been brought/moved to a land consisting of 80%+ white people? Maybe he’d be happier - but the music wouldnt be as interesting? maybe, maybe not, who knows.
would robert johnson have been able to play the blues without white folk? No, becuase white folk nicked the guitar idea from some people they met in the middle east while they were both fucking around in boats in the mediteranean 5000 years ago.
I have no problem with what theo says but im taking up some serious objections to people’s interpretations of it.
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you know what happens when ur living in detroit? you get salty and pissed off at the rest of world basically. worst economy in the nation, corrupt cops, corrupt mayor, “most dangerous” in the nation. all that shit. u know what i’m saying. so you just sometimes talk some shit tounge in cheek.
half of the illest detroit records wouldn’t have been pressed it it weren’t for ron murphy, a white dude. think about that.
plus half of theo’s top 8 on myspace is like, people. haha!!
he’s just talking to wackness out there… the people doing shit wrong.. and the white people unappropriating and disrespecting original roots. anyone who understands and respects music, should be able to catch that on the dime.
don’t forget about this part of the interview “There are a few non black underground dance artists that simply have gravitated to the form because its as free a musical form as you can get. They don’t even care who their music sounds like, they are just trying to express themselves honestly and truthfully. I’m not talking about them. They are rare and appreciated. They are original. Whatever success they garner is deserved.”
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jordan detroit reply on July 28, 2008 5:25 pm:
edit: plus half of theo’s top 8 on myspace is like, WHITE people. haha!!
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