SXSW panel report: A Dream Deferred: Black Rock

Jimi Hendrix setting his guitar on fire at the Monterrey Pop Festival: one of the original outliers, he was better than twice as good; he was exponentially better than everyone.

A Dream Deferred: Black Rock  was a panel at SXSW this year that I was determined not to miss as its subject matter is determinedly close to my heart and soul. I spoke with all of the panelists after it was over; I felt like they were kindred spirits; African American folks that are bold enough to be different, living out loud, embracing the very rock ‘n’ roll culture that the mainstream media would have you believe we did not create…when we did!

I used to get called “oreo” in high school because I spoke with proper diction and listened to alternative rock as well as hip-hop. Odd that a delicious cookie could become such a powerful, meanicing word. Sometimes I want to just go postal when people even jokingly refer to me as an “oreo,” black on the outside and white on the inside. How dare they question my “blackness”…because of the way I speak, dress and the music I listen to. Anyone that knows anything about black culture will tell you straight up that blackness is a state of mind. (It is not clothes, it is not speaking one way, it is not one type of music.)

I saw that same ignormant BS rear its ugly head when African Americans questioned whether President Obama was “black enough” to be the first black president. Can you believe that?!? I once heard someone coyly retort: “Ask Michelle if he’s black enough.”

Is Barack black enough? Am I black enough considering I listen to rock? People – sometimes our own people – questioning the core, the very soul of our  socio-political being. Ironically both Barack and I  are revolutionaries. Abolitionists that speak quietly while carrying a big stick. As W.E.B. DuBois would say, living under the “double-consciousness” of being at once an American artist and an African American artist. I mean, even one of my best black friends in middle school called me an “oreo,” then quickly said he was just kidding. (But I basically never spoke with him ever again. I was young, but I felt it was a high insult to have my “blackness” called into question.)

African Americans are not monolithic in our culture! We all dress, talk and act very different. We come in many different shades of black, brown and beige. We might speak in one dialect at work and then we’ll switch to  slang when we are at home, speaking with our brothas and sistas, our friends and family. Some of us love hip-hop, some of us are renowned opera singers.  Some of us are classically trained violinists. Some of us get down with hip-hop and R&B.

…and many of us like rock ‘n’ roll.

Before the anglo Cleveland DJ Alan Freed started using the term to market R&B, “rock ‘n’ roll” started as an African American slang term for sex. Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, Arthur Lee, Bo Didley, Big Mama Thornton, Little Richard…African Americans made up some of the earliest pioneers of rock ‘n’ roll! It’s almost as if the scribes of popular culture tried to erase our creative history by omission.

I hope that the next generation of black indie rockers never has to feel the pain of someone trying to make them feel less than just because they aren’t playing into a monolithic stereotype of “blackness.” I pray that the young indie rockers in high school and college today never have to explain themselves to anyone for liking rock and hip-hop

The academic discussion on black rock during SXSW was a first step that’s been a long time coming…

…here is a link to the original article that ran in the American-Statesman.

By V.M. Black | Friday, March 20, 2009, 12:47 AM

The Thursday audience at the SXSW panel “A Dream Deferred: Black Rock” was a small but enthusiastic group of professors, musicians and music industry insiders that attempted to discover the roots of media marginalization of African American rock musicians.

“It’s no accident that this panel is happening this year,” said moderator and Princeton professor Kandia Crazy Horse, later referencing how the African American underground rock scene is beginning to bubble up into the popular culture. Crazy Horse noted the success of Bloc Party, TV On the Radio and a host of other black hipsters – or “Blipsters” as the New York Times cheekily dubbed them.

Princeton University professor Daphne Brooks noted that in the new age of President Barack Obama, where possibility appears limitless, artists like Santogold and TV On the Radio have graced the cover of Spin Magazine while their music reflects “anxious blackness that is alienated – and yet at the center of popular culture.” Brooks pointed to a black and white, independent film (which initially gained traction at SXSW 2008) called “Medicine For Melancholy,” noting that it was one of the first artistic mediums documenting the emerging “Generation Y” African American rockers, their hopes, thoughts dreams and scene.

Boldaslove.us blogger Rob Fields made an eloquent case that African American rock musicians began to lose parity during the 1970s as rock radio marketing executives figured out that there was money to be made in creating genre formats with specific playlists, as opposed to the genre-bending, free flowing AM radio stations of the 1960s.

“We’ve got to help audiences become more sophisticated,” he said after recalling how some of his African American friends will ask “Is that band Living Colour still around?” when “black rock” is mentioned as a genre.

“We’ve got to take our sista friends to rock shows,” Crazy Horse said. “And black folks … we need to take our children to (rock) shows, too” to expose them to the genre of music that African Americans had a heavy hand in creating.

“Context is key,” Duane Harriott said as the panelists almost unanimously agreed that when sample-heavy artists like Girl Talk mash-up everything with the kitchen sink and African American rock, young audiences consume that music without any idea of the original source material, unless they do their research.

Crazy Horse reminded the attendees that African Americans are not monolithic in their art; she noted that Public Enemy is still one of the most rockin’ bands around, and a perfect example of not necessarily being what people think of when the “black rock” genre is discussed.

Unfortunately many of the SXSW musicians that are a part of this emerging scene were likely still asleep during the 11 a.m. under-attended panel.

Additional suggested reading: Spin Magazine’s Black Rock: An Oral History