Classism and music

[XemaSab]

Hip hop and country are really taking it today, and I'll be the first to say that I can't get into either genre. I've really tried, and I'm at the point where I like a few rap/R&B songs and a small, small, small handful of country songs, but most of the songs don't say anything meaningful to me about my experience.

The whole "pimp" and "gangsta" lifestyle I find appalling. Homocide is the leading cause of death among young black men, and what's the percentage of black men who will find themselves incarcerated? Whatever the percent, it's too high. Too much music glorifies a lifestyle of egregious sexism and wanton violence.

Alternately, most country music I've heard is just too maudlin. I used to go out with a cowboy-hat-sportin' dude, and the machismo and lack of depth to the music just doen't grab my interest.

With both genres, it's not about the instrumentation or form, it's about the lyrics just doing nothing for me.

Maybe it's a class issue. I've grown up as a middle-class urban white girl in a time when middle-class urban white girls didn't listen to hip-hop, and though I have had friends who were gang members, I can't relate to it because it's so foreign to me.

I've also had friends who were very "country," and I'm just not down. The music says little about where I'm coming from. Even living and working in agricultural areas I'm more interested in a white, urban style of music.

Which isn't to say that we shouldn't only listen to music that reflects back to us what we already know. Bluegrass, blues, and opera are genres that I've managed to develop an appreciation for through listening and reflection. There are messages there that speak to broader human experience (like dying of TB while singing at the top of your lungs). These messages can also be found in some country and hip hop music, but for me, notsomuch.

[DS1]

1. The world needs another Wesley Willis

[XemaSab]

2. True dat.

[Karenina]

32. THEY THREW ME OUTTA CHURCH!

:rofl::rofl::rofl:

[Oeditpus Rex]

3. It was implied yesterday in this forum

that those who don't like rap have closed minds. Apparently the poster didn't consider that some music simply doesn't resonate (NPI) with some people.

One need never justify one's likes and dislikes to anyone else. They're all quite personal, and one might not even be able to explain them.

A friend told me years ago, "Most people listen to music and say they like it or they don't. You get into the mechanics of how well it's done." That's true, and it is possible to dislike a music genre — or any other art form — but still appreciate its nuts and bolts. But art, to be truly enjoyed, must touch us on an emotional level.

[XemaSab]

4. I think most genres are an acquired taste

So part of it may be lack of exposure, but yeah, you're right, de gustibus non disputandem est.

:pals:

[Oeditpus Rex]

6. Yeah, and In vino veritas

So let's get drunk and listen to some Floyd. :headbang:

[XemaSab]

7. I just cued up "Dark Side of the Moon" on your suggestion

:toast:

[Oeditpus Rex]

15. I'd likely follow suit

but I've got a ball game on.

[trof]

37. Hear, hear.

Well said.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

39. I'm an old grannie and like some early rap

but the newer stuff is too in-your-face and woman-hating. Everything is bitch and fuck. I think they have taken the genre too far.

Country I can bear the older stuff. I don't like scream music.

I have never been able to abide opera. It grates on me.

[Squeech]

5. No, I think this is how it works

The examples you hear on the radio of *any* genre are effectively never the best examples of that genre. So don't base your opinion of, say, hip-hop by the current Top 40.

The reasons for this are not easy to explain, and I'm at my day job so I'm not at my wittiest, but it goes something like this: contemporary music is marketed primarily by giving the consumer some cheap and trivial validation of the role (s)he fulfills in the world, in his/her own mind. So, whether (s)he recognizes it or not, the typical hip-hop fan is likely to choose some sort of heroic fantasy about rising above the odds in the mean streets by great strength of character, rather than a reasoned critique showing why those streets are mean and how one could escape by getting a good education. (Rappers who try that seldom make the charts.) And yer typical urban cowboy type often prefers homilies about home on the range, the less realistic the better, to anything you might hear from Willie Nelson or Johnny Cash. It's not a matter of the music itself being good or bad, it's a matter of the consumer not being an educated or critical listener, and choosing the music according to how it complements some movie playing in his/her head.

It's just as true for more mainstream stuff. Springsteen is something of an anomaly, since he can actually capture some really disturbing realities in his songs, but your typical white rocker is generally a shameless apologist for the way things are, that everything's fine, or would be if only the homecoming queen would go out with you...

At least that's how I see it. Your mileage may vary.

[Oeditpus Rex]

10. The flaw in that hypothesis

is in the assumption that it's all about lyrics. Most of the time with me it's the instrumental arrangement.

It's a rare lyricist who grabs my viscera, Roger Waters being foremost among those.

