[HN Gopher] Bob Dylan lays down what killed rock n roll (2016)
___________________________________________________________________
Bob Dylan lays down what killed rock n roll (2016)
Author : Phithagoras
Score : 94 points
Date : 2021-05-08 00:12 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| llamataboot wrote:
| I often reflect on the similiarities to that and how techno and
| house became EDM.
|
| When I started going to Midwestern raves in the 1990s they were
| literally some of the first fully integrated places I hung out
| in. Definitely some of the Detroit techno parties we went too,
| some of the first places where it was a majority Black space.
|
| EDM now is thought of as this totally white music, all electronic
| music really, by everyone. Oh some rappers might flirt with some
| electronic beats, but the whole genre has just been whitewashed
| basically.
|
| But for some of those years in the 1990s it really felt like we
| were living in the future. Hopped up on smart drinks (and LSD),
| gay and straight, black and white, talking about this new thing
| called the internet and dancing all night together.
|
| We were it - the New Humans...
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| First: The parent comment is stereotyping and racist. Edit:
| they changed their comment to remove some racism (use of
| "white" and "whitewashing") but are still racist.
|
| They don't understand what EDM is: the superset of most
| electronic music.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_dance_music
|
| In my opinion, the phylogeny of EDM and related genres looks
| like this:
|
| Funk beget disco and boogie.
|
| Funk and boogie beget electro.
|
| Disco and boogie beget house.
|
| Electro beget techno.
|
| Electro and funk beget breakbeat.
|
| House and techno beget trance.
|
| (Trance and its subgenres (like acid trance) and deep
| progressive house are/were what raves were made of.)
|
| Calypso beget ska.
|
| Ska beget reggae.
|
| Reggae beget dub.
|
| Dub and breakbeat beget dubstep.
|
| Dubstep != brostep. (Brostep is crapstep.)
|
| Reggae, rock, and rockabilly beget punk.
|
| Funk, disco, jazz, and punk beget hip hop.
|
| Hip hop beget trap.
|
| Dubstep and trap beget EDM trap.
|
| ---
|
| DigitallyImported had zillions of genres, subgenres, and maybe
| genres of EDM.
| bitwize wrote:
| EDM is its own separate thing now, it basically means "radio
| pop with a four-on-the-floor beat and synths".
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| No. Just no. You can redefine terms but this doesn't make
| it so.
|
| Edit: _" Despite the industry's attempt to create a
| specific EDM brand, the initialism remains in use as an
| umbrella term for multiple genres, including dance-pop,
| house, techno and electro, as well as their respective
| subgenres."_ - Wikipedia. Wikipedia being right for a
| change, this is industry BS. Don't buy it like a willing
| consumer.
| jorvi wrote:
| What, no? At least in Europe, EDM is a specific set of
| big club / festival House that's all about big bombastic
| bass drops. If one of my Techno buddies says with disdain
| 'all they were playing at that place was EDM' I know
| exactly what he means, and it isn't techno
| mxmilkiib wrote:
| One can nicely troll young British ravers by casually
| referring to UKEDM, which is a play on UKG (UK garage)
| and the less frequent UKJ (UK jungle).
| ehnto wrote:
| I have always used it as an umbrella term too. Maybe it's
| a distinction you and your friends have because of the
| scene you're in?
| j4yav wrote:
| Could be age too. That use of EDM is in my experience a
| 90s/00s thing.
| ehnto wrote:
| I don't agree at all with that outlook, unless I missed a
| beat EDM has encompassed everything from House to Trance,
| Jungle to Breaks, even IDM, acid and techno, and the dozens
| of genres in between.
|
| I see in another comment they mention that's how their
| friends understand it, so maybe it's a regional thing.
| j4yav wrote:
| I have been a DJ for about 25 years, playing in the US
| and Europe so I can at least talk about how the terms are
| used in those places. EDM used to mean something close to
| "electronic music", but as of about 10 years ago or so it
| has come to mean a quite specific subgenre.
| ehnto wrote:
| Hm fair enough, I am probably just out of touch then,
| which makes sense. I used to DJ back in the late 2000s,
| 2010s, so that's where my perspective comes from. I never
| played dubstep, but the commercial uprising of dubstep
| was about when I stopped playing along.
| crucialfelix wrote:
| I also regard the term EDM as a specific scene. It
| absolutely does not encompass the previous 40 years of
| club culture.
| ehnto wrote:
| That isn't the implication. I wouldn't even say EDM
| represents any particular club culture at all, just a
| shorthand for electronic music in general. If I wanted to
| refer to a club scene or genre I would use it's actual
| name and for me at least none of them are called EDM.
