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HAS AN ARTISTS RACE EVER PREVENTED YOU FROM BUYING THEIR MUSIC?
I have seen many great blogs on Fuzz. But I have to admit I haven't seen this question. So here it is and even though I am not guilty. I have allowed "race" to interfere with my choices as far as concerts to attend.:-) My brother and I had tickets to see Metallica when they came to Milwaukee one year. We were clearly aware that many black people weren't into "metal." But we were never "normal" when it came to music. But knowing we would not see a uniform representation of where we "LIVE," we chose not to go. I look back on that incident now and feel like I lost something. In our quest for things that bring us happiness. We always seem to equate how "OTHERS" will react. This is necessary and wise, but when should we trust "OTHERS" and ignore our fears? In a country like the USA, no one is truly "FREE." As long as we continue to avoid these invisible boundaries, we continue to make these boundaries stronger. If the music is good and moves "YOU" support it, explain it, and encourage it! Out of all the ways human-beings communicate. Music is by far the strongest tool because it involves speech, tones, and ultimately assumptions. It is poetry regardless the genre. I vow to destroy these boundaries and hope that we all TRY to unite in MUSIC. "Peyasomatah" May the SUN always rise and set on you and protect you from ALL evil.
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Accordingly later on my fave singles in 1969 were Badge by Cream and Harlem Shuffle by Bob & Earl (the latter one was re-released, but for me and the charts it was new).
So a lot of years later you and your brother experienced a similar thing vice versa. That's why we are meeting here, I think.
But there seems to be some need for identification process, which I learnt from a clever book I read and can recommend to anyone, I quote from an advertisement:
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
Revised Edition
by Beverly Tatum
Description
Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see black youth seated together in the cafeteria. Of course, it's not just the black kids sitting together-the white, Latino, Asian Pacific, and, in some regions, American Indian youth are clustered in their own groups, too. The same phenomenon can be observed in college dining halls, faculty lounges, and corporate cafeterias. What is going on here? Is this self-segregation a problem we should try to fix, or a coping strategy we should support? How can we get past our reluctance to talk about racial issues to even discuss it? And what about all the other questions we and our children have about race? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, asserts that we do not know how to talk about our racial differences: Whites are afraid of using the wrong words and being perceived as "racist" while parents of color are afraid of exposing their children to painful racial realities too soon.
The book may be slightly outdated, with kids growing up watching MTV and listening to hip hop, most of them don't seem to find it necessary to pay attention to their own or others' race (strange word, "race", anyway).
Nowadays racism mainly occurs when it mixes with anti-Semitism, in the sense that stupid people seek a scapegoat whom they can hold responsible for all bad things happening.
Back to the music: It is interesting though that even if people are not racist, they normally are kind of glued to their "colour's" type of music. The big one exception being hip hop, which of course mixed over the time with other styles like rock (as cleverly portrayed in that famous video of "Walk this way" featuring Aerosmith and Run DMC).
ARE FINE WITH "PREPARED STUPIDITY" TIBII SAID IT THE BEST. GOD BLESS.......................... SPACE BOY
1. If you ask the question another way, I think you get a more honest answer [leaving aside the value judgment whether that answer is a good one]: "Has an artist's race ever influenced you in buying their music?" I think most people, if they are honest about it, will answer, "yes" [because the question as recasted seems to be less "racist" in its overtones]. However, if you think about it, if the answer to the recasted question is, "yes", then the answer to the original question must also be, "yes".
2. Why would most people answer in the affirmative whether your choice of music is influenced by race? You identify certain types of music with a quick and casual generic cultural or historical tag that seems, at least at first glance, to be better rooted in the legacy of a specific past, a legacy that almost always frames the music in question. Thus, you might say that, as a genre, "blues" came out the "depression era" black experience that continues to this day; and so, in picking out a blues song you might let race influence your decision whether or not to buy the songs about an "authentic" experience following the "blues" framework. Similarly, "country" might be said to come out of a rural, and impliedly "poor white" legacy: and here again you may be inclined to select the country framework by race. Point is: the flip-side of the positive is a terrible negative, i.e, if blues is identified with blacks and country is identified with whites, logically whites are not identified with blues [of course, there are exceptions but we are talking about broad impressions and assumptions here] and blacks are not identified with country [with obvious exceptions].
3. Of course, looking at the race and music question this way [as a framing exercise of historical and/or cultural legacies], begs the broader question whether we should. And whether dividing music discovery by "genre" is useful or valid to the experience sought to be discovered. [This will, of course, lead to a whole boatload of other questions that may or may relate to racial stereotypes.]
4. To place value judgements then on a "yes" or "no" answer to the race and music question, your assessment of whether this is right or wrong must be nuanced to account for whether the identification of a certain type of music [to the extent that music reflects a legacy and a story that should be heard] with a race of people is "positive" or "negative".
5. To the extent that we succumb to stereotypes, whether it is listening to music, buying it, or more broadly, making assumptions that prevent a more nuanced look at underlying realities, this is a "negative". To the extent that we accept that race matters in telling a story about reality that is in fact a legacy of the past [or current conditions] that is reflected in music, this is to me a "positive".
6. Tibii's, always interesting, discussion is also instructive to the question whether race and historical legacies matter in your associations and assumptions. Here again, whether the associations and assumptions are "positive" or "negative" depends on the context and reason for the framing exercise about why people tend to hang out in tribes [as they do].