But, yup — what's played on radio is typically not an example of an artist's best work.

[billyskank]

8. Much 80s hip hop is very lighthearted

this "gangsta" stuff is a relatively recent development. I think it's corporately driven.

:hi:

[meow2u3]

9. I KNOW gangsta rap is corporate driven

Promoters deliberate push this trash they try to pass off as hip hop to keep the poor down.

[Squeech]

12. Yeah, but

the majority of the gangsta records are actually bought in the suburbs by white kids. That was one of the great revelations when SoundScan data became available.

Another revelation was how well hip-hop sold all around. Before that, Billboard et al heavily under-reported rap/hip-hop sales.

[XemaSab]

11. I know that 80's stuff is very different

If I'd stayed in Oakland, I would have gone to the high school MC Hammer went to.

Instead I moved to the posh area and went to the same high school as Tupac Shakur. :shrug:

[billyskank]

13. One thing's for sure

MC Hammer DOES suck! :D

[XemaSab]

18. He was alright for the time

But like synth-pop, usually the first commercial wave of a genre just ain't that good.

[Orsino]

14. Gangsta homicide is a huge problem...

...so it strikes me as only right that there should be a lot of music written about it, and that said music shouldn't shy away from portraying the nigh-inevitability of these crimes. Whether or not any of the music is actually glorifying the lifestyle is debatable. Me, I assume that a lot of it is a lament.

[XemaSab]

21. There's a fine line between a lament and a glorification

Witness "Pimpin' Ain't Easy." :eyes:

[Orsino]

34. Yeah...fine enough that I'm not sure I could recognize...

...one from the other--particularly when I don't speak the language.

[Shine]

16. The bottom line is: people have different musical tastes. Big deal.

No biggie. Why get all worked up and attached to one's personal opinion and have to be RIGHT about it? I just don't get that.

What annoys me about all those threads is the self-righteousness and judging of people who don't happen to have the same musical taste as themselves.

Can't we all just respect our differences and move on, without having to bash others' opinions?
:shrug:

[Bridget Burke]

17. It's one thing to admit you don't care for certain genres (as you do)

And quite another to state that "That isn't Music." (As others have done here.)

I, too, am a white woman with middle class roots. However, in my youth, "Folk Music" was popular. Beyond the Kingston Trio stuff, people did musicological work & searched for "authenticity." In the Houston reality of those days, I was able to hear bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins--whose improvised lyrics were an early great-uncle of hip-hop. And I heard songster Mance Lipscomb--a retired sharecropper with songs from the pre-Blues era--although he could sing a blues that would make your hair stand on end. And I danced to Clifton Chenier & His Red Hot Louisiana Band. Modern zydeco was born in Houston--our city has long-standing links with Louisiana.

Some pretty fair singer-songwriters came from Texas--well-educated folks who looked to Blues & Country roots. (Some of these went to Nashville & went to Hell. No, I don't love the Nashville style.) The Cosmic Cowboy movement had its excesses, but many Texas Playboys jammed with Asleep at the Wheel. Again, living traditions. Texas also has some fine Mexican/Chicano/Tejano stuff going on.

Ever hear of Jimmie Rodgers? He was one of the seminal country artists--but his career was cut short by TB. Yes, he sang up until the end. (While you're at it, check out the Carter Family.)

www.roughstock.com/history/begin.html

Lyrics are fine, but "music" is also important to me. You seem to have an open mind--continue your education!

[mac56]

23. You do mean Jimmie Rodgers, the Singing Brakeman, right?

Not Jimmie Rodgers of "Honeycomb" and "Secretly" and "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine", right?

[Bridget Burke]

26. None other!

That's Jimmie Rodgers on the left, with the cigarette. Then, Maybelle, A P & Sarah Carter.

[alcibiades_mystery]

19. Rap is not all lyrics

In fact, one can very easily read the lyrics as not mattering very much with respect to meaning in some very good rap. It matters, rather, with respect to sound, and the way it complements the beat and works with it. Rap started, in part, as a dance and party form, combining the value of oral virtuosity in the African American social tradition with the technical constraints of poor urban life. There is certainly a class element involved, even in the evolution of hip hop. Sampling and DJing begin as a poor man's form, those without access to music and musical education inventing a new kind of instrumentation with existing materials (as Chuck D says, "Run DMC first proved a DJ could be a band..."). This is actually a shocking development in the history of music and technology - astonishing, even: it is rare in history to see the emergence of an almost unheard of form, with little in the way of precursors. This was the emergence of hip hop music (yes, goddamnit, music) in the 70's and 80's. And, of course, hip hop was always a life style, and always a life style that to some extent flaunted its particular relation to white middle class morality. All those people saying that rap was "lighter" in the 70's and 80's are engaging in nostalgia of the most hilarious kind: rap grew up next to and alongside graffiti, for example, always considered a "blight" by the white bourgeois moralists, and it was always more or less concerned with the realities of "working class" urban life, no more violent today than back then, and no less.

