#antiblackness in music

[doberbutts]

[duncebento]

hearing someone is not racist from an anime blog = 100% confirmation that person is racist. this is about mori calliope of “rapanese fire” fame btw

[lesbianchemicalplant]

“Midnite Cruiser” is sung from the point of view of a hipster longing for the attentions of some other, greater hipster, whom he calls “Felonious.” “Felonious” might be an easier word to sing than “Thelonious,” as in Thelonious Sphere Monk, who played with his right and left hands in different dimensions and made the piano sound like broken china sutured together with gold. Weird choice of pseudonym, though—Monk’s most notable criminal conviction was a sixty-day workhouse bid on Rikers Island for his “possession” of a baggie of smack that had actually been thrown from Monk’s car window by his passenger, Bud Powell. And some part of Thelonious’s “madness” was undiagnosed bipolar disorder—but so goes the romance of jazz, which is so often about professorial dorks building questionable monuments to Black pain.

Even at this point, in the early ’70s, jazz in the Steely Dan symbology is inexorably tied to the past. “The time of our time has come and gone” is how the narrator addresses Felonious, implying that they’re both marooned in the present. The narrator wants Felonious to step off the bandstand and shake his hand; he wants to be validated as a fellow traveler, to be transported out of the ordinary by contact with visionary Blackness. Felonious occupies the same space for the narrator of “Midnite Cruiser” that someone like Monk would have in the personal cosmology of a young Fagen or Becker. The narrator envies Felonious’s freedom from social stricture, but he also imagines that his own sense of being at odds with his content gives him something in common with Felonious, a kinship he longs to have affirmed. What the narrator is saying to Felonious is I’m like you. I’m more like you than I’m like the people I’m supposed to be like.

In other words, he’s longing to slip the skin of his whiteness and be a brother who’s free. Harry Styles could sing this song, but could he get away with writing it, in a world that’s come to understand the white longing to channel Black cool as an expression of privilege? We now have the concept of “romantic racism” to explain what’s happening in a song like this—and for Sal Paradise looking out the window in On the Road and wishing to “exchange worlds with the happy, true-hearted, ecstatic Negroes of America,” for Norman Mailer extolling the bravery of the White Negro (“the source of Hip is the Negro for he has been living on the margin”), for Ralph Bakshi’s Fritz the Cat, rediscovering his capacity for animal passion by hanging out with blackface crows under a grimy tie-dye sky.

Time hasn’t been kind to Kerouac and Mailer’s dreams of seceding from white hegemony. We understand now that there’s something unseemly about white hipsters who identify with Blackness, since they can never assume the risks that come with it, or give up the power white America affords boys born into it. But back when Donald and Walter were coming up, most white hipsters didn’t think about it that way. Which means “Midnite Cruiser” is a little bit ahead of its time—for 1972, and for right now. There are countless songs in the pop canon that are in some way or another symptomatic of the white man’s yearning to possess Black cool, but there are very few songs about that yearning, and “Midnite Cruiser” is one of them. Steely Dan are as guilty as anyone else of borrowing from Black music to advance themselves commercially and artistically, but in the ’70s they’re pretty much the only [white] people actively thinking, and writing, about the debt they’ve incurred through that involuntary transaction with history and the essential unrepayability of that debt.

They haven’t solved the problem because there’s no solution. They will go on to write better songs about it than “Midnite Cruiser.” The title track on Pretzel Logic is “Midnite Cruiser” stripped of anything romantic; its narrator longs to travel back in time and play the minstrel circuit, convinced he’ll be recognized as the genius he is. And in “Deacon Blues” the story comes full circle, and the romance is restored. Whereas “Midnite Cruiser” lionized the jazz musician as dissolute trickster-genius-madman, turning actual Black artists into stereotypes in the process, “Deacon Blues” slyly romanticizes the white hipster outsider’s romance with that same stereotype, rendering it touching and funny precisely because it’s quixotic and impossible. Donald Fagen once said, “Deacon Blues” was “about as close to autobiography as our tunes get.”

Even in “Midnite Cruiser,” though, there’s already a slight satirical sting. “Drive me to Harlem,” the narrator begs Felonious, “or somewhere the same,” anticipating later Steely Dan songs like “Bodhisattva” and “Aja,” where deluded white guys will long for a muddled idea of the mystical East. The “constellation of enthusiasms” that brought Donald and Walter together also included the writings of Terry Southern, whose short-story collection Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes—published in 1967, the year the founders of Steely Dan met at Bard—is full of deluded white protagonists who seek out Black authenticity and wind up clowning themselves, or worse. [...]

Walter was Donald’s bohemian muse, and their collaboration was a platonic love story. Donald grows up alienated in the suburbs, builds a memory palace to safeguard an idea of jazz that’s already be-bopping into antiquity by the time he discovers it, and eventually meets Walter, who likes and hates a lot of the same things he does, who in particular shares his disdain for the pop present but is also in some essential way a product of the mythic elsewhere Donald’s been yearning for. Walter’s from the city or at least its outer boroughs, Walter has a painful personal history, Walter has played in bands already, and when they start writing together Walter gives Donald permission to become the thing he’s supposed to become. Walter, in other words, might be the real Midnite Cruiser—the gentleman loser Donald’s always wanted to shake his suburbanness and become. So the end of Steely Dan is built into the band at its inception because once they’re a working band, it’ll be Walter who gets into drugs and almost chases the dragon to his doom and has to drop out of sight for a while, leaving Donald to figure things out on his own.

Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan, by Alex Pappademas and Joan LeMay (2023)

ISBN 9781477324998 | google books preview

[nehiwords]

white people think there’s only one genre of hip-hop and that’s genuinely tragic

[icedsodapop]

Im still big mad that culture vulture Miley Cyrus won a grammy 😠😠 like first she appropriates Black culture to distance herself from her Disney image. Then she distances herself from Black culture and insults it when it no longer fit her more "mature", "feminine" image. Then she wins a grammy for sampling Gloria Gaynor. Shes so annoying.

