African American Music and Culture in the late 20th Century and early 21st Century

Jane Davis April 30, 2009 African American History Dr. Pippa Holloway

2 In 1926, W. E. B. Dubois declared that all Art is propaganda and ever must be.1 In this context, Dubois felt art must promote the best and brightest of African American culture and not play into the negative stereotypes propagated by white America. If African Americans were to be remembered by later generations, Dubois wanted a representation of African American life that was more positive and more representative of reality than the image painted by whites. Therefore, not only should African American art be influential and representative of the community, but it should be socially conscious and activist in nature. Dubois would see all forms of African American art as not only a vital form of expression, but a conduit for social activism as well. White America has offered a vision of African Americans that has traditionally been less than positive. Even after successes during the Civil Rights Movement and advances in the economic and social standing of many African Americans, white media has continued to portray a somewhat skewed image of African American life. Because of this lack of redeeming or non-stereotypical representation of black life, many African American artists have felt pressured to not only shatter stereotypes, but to advocate social change as well, all the while creating a commercially viable art. The historical study of African American art, particularly in the realm of music, has focused heavily on the social impact of these cultural expressions. Where music fails to have an obvious social message that promotes positive black images or the struggle for African American freedom, it has been discarded by historians and considered an anomaly or an appeasement to the white power structure. Michael Eric Dyson points out that
1

W.E.B. Dubois. Criteria of Negro Art, Crisis 32, 6 (October 1926): 296.

3 this creates a standard for legitimate African American art that is suffocating and too narrow to measure the true variety and beauty of black art. Dyson states that black culture is too broad and intricate for African Americans to be obsessed with how white folk view our culture through the lens of African American art. 2 This shift in how African American art is viewed is evident in the work of Brian Ward, Tricia Rose, and Jeffry O. G. Ogbar. In his book Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations, Brian Ward seeks to examine how commercial pop music helped shape African American consciousness at specific historical moments. The primary thrust of Wards book is that consumers are the driving force behind the political and social relevance of popular music rather than the entertainment industry. Just My Soul Responding focuses on just how ineffectual it [the entertainment industry] has generally been in initiating trends, or even sustaining existing ones, which have not had some kind of genuine social, political, or psychological relevance for their audiences.3 Building on this notion of consumer agency, Ward asserts that black consumers were never passive in their music consumption and although all factors that influenced said consumption cannot be known, broad shifts in preferences can be representative of the changing state of mass black consciousness in an era of great racial ferment and struggle.4 These broad shifts in popular consumption of black music gave rise to a new style of music, Rhythm and Blues, and are linked to the emergence of the modern civil

Michael Eric Dyson, Gangsta Rap and American Culture, in The Michael Eric Dyson reader (New York: Basic Books, 2004) 414. 3 Brian Ward, Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 5. 4 Ibid., 5

4 rights movement. Despite this link, Ward is careful to point out that R&B artists were not activists and the impact their music had was more like that of those cautious black ministers of the early movement who helped to foster the emotional strength, the psychological resources, and even some of the money, which others transformed into a mass movement for black civil and voting rights.5 Like many other historians, Ward falls into the Dubois definition of art and interprets the somewhat less than positive images of African American life painted by R&B and Soul music as a failing and an example of why the art is not political. Particularly problematic is the reoccurring sexism in R&B and the tendency of Funk and Soul to promote a manic hedonism and coolness that was defined in a distinctively black way.6 In his review of Just My Soul Responding, Robin D. G. Kelley acknowledges that Ward is correct in regards to R&Bs apolitical vibe, and that the true power in the music lay in its ability to generate community pride, challenge racial self-hatred and allow for an escape from daily brutalities. Kelley also criticizes a number of Wards conclusions, particularly in those areas where Ward discusses R&B lyrics. When dealing with gender, Ward takes the words in the songs as the gospel truth of the community. Therefore, those uncomfortable misogynistic lyrics are an absolute reflection of the African American community at the time. However, when he addresses the shift in Soul music to a more political tone and lyrics that reflect a more socially conscious black music, Ward

5 6

Ward, Just My Soul, 336. Ibid., 354.