I'd argue that one can listen to and enjoy rap even ignoring the lyrics as meaning, and concentrating only on the combination of the sounds and the modulation of the beats and lyrics together. One need not do this, but one could. And, of course, white middle class moralism expresses its faux white shock at the "dirtiness" and "unpleasantness" of rap lyrics, while the suburban movie theaters fill for every slaughter-fest put out by Hollywood and Stephen King and Dean Koontz fly off the shelves. I often suspect that what is most grating to the white bourgeois moralists is the reminder, everyday, that their morality is dependent on America's general immorality, their precious values a sham that would allow the unending racism and poverty to grind away at a people for generation after generation. Hip hop makes a lie of the white suburban life. It is heard as grating, immoral, nasty, even (gasp) unmusical as a result. This is also, of course, why it appeals so much to white suburban teenagers, who see in it a questioning of their own lives and values; but they'll mostly soon settle down, and say that the rap was better when they were teenagers, now that they are no longer in a subordinated social position and the music doesn't touch their lives anymore. This is why so many white adults in their 20's and 30's pretend that rap had some golden age in the late 1980's and early 1990's, when these same folks were, surprise surprise, teenagers: now that they're all grown up, it's all crap, because, of course rap tends to speak to a condition of social struggle, and these folks have now been assimilated fully into white bourgeois life.

Is it classism? Of course it is. It's also racism. We pretend that the racist is one who makes a choice to lynch a black person, rather than the one who really believes that, say, Afros look stupid. We also pretend that our "tastes" are some product of a little precious machine inside ourselves - Lawd we cain't splain it, no suh! - rather than a product of our social position. In this way, we can pretend that 1) our precious individual tastes can't be racist, because 2) they are our own, and 2a) we don't lynch black people, Q.E.D. These positions are naive in the extreme, but they keep us safe, and keep our little resentful moralisms alive and steaming, and I mean steaming.

[XemaSab]

22. I like music for the lyrics

:shrug:

[alcibiades_mystery]

24. Um

Never said you didn't...:shrug:

[XemaSab]

25. That was my response to the opening of your post,

that it can be argued that lyrics are only a part of the whole.

I usually pick music for the lyrics. :hi:

[alcibiades_mystery]

29. Well, thanks for reading the first sentence

:eyes:

[XemaSab]

40. I read the whole thing

and I've been thinking about parts on and off for a few hours now, especially the idea that whites "learn" to dislike rap music.

It's just a lot to digest. :hi:

[alcibiades_mystery]

42. Sorry

My response was rude. I apologize.

[XemaSab]

44. Don't worry about it!

:hi:

[mac56]

20. Basically, you should like what you like.

If that involves broadening your horizons, that's great. But you needn't pretend to like something you don't care for just because the kids sitting at the cool lunchroom table tell you that you're 'sposed to like it.

[Radical Activist]

27. You could say the same about most top 40 pop

It is devoid of meaning and lacking in values. Britney, Boy Bands, and the like. There's no reason to single out Country and Rap for that.

[XemaSab]

28. Hey, I said I dislike MOST country and rap

but ALL top 40 pop just sucks.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

30. All rap music is not "pimps and gangstas"!

Sorry to yell, but I keep seeing this pop up on DU.

Don't judge hip-hop by the crap they play on radio or MTV. It's kind of like judging all country music by Toby Keith while ignoring Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, etc.

There are so many great rap acts that are NOT based on the gangsta lifestyle -- those that have meaningful and clever lyrics without talking about "bitches and hoes." Hell, some even play their own instruments.

The problem is that these talented rap acts generally aren't given major airplay. Don't judge a whole industry by a few examples.

[Rich Hunt]

31. most of it isn't anymore

That caricature of hip-hop is really out of date.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

35. But many people think it is all about that.

[XemaSab]

41. I know this

but the only exposure I have to it is on the radio. :P

[kwassa]

33. There are many well-off white kids listening to hiphop; 70% of record

sales are to whites, and though I haven't seen stats on family income levels, I've seen many caught up with it.

