Why are you listening to THAT kind of music?

National Public Radio aired a very interesting story last month that hit me where I live.

“Music writer Laina Dawes is a die-hard Judas Priest fan. She’s all about the band’s loud and fast guitars, the piercing vocals — and she loves to see the group perform live.

“Now, a fact that shouldn’t matter: Dawes is a black woman. This, she says, can make things uncomfortable on the metal scene. She says she’s been verbally harassed and told she’s not welcome…

“Dawes writes about the issue in her new book, What Are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal.”

I so relate to this.

Though I’m not particularly a heavy metal fan – though I do have a country version of AC/DC songs – I have been chastised for my eclectic taste in music, particularly when I was growing up. Usually, the critic was black.

One overbearing example was my sister’s boyfriend at the time, who I will call George since that was his name. I listened to Motown, but I had the audacity to also listen to music by white artists, such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Cream, each of whom was indebted to black music, not so incidentally. To me, the strands of country, gospel, pop, and rhythm and blues were all, more or less, the same.

But, I was told, there was music I was “supposed” to be listening to, to the exclusion of other music. Blues, jazz, black gospel were OK. Conversely, as Dawes puts it: “So when black people listen to quote/unquote ‘white-centric’ music – which is rock ‘n’ roll, or country, or heavy metal, punk, hardcore – it’s seen that they are somehow not proud of who they are, they would prefer to be somebody else outside of being black. And it’s seen as a slap in the face.” I got THAT a LOT, and it rather ticked me off.

George might, begrudgingly, suggest that SOME songs by white artists were OK – Bridge over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel and One by Three Dog Night made the cut.

He seemed to think, though, that most white music was the same, for he gave me a live, double album by Grand Funk Railroad, a group I previously had no interest in, for my birthday. (Still have it, BTW.)

There was legitimate concern over white artists covering black artists. But I suppose it depended on how it was done. My father hated Elvis Presley, for instance, in part for him “stealing”, among other songs, Big Mama Thornton’s Hound Dog, but I thought Elvis infused his own style into the song. Whereas I disliked the Pat Boone covers songs such as Little Richard’s Tutti Fruiti as washed-out mush.

This same narrow mindset had folks criticizing such disparate artists such as Dionne Warwick (pop), Jimi Hendrix (rock), and Charley Pride (country) for performing music that wasn’t “black enough,” whatever that meant.

Most of my music is organized alphabetically, by the artist. No categories. No “is that jazz or funk? Is that country or blues?” Music is music if the feeling’s right.
***
The poster is from someone’s Facebook page. Had to be from 1963 or later, since a ZIP Code is cited.

Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto. View all posts by Roger