5 does not hesitate to point out the white authors contributions.7 This separation of the author from the singer is helpful to understand how outsiders may have influenced the music, but the lyrics of the artists are not the only insight into the culture. Why certain songs and musical styles were successful is a far more interesting angle, and even though Ward tries to point out that the African American consumer sought out the more apolitical music, he gets bogged down in his interpretation of the music on a purely ethnographic scale. Despite his attempts to do otherwise, Ward still falls into a trap of treating music as ethnography, rather than examining the social and commercial pressures at play. Ward looks to separate R&B from the political while tying the rise of R&B to shifting social and political attitudes of the market place. In doing so, he should be able to paint a picture of African American popular music that does not limit, but he is unable to fully achieve his goal. Ward continues to explore the Civil Rights Movement and the way African American activism has been viewed as editor of a collection of essays on the subject. In Media, Culture, and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle, Ward brings together a number of prominent scholars to discuss music, film and media and the impact of the Civil Rights Movement on African American media. A collection of papers presented at the second Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Conference on Civil Rights and Race Relations, the book argues that the traditional historical study of the Civil Rights Movement ignores a great deal of the cultural impact of art and media. Ward seeks to undermine the

Robin D. G. Kelley, review of Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations by Brian Ward, American Quarterly 52, no. 3 (Sept. 2000), 536-537.

6 common narrative of the Civil Rights Movement as a story of great men and legal successes and reveal the give and take of social change through media and music. The majority of essays focus on how the media reported the movement and the deification of King, however, two essays in particular addresses the issue of stereotypes and negative images in African American media and their social impact. In William L. Van Deburgs essay Villains, Demons, and Social Bandits: White Fear of the Black Cultural Revolution and Eithne Quinns essay, Pimpin Aint Easy: Work, Play, and Lifestylization of the Black Pimp Figure in Early 1970s America, the difficulty of negative stereotypes is examined. If art is to be propaganda, then the shift during the Black Power movement to a more negative stereotype that was portrayed and embraced by African Americans within their own media is problematic. The image of the Pimp and the Bad Man had long been present in African American music, but it was rarely celebrated on such a wide level. Van Deburg points out that the image put forth by the Black Power movement was exactly the kind of African American that whites feared. Taking the stereotype whites feared most, that of the black villain, African American artists re-tooled the wicked black villain into a cultural hero that still resonates. Far from promoting an image of African Americans that could be admired in traditional terms, the black villain and bad man are the anti-Uncle Toms. They are black characters that respond to violence with violence, theft with theft, and meet the white disregard for their lives and wellbeing with the same. These characters, like Shaft and Dolomite, became visionary vehicles of African American wish-fulfillment.8 In addition to the black villain, the pimp as
8

William Van Deburg, Villains, Demons, and Social Bandits: White Fear of the Black Cultural

7 examined in Quinns essay provided an alternate view of work and play. As African Americans became increasingly disconnected from social and political activism, Quinn asserts that the image of the pimp and his masculine challenge of the norms of capitalism that were politically resistive.9 The pimp signified the urge of African American men to pursue capitalistic success as well as the social limitations that were placed on them. By moving outside the realms of legal and polite society, the pimp achieves economic and personal success on his own terms, without compromising with the white establishment. This difficulty with funk and souls less positive imagery of African American life is not new, blues and jazz were often criticized for projecting images of African American life that focused on poverty, bad men, and misogyny; however, this rebellious image of the pimp and the bad man that grew out of the Black Power movement would have lasting effects on African American music and its cultural impact. Born out of the Black Power movement and, according to Tricia Rose, the massive de-industrialization of cities, rap and hip-hop is a black cultural expression that prioritizes black voices from the margins of urban America.10 Rose, a professor of African American history and culture at New York University seeks to examine hip-hop and rap music in the cultural context of America. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America examines the social and political implications of hip hop and dances between the Dubois ideal

Revolution, in Media, Culture, and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle, ed. Brian Ward (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), 207. 9 Eithne Quinn, Pimpin Aint Easy: Work, Play, and Lifestylization of the Black Pimp Figure in Early 1970s America, in Media, Culture, and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle, ed. Brian Ward (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), 228. 10 Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1994), 2.