[trof]

36. Don't do opera, hip-hop, rap, or Michael Jackson.

Especially Michael Jackson.
I don't care if he starts doing Sinatra songs.

Funny you should mention this.
Just this morning I was doing my (almost) daily 3 mile walk with a couple of other 60-somethings.
The subject of last night's Academy Award winning 'song' came up.
Nobody could understand the lyrics, if you can call them that.

I understand that hip-hop and rap have come to be accepted as art forms.
I guess even musical(?) art forms.
I don't get it, but I have no problem with that.
I'm free to listen or not.

And although I have sung in a few operas and operettas, I wouldn't sit through one as a spectator (especially a PAYING spectator) for anything.

Just my taste.
Ain't it great that we're allowed to pick and choose?
'Scuse me while I put some Four Freshmen on.
;-)

[WeRQ4U]

38. There doesn't really have to BE a reason to not like something...

Whether it be about lyrics, beat, sound, mechanics, theory, etc...aren't there times you just hear something and like it? That's what's beautiful about music.., (and here is where I get corny) sometimes you just "feel" it.

Also, I will take exception to anyone that attempts to classify my music likes and dislikes as "racist" or "conformist" or whatever. Who gives a shit. I need neither a psychological evaluatiion, nor a thesis on urban sociology and concentric ring theory to help me "understand" why this is. If I don't like a particular hip hop song, it's because it does nothing for me emotionally. Listen, there are songs from bands that I generally DO like that do nothing for me. They aren't on my iPod and when I play them on the CD they get skipped. Is there some express or implied "reason" why I do this? NOPE.

That being said, I also can't understand how someone could disregard an entire genre of music out of hand. That's ignorant. I'm not saying that anyone in this post HAS done this. I'm simply stating that to do so would be irresponsible. You can't possibly have heard everything from that genre, and even if you've heard a lot of it in passing, you can't make a critical assessment without REALLY listening to it anyway. Besides, the genres have become quite melting pot-ish anyway. There aren't really any specifically defined classes anymore.

[alcibiades_mystery]

43. There doesn't have to be a reason, but there usually is

Is there a reason that some blue collar guy likes Budweiser and doesn't care much for Pinot Noir? We could say, well, there doesn't have to be a reason - the Pinot Noir doesn't "touch" him, etc. We could say that it's not important to figure out the social causes of his tastes, and one doesn't need sociological studies to explain it. We could always do that.

But, of course, there usually is a reason, and it has little to do with the precious little machine of personal taste that resides inside our working class guy. Rather, his supposed "personal taste" for Budweiser (and not fancy wine) is a result, in part, of complex social factors, including not only habituation to a particular product (he grew up drinking Budweiser, and not Pinot Noir, primarily as a result of social position and location), but the way such products contribute to a valued subjectivity, or kinf of self that's already predetermined, and available, and valued within his social group. Can't very well walk into the factory watering hole and order a gasp glass of California wine! This is how "personal tastes" are generally determined: a big part played by the social group, positioning within the general society, and the creation of types of selves within such groups. His taste for Budweiser, in other words, has little to do with any intrinsic value in the product, or instrinsic attraction to it in the drinker. It happens in a complex social network where multiple factotrs interact. Now, needless to say, we have highly mobile societies where people move in and out of different social groups, and thus acquire various tastes appropriate to those different positions, and reject some in favor of others. We are not completely determined by the social. The illusion, however, is that our tastes are our own, fully our own, and that our working class friend likes Budweiser because, well, he just likes it, it's something inside him that makes him like it, and that's that. We take a function of the social and forget its social origins, locating it within ourselves. This is very useful, since "personal tastes" can't be disputed, and need not be examined, whereas if they were social, critical thought would demand that we examine their causes. Our blue collar guy can say that he likes Bud because of Bud, and himself, its origin a mystery, something special about himself, that's all, so that questioning his taste amounts to questioning his very being.

Needless to say, such ideas threaten the consumerist nonsense about "choice" that we've all grown up with. We all "hate" peer pressure and celebrate the individual. But this mode of thought cripples our understanding of our positioning within social systems, and the profound effect such positioing has even on the things which seem most everyday and "private," like our preference for Bud, or, ahem, our dislike of rap (or country, or classical). These forms may not touch us emotionally, but our emotional responses are no less involved in social networks than our habituation and valuing of one drink over another. Our emotional responses present the most accomplished illusion of being private, but they too are social, and involved in the social. Now, we might say, Who gives a shit? I'm certainly not arguing that everyone should. But the fallback position of "personal taste" seems extremely suspect to me, and worthy, at the very least, of investigation.