Black Music Month 2023: Final Thoughts

I can't help but feel like using that "final thoughts" is setting me up to have subsequent thoughts. 

As it is, there are things that I know I could include with this reading segment (which ended up spanning much more than a month), but I am not because I think they will go with other things better. 

Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race by Maureen Mahon
Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll by Maureen Mahon
Rip It Up: The Black Experience in Rock 'n' Roll by Kandia Crazy Horse
Blues People: Negro Music in White America by Amiri Baraka 

First of all, let me say how much I enjoyed discovering Maureen Mahon, especially in the way it happened. I read Right to Rock (2004) which came from her student experiences, and then saw references to Black Diamond Queens (2020) and decided to read that. 

I enjoyed her writing anyway, but in that order, seeing someone still preparing for their career, and then more established, and knowing also that they are fairly young and that there could be new works coming... that was really cool. Often as I am reading something I wonder what they would think of later developments, but here there is the chance of continuing to learn.

These last four books are bound by a common thread. It would be easy to call it music snobbery, but there is more to it than that.

Chronologically, it would start with Blues People, where there is a divide between which Black people appreciate blues versus jazz, or other types of music. It is roughly a matter of highbrow or lower class. Blues can be very sexual, and so polite company might feel awkward about it, but there was an influence from what was perceived as white taste and respectability.

Moving forward, when we get into rock, then there is at times this sense that rock is for white people. Yes, white people are notorious for automatically classifying music as R&B or Hip Hop if the performers are Black, but sometimes that was reflected back at Black rockers, even though it was a craft that white people stole from Black people anyway.

Now, there is an interesting class distinction there too. Transcending race, "garage rock" requires a garage, or somewhere a beginning band can practice and play and be loud, which is easier to find when you have more space.

Then, of course (especially in Mahon's work) there is the sexism and misogyny and misogynoir that women get when they are trying to succeed in a "man's" world.

Those are not the only factors; one things that seems to be a real obstacle to acceptance is being too different from the other contemporary music. Having some similarities but putting a new spin on them can work well, but some sounds were so different they were outright rejected; a few years later they might have worked.

Often, though, race and gender were obstacles to success, or were held against musicians socially, and generally made life more difficult.

Obviously, tastes vary, and that's fine. There may still be great value in listening again, and examining that tendency to reject.

Sometimes it is racist or classist or sexist, or even all of the above.

We don't need that.