8 of art as propaganda and Dysons more practical view of art as a cultural expression, warts and all. Rose focuses on the beginnings of hip-hop and how the musical form and style rose out of a massive loss of industry in Urban America, she also addresses the challenges of hip-hop and how despite massive commercial success, hip-hop manages to continue to represent and speak to African American youth. Much like its predecessors, jazz and blues, hip-hop is criticized on a number of levels. It is just noise and a beat, it is overwhelmingly violent and paints an increasingly negative picture of African American life, it encourages bad behavior on the part of its listeners, and most of all, it is too black and threatening. Rose addresses all of these criticisms by explaining how the stylistic and musical signatures of rap are founded in both African American musical traditions, how early hip-hop artists used and manipulated technology for new and inventive ways to get a specific sound, and how despite the negative images and misogyny, rap music is both challenging of the social norms and uplifting. Rose states, In the postindustrial urban context of dwindling low-income housing, a trickle of meaningless jobs for young people, mounting police brutality and increasingly draconian depictions of young inner city residents, hip-hop style is urban renewal.11 This urban renewal involves embracing negative stereotypes like the bad man, pimp, and violent black youth and using them for social and political criticism. Rose details how artists like N.W.A., Ice-T, and KRS-One used songs deeply critical of the police and police actions to create a hidden transcript of the
11

Rose, Black Noise, 61.

9 powerless and provide alternate stories of dealings with the police and white authority. Rose spends a great deal of time quoting the lyrics of rappers and examining the technical aspects of hip-hop production. In doing this, she is avoiding treating the words as gospel because she attempts to read between the lines. When she examines L.L. Cool J.s Illegal Search, an antipolice rap that examines what happens during an arrest, she is careful to point out that the words are a hidden text on what subordinate individuals would like to say directly to dominant authority figures but cannot.12 The artist is attempting to bring to light something he feels happens on a regular basis, not tell a story of what happened to him or how he responded. The song is a symbolic confrontation of all black youth who feel they have been illegally searched and detained by the police because of their race. Much more than Ward, Rose makes a point that rap and hip-hop, like many other forms of African American art are difficult to pigeonhole into labels like political and apolitical. Specifically in the era of raps early development, the American media in the latter part of the 20th century systematically avoided mentions of the destructive elements of urban renewal, deindustrialization, woefully underfunded and ineffective public education and the human results of these problems. Instead, the media and political realm painted the failings of African American society, the intense violence, drug abuse and poverty, as personal failings of the African American community. Rose points out that this illusion that black agency can be removed from the racist and discriminatory context in which it takes place is not only harmful but essentially blames the
12

Rose, Black Noise, 110.

10 victim for his or her status and circumstances.13 Rap, with its violent depictions of black urban life, drug deals, and glorification of pimps and hos, paints a vivid picture of the human toll of this presumed agency, and at the same time demonstrates how African Americans (or the characters the rappers pretend to be) resist the oppression and the lack of control over their lives. According to Rose, rappers are attempting to rewrite and revise popular national and local narratives using mass media and commercial outlets that have been previously out of the reach of African Americans. Not only do rappers use the commercial viability of their art form to spread a dissenting image of African American life, they also use the technology of sampling to preserve and celebrate earlier, less commercially viable African American music. Rose points out that rappers frequent use of bass lines and hooks from early soul and funk music not only acts as a celebration of the music that has come before, but counteracts industry-fostered market conditions that dictate a particularly shallow shelf-life for black music.14 Sampling funk greats like George Clinton or Bootsy Collins not only honors their contributions to African American music, but it keeps those tunes and hooks in the cultural consciousness and exposes new listeners to music they may never have heard of otherwise. Written in 1994, Roses Black Noise is an impressive contribution to the field. Instead of examining African American music and media to find the explicitly political and socially conscious, Rose takes the complex and sometimes

13 14

Rose, Black Noise, 141-142 Ibid.,89.

