It is extremely difficult to talk about representations of race in popular music without having ones opinions coloured (pardon the pun) by the demographics of american culture. A culture still struggling with a black/white divide nearly 60 years after the civil rights movement.
Rap music seems the obvious genre to consider this in that it was one of the first genres specifically aimed at a black audience, a black audience with an extremely large buying power.
Unfortunately, because most of the artists in this genre came from a working class background with the inherent lack of education very evident in the lyrically content of their songs, a culture of misogyny, overt materialism and a blase attitude to guns and crime quickly became the norm. However, recently some well known black pop and rap artists are showing an awareness of social injustices and incorporating this into their music. When Beyonce performed at this years Grammy awards, her backing dancers mimicked the "don't shoot" movement which arose after the Ferguson shooting of an innocent black man.
It has been argued that Izzy Azalea, an Australian white female artist, is guilty of cultural appropriation for performing rap music in an american black accent. I wonder if this would be the case if she was a black Australian female artist.
It is interesting to note that most of the music genres that have come into being in the last 30 years are heavily biased to either black or white artists. Rap and Hip Hop are almost exclusively populated by black artists. Punk, Metal, New wave, Brit Pop, Rock are almost exclusively populated by white artists.
Because of the huge impact American music culture has on all of western popular music, the evident racial divide of American society is mirrored in the make up of popular music genres as a whole.
No comments:
Post a Comment