Thursday, 8 May 2008
week 9 - are blackness and whiteness useful concepts in the study of popular music?
I think that using blackness and whiteness as a concept when studying popular music is wrong, as certain types of music shouldn’t be associated just with one type of person. It is true that a lot of rap music and R & B music is associated with black people, and pop and indie is generally associated with caucasians, but this doesn’t have to necessarily be the way. There are many examples of people who have broken this mould, Eminem and Kele Okereke of bloc party naming two of many. They prove that certain music doesn’t have to be associated with the colour of people, and associating a colour with a certain type of music is purely generalizing, because people assume that because they do indie music, they will be white, or because the are an R & B artist they are automatically going to be black. To conclude, I would say that blackness and whiteness are useful concepts in the study of popular music, although the proof is in the pudding that types of music don’t have to involve people of certain skin colour in order to have success.
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The Oxford English Dictionary defines caucasian as "relating to a broad division of humankind covering peoples from Europe, Western Asia, parts of the Indian Subcontinent and parts of North Africa" - I am not too sure how you could associate pop and indie music with such a broad definition. Generally I would agree that it is very difficult to definitively trace a music genre along racial lines. However, the terms may be of some use in understanding the origins of certain musical styles.
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