11 unpleasant messages sent by rap and hip-hop and declares them political by their very being. In her epilogue, Rose discusses how early gangsta rappers like Ice Cube and Chuck D all but predicted the 1994 Los Angeles Riots. These rappers, who had been considered social menaces for pointing out the violence, rage, and frustration bubbling under the surface, were now seen as prophets. Rap, specifically West-Coast influenced gangsta rap, was not only capable of pointing out societys ills, but allow African Americans an outlet for cultural expression. Rose closes Black Noise with a prophecy that rap and African American music has found yet another way to unnerve and simultaneously revitalize American culture.15 Writing in 2007, Jeffery O. G. Ogbars Hip-Hop Revolution: the Culture and Politics of Rap explores as a cultural force and its affect on American culture as a whole. Ogbar sees the central quest of rap music is that of authenticity. Rising out of the Black Power movement, early rap and hip-hop artists were driven to be not only authentic to the music and the lifestyle, but to be authentically black. This quest for authenticity leads to a projection of images of African Americans that may not always be positive. He begins with examining the minstrel stereotype and the associated negative portrayals of African Americans. The image of the minstrel and black face is primarily what Dubois was fighting against in his 1926 speech. Ogbar examines how the minstrel stereotype evolved and how it affected African Americans during the 1800s and the early part of the 1900s. Ogbar sees the most important function of blackface and the minstrel was the portrayal of African Americans as the happy, docile,
15

Rose, Black Noise, 185.

12 cowardly, and shiftless coon who was incapable of competing with whites in any meaningful way.16 These images not only justified white supremacy but comforted the conscious of many whites by proving that blacks were happy in their place. Despite these racist images and the damage done by them, some blacks benefited from minstrelsy and worked as entertainers exploiting these racist stereotypes. In a similar manner, many modern critics of rap characterize the violent thugs portrayed in rap as a new version of the minstrel. Artists that promote the coon stereotype and lifestyle through their rap are accused of profiting from negative stereotypes that play right into the hands of the white majority. For good or ill, Ogbar notes that the violent, oversexed, platinumgrilled thug has become a recognized marker in hip-hop of racial authenticity that conflates poverty, crime, misogyny and all things ghetto with blackness.17 This association of ghetto and poverty with blackness is contested by many rappers and yet embraced. Ogbar looks at rappers like Ice Cube, who in his song True to the Game dismisses those artists who have sold hip-hop out and made it white and corny all the while, embracing his connection to the ghetto and those things black. Rappers who play up their blackness by this association with ghetto and poverty are in some ways seen by critics as pandering to the white power structure, but Ogbar is quick to point out that these thugs and gangstas have achieved a level of wealth that is largely denied other blacks and whites, thus they have subverted the economic exigencies for their personal advancement.18 These positive and negative portrayals of African Americans in hip-hop are not
16

Jeffery O. G. Ogbar, Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (Lawrence, Ka.: University Press of Kansas, 2007),14 17 Ibid., 30. 18 Ibid., 32.

