[List] Artists and genres which have received criticism or are dismissed due to perceived proximity to whiteness?
A while back, I was responding to a thread about how many artists get dismissed due to perceived fanbase.
And it really occurred to me that a number of genres and artists have been criticized on the basis of being associated with whiteness, or at least a perceived association.
Some examples:
- Over the years, we've had various threads discussing how rock music became predominantly associated with white people for various reasons. Either Black artists took the "Roll" from Rock n' Roll and moved on to soul, funk, disco, and hip-hop. Or, the segregation of music meant Black artists were pushed out of rock's legacy. Or both.
- Elvis' legacy. I think most music fans can agree that Elvis benefited from his whiteness and had a lot of advantages that Black artists didn't have. But it gets reduced to "Elvis stole Black music". It's not always clear if white artists practicing Black musical styles is the issue or is it the advantages white artists have.
- People have noted that by the time Jimi Hendrix passed away, he was perceived as operating in a "white" genre or seeming like a novelty. Even though one could connect his legacy to say, Funkadelic. To an extent, this has affected Black rock artists and bands differently as they're seen as relative anomalies like Living Color and Bad Brains.
- There have also been threads discussing why country music is an easy musical target. Many music fans will say they listen to anything "except country". While there are a variety of reasons, I think the reputation of whiteness with country may play a part.
- Motown music is beloved but it's also seen as too poppy, polished, and appealing to White audiences.
- The legacy of disco has come under some dispute. On the one hand, disco's legacy is becoming more appreciated for its massive influence on music afterwards and being a bastion for Black and Queer audiences. And people generally condemn Disco Demolition Night. On the other hand, it's been pointed out that disco received criticism from Black artists for being a watered-down version funk. That there was a rising backlash to disco from Black artists. Though that also gets into the discussion that Black artists aren't a monolith of opinion.
- I also think about the example of Tracy Chapman. Even though there were Black artists who existed in the singer-songwriter space and precedents such as Odetta or Bessie Smith, singer-songwriters like Chapman were often seen as appealing to white audiences. There was a quote from Chuck D of Public Enemy:“Black people cannot feel Tracy Chapman if they got beat over the head with it thirty thousand times. I like to take what Tracy Chapman's about but only once my funk's in place because if you don't have your funk in place, you're not going to get the masses of Black people.”
I'm sure a longer post could be written about the tensions between Black musical movements and how it may complicate some of the narratives of continuity (Blues, Jazz, Gospel, R&B, Soul, Funk, Disco, Hip-Hop, etc.)
A passage from Jack Hamilton's book Just around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination:
"The fact that this new brand of musical whiteness so depended on white performers’ proximity to and fluency within black musical styles left black musicians themselves in a precarious position. Whereas artists like Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and Janis Joplin were lauded for casting off the shackles of racial conformity, artists like those at Detroit’s Motown Records, whose R&B-to-pop crossover formula was the most significant American musical achievement of the decade, were often derided for being insufficiently black*.*
As the 1960s wore on, cosmopolitan versatility among black artists was not heard as identity transcendence but rather as racial betrayal, in accusations that were frequently lobbed by white critics. Again, perhaps the most tortuous example of this was Jimi Hendrix, who during his career was judged by many as a fraud or sellout, his blackness rendering his music as inauthentically rock at the same time that his music rendered his person as inauthentically black. By contrast, the very act of imaginatively engaging with historically black musical forms while keeping black bodies at arm’s length became a newly powerful way of being white."
To be clear: I can understand criticizing artists and questioning the way in which systemic racism has permeated society and benefited white artists. The issue of cultural appropriation and Black artists being denied credit has to be handled sensitively. These are important issues. This isn't a thread about how white artists are secretly oppressed so much as examining the role of whiteness in shaping our views of artists and genres.
But at times, arguments can get muddled where criticism leads to a sense of reductionism. That Black music is one way while White music is another. And it eventually loops around to affecting Black artists as well.