Tags credit: @kvtnisseverdeen

[cistematicchaos]

when white singers stop having "Black" phases where they sing traditionally Black music genres and attempt some mockery of rap for like, 1 album, the earth will heal a little.

[circuscl0wn]

Media Rant

One of the worst things about consuming non-western media as a Black person is remembering how that non-western community feels about you. Let me explain.

One of the reasons I had started watching K-dramas is because I was tired of looking at media where I was supposed to see myself such as American shows or movies and not seeing myself or at least different versions of girls who look like me. Essentially, there was a lack of representation for mono-racial black girls that was slowly turning into misrepresentation where we were told that Zendaya was our representation so we are not allowed to complain (??like?? Love her but no). So I turned to Asian media and decided to watch media in which I was not expecting or looking for representation, just good stories.

But nothing is worst than when there’s slivers of anti-blackness or colorism in media you turned to in order to escape your realities. It’s like what you attempted to relieve yourself from followed you. For example ANYTIME Africa or Hiphop is mentioned in a K-Drama I sigh and know shits about to be problematic or annoying. Thai BLs are also guilty, for example Or in Theory of Love there’s a character with Tan skin (Earth Pirapat) and his skin tone gets made fun of. It reminds me that overall, several cultures do not value those with tan to dark skin. Makes me feel even worst for people in those countries who don’t fit the standard of porcelain skin.

Those reminders always remove me from what I’m watching. In conclusion, unfortunately you can never escape anti-blackness, racism, colorism, and more horrible societal issues. You can only find media that shows it to a lesser degree or hides it. Thanks for coming to the Ted talk no one asked for.

[theresa-of-liechtenstein]

man i’m still so hung up on the way that this professor handled music in the philippines. there were Choices made and though i agreed with a few of them, i found most of them straight up fucking baffling and it was disheartening to not feel heard or invited to contribute to the discussion despite this subject matter being uhhhhhhh my fucking lived experience just because i didn’t pay a twenty dollar membership fee to the fil-am org

[bellamer]

Less talk about the fact that a featured rapper could make the most beautiful and powerful verses about struggling, police brutality, growing up in bad situations or the struggles of black people in America, in a Gorillaz song

Yet Gorillaz fans will deadass make edits and remakes of the song, removing the rap, the foundation of the song just to hear Damon/2D sing a nonsense chorus like "I'm a monkey man, take me by the hand, eating sand." over and over again and will claim that the song is "better" without the rap and will make up a dozen excuses why the rap or the black artists' verses feels out of place

It's giving anti-blackness

It's giving racisim

It's giving black people erasure

It's giving "I'm white/nonblack, please don't make me think about these issues and let me live in my own little bubble."

And don't even try to say "Well I just don't want to listen to political stuff in music" cuz fucking newsflash ALMOST ALL OF THEIR SONGS ARE POLITICAL AND DEAL WITH SOME SORT OF ISSUE !

[black-is-beautiful18]

The antiblack “jokes” about Beyoncé’s music all cuz she released an album that was full of afrobeats and music from Africa, mind you it was for a movie, is not funny. At all. Nor is making fun of an album that was about very vulnerable time between her and her husband. Calling them “negro spirituals” isn’t funny either. Cuz if she didn’t make songs about the Black experience and to uplift us then you would be calling her a coon. Y’all also don’t seem to ever learn. Nonblack ppl, especially white ppl, watch and listen to us like a hawk. When they start saying this mess it’s suddenly going to be a huge problem. Rightfully so, but you’re not gonna see that it’s your fault for even putting it out there. I need y’all to let her do her job as an artist. We can shake ass all we want but an artists job is not just to cater to their audience. It’s to also shape the world. Without musicians, poets, painters, etc we would be freaking miserable and most likely lack the capability to understand a number of things. Please get a grip. It also doesn’t matter if you don’t think it’s that serious. It doesn’t stop me from being right. I literally go to school for this.

[cosmicanger]

do not let shallow representational politics + tokenization fool you Black people have not gotten more support in the last two to three years, they just shuffled out burned out tokens of the past for new token overseers smdh

[jjongslight]

Again, I think the way K-pop capitalizes on black music/aesthetic is a convo that needs to be constantly had despites our music preference or biases.

I am including myself in it, cause despite me disengaging with majority of K-pop a long time ago, I still engage with parts of the industry that uses black workforce to put money in their pockets.

My only problem is and remains that this discourse shouldn't be isolated or selective to hip hop, cause I feel like we cage in and stereotype black music appropriation to it, when again, all those r&b/funk/edm/house/soul/gospel-like songs SHINee and others have put out falls into that same type of appropriation.

Let's not act like this hasn't always been an issue. If it was okay for you to engage with it before, than look at your biases in regards to what black music is.

[yudgefudge]

BARBIE WORLD BY NICKI AND ICE OUT NOW!!!!!! STREAM 🫶🏾🫶🏾🫶🏾🫶🏾🫶🏾

[juror4]

It's ridiculously and infuriatingly difficult to find some casual history material on the Moors because all anyone cares about is classifying whether or not they were Black... Shut up! I want to know about the arts and the science and the clothing and the crafts and the poetry and the battles and the culture! I don't want to do race science!

[gay-nidoking]

Too much m*ndless self indulgence 🤢🤮 and not enough t-pain in marvus spotify playlists

[icedsodapop]

Billie Eilish is really pulling a "White girl" by getting diamond grills despite her criticism of the authenticity of rap music, like, girl, what are you doing? Please stop. 🙄