13 easily reduced to simple good and bad, black and white. Instead, according to Ogbar, they represent a complex debate within hip-hop and the black community that reflect the never-ending ability of African American artist to adapt to and resist the culturally dominant narratives that deny their humanity. Ogbar, like Rose, never hesitates to recognize the complexity of the images presented in hip-hop and rap. He also points out the contradictions. According to Ogbar, one of the most influential rap ablums of the 20th century was N.W.A.s Straight Outta Compton. The groups authenticity and power relied heavily on crude and fanciful tales of gangsta narrative and despite the fact that no member of the group was ever in a gang or served time in prison, they were praised for their raw and authentic portrayal of ghetto life in Los Angeles. 19 Specifically, Ogbar examines one of the founding members of N.W.A., Ice Cube, for his problematic and conflicted representation. Born OShea Jackson, Ice Cube has straddled the line between socially conscious messages and glorification of pathology like few other rappers. His first solo album, Amerikkkas Most Wanted, examined a number of social ills all the while promoting an image of a ghetto thug with little regard for women or authority. In his later albums, Ice Cube encourages blacks to stand up to the white authority and predicts the riots in L.A. as an outpouring of black frustration and rage. Throughout all of his work, Ice Cube does promote some level of social consciousness and pro-black positions while at the same time advocating a pathological level of misogyny. Ogbar does point out that Ice Cube is a manufactured persona, designed to give the artist the maximum amount of credibility through the creation of first person
19

Ogbar, Hip-Hop Revolution, 44-45.

14 narratives that are not to be taken literally. Ice Cube, as a sexist gangsta rapper, assumes a carefully contrived studio persona. His real life identity as a lawabiding, millionaire producer, actor and director with a black woman manager provides a challenge to his own artistic expression.20 Here Ogbar and Rose differ greatly from Ward. They do not assume that the words and the artist are equal. They examine the words as independent from the artist and understand that either due to a quest for authenticity or a way of subverted stereotypes for social rebellion, the artist is not always the thug or dangerous criminal he portrays himself to be. The problematic stereotypes and negative images are then no longer signs that African American art is a failure, but that it is a success. In the complex portrayals of African American, both positive and negative, rap, hip-hop, funk, soul and R&B have shown the full range of African American life. No longer restricted by the market to portray an image that is acceptable to whites, African Americans can, especially through rap, exert commercial and artistic control over their music and show the good and bad in their culture without losing artistic or political capital. Ogbar closes Hip-Hop Revolution with a description of a young man he encountered in Indiana who is attired in the gangsta uniform and has a verbal altercation with another youth. At this point Ogbar realizes that at that point, hip-hop had become the way in which cultural displays of youthful rebellion, antiauthoritarian behavior, and cool had been packaged.21 This realization and understanding of the true social impact of hip-hop is an indication of how far African American music and

20 21

Ogbar, Hip-Hop Revolution, 118 Ibid., 176.

15 culturally expression has come. Writing in the early 21st century, Ogbar has the benefit of time and distance that are not afforded to Ward and Rose. He manages to see the success of hip-hop and the massive cultural impact as a success for African Americans. Hip-hop has gone worldwide. Latinos, Japanese, and even New Zealand Maori youth have embraced hip-hop forms of expression to channel the negative images of their culture into political and social challenges. The negative images portrayed by hip-hop in America are not signs that the artist is failing the African American community; rather they are signs that the American system is still failing African Americans and other poor minority groups. They present a direct challenge to the comfortable notion that a good job and an honest life is available to all and the overwhelming popularity of hip-hop seems to indicate that the challenge is welcome.

16 References Deburg, William Van. Villains, Demons, and Social Bandits: White Fear of the Black Cultural Revolution, in Media, Culture, and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle, ed. Brian Ward, 197-210. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001. DuBois, W. E. B. Criteria of Negro Art, Crisis 32, 6 (October 1926): 296. Dyson, Michael Eric. Gangsta Rap and American Culture, in The Michael Eric Dyson reader. 411-47. New York: Basic Books, 2004. Kelley, Robin D. G. review of Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations by Brian Ward, American Quarterly 52, no. 3 (Sept. 2000), 536-537. Ogbar, Jeffery O. G. Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap. Lawrence, Ka.: University Press of Kansas, 2007. Quinn, Eithne. Pimpin Aint Easy: Work, Play, and Lifestylization of the Black Pimp Figure in Early 1970s America, in Media, Culture, and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle, ed. Brian Ward, 211- 232. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001. Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1994. Ward, Brian. Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998 _______. Media, Culture, and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001.