|
| It's not surprising to me that there are different
| interpretations of the term and I am not particularly
| worried about that. It's all muddied up across the globe,
| across time and across the internet, music is as
| colloquial as it is worldwide.
|
| There are so many genre placement disagreements all
| across music, slotting everything into discrete groupings
| is only useful in a shallow and practical way, not a
| meaningful one.
| crucialfelix wrote:
| Well I think names and usage do matter.
|
| Not that Wikipedia is an authority, but note that this
| page:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_dance_music
|
| correctly covers the whole fields of music for dancing
| that is made electronically. I am perfectly content to be
| in the wider field of Electronic Dance Music.
|
| But this specific initialism of EDM came out of the US
| music industry, and was never in use prior to that.
|
| Wikipedia notes that the specific term "EDM": > By the
| early 2010s, the term "electronic dance music" and the
| initialism "EDM" was being pushed by the American music
| industry and music press in an effort to rebrand American
| rave culture.[3]
|
| which is where us ornery old techno bastards come in. We
| will not be rebranded and renamed. Everybody is welcome
| to come up with new things and new styles, but you cannot
| rename a past culture.
|
| Imagine if some industry press decided to rename Rock and
| Roll to "RNR" and back date all usages to 1959, editing
| Wikipedia to insert their new term in there and push
| their newly branded marketing channels (eg.
| https://edm.com/ )
|
| Underground dance music has been fiercely against the
| mainstream music industry. We had different distributors,
| different press, different rules. This EDM term and this
| AOR (Adult Oriented Rock) over replicas of classic 909
| house beats is the kind of thing that what we spent our
| whole lives fighting against.
|
| So I hope that explains why we object to that particular
| the term, as strange and as petty as it may sound. It's
| political.
|
| Remain Underground
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5t0l2aOW2o
| pupdogg wrote:
| Motor City Lounge brings back good old memories! Still a fan of
| AUX88 to this day.
| crucialfelix wrote:
| I was in the 90s Midwest rave scene as well.
|
| This pattern repeats itself in music over and over. Jungle to
| DNB. Dubstep was like two tone, then it got destroyed by the US
| market takeover.
|
| Garage, grime, dancehall, hip hop all stay mainly black (with
| some white artists accepted) to defend their scene. Precisely
| to stop the take over from happening again.
| ehnto wrote:
| I thought the Jungle/DnB split was just the result of cocaine
| getting popular and the Jungle scene wanting none of that,
| but I wasn't there so I only have third party accounts to go
| off.
|
| Remembering as well that these musical styles live on and
| elevated above their once-upon a time rave/club scenes. So
| this is commentary specifically about the club scenes in the
| UK at their time of provenance.
| yoz-y wrote:
| With streaming, what does make a genre more or less
| appreciated by a group of people? TBH for most of the artists
| I listen to, I have no idea who they are, how they look like
| or even how many of them are in the band.
| ehnto wrote:
| I think the musical styles and their in the flesh club/rave
| scenes are getting conflated a bit. Music is often born in
| a specific location and scene and then grows into it's own
| monster. Especially now with the internet, music is for
| everyone. But locally speaking there are different groups
| listening and producing styles of music you may not even
| know about yet, that will enter the global lexicon of music
| and get much the same treatment of commercialization as
| house and others got.
| hntroll999 wrote:
| This leftist style of racist crap is normal and accepted on
| HN now, isn't it?
| stuaxo wrote:
| This is just name calling and doesn't address any of the
| points, which are all valid - for anyone who pays attention
| to music.
| hntroll999 wrote:
| It's not just name-calling, it's accurately naming
| somebody's fallacy. The actual process that goes on with
| music and _all other phenomena_ is that they _change_ and
| eventually "die" in that nobody cares about them
| anymore. It happens with everything, and there is no
| villain.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Don't feed the troll, just downvote and move on.
| hntroll999 wrote:
| HN has really become despicable. If people had integrity
| or guts, they'd take my comment apart and show everyone
| how wrong it was. But they can't do that, so they just
| hide what I said. Don't you feel ashamed? Why are people
| so afraid to put the strength of their ideas to the test?
| I really pity people who would put their hand over the
| mouth of someone calling out fashionable racism for what
| it is.
| ehnto wrote:
| Hm I don't quite agree but it could be that the scenes are
| different in different places. It could also be that our
| definitions of EDM differ. I might also be missing something so
| take my comment as just my perspective from where I stand.
|
| I think there is a split between commercialized EDM and "real"
| EDM. The true culture and heritage of house and techno
| definitely live on in the greater electronic music scene in
| general, especially online and in clubs. I call that scene EDM
| because it is easier than trying list all the dozens of
| subgenres it has grown to include, and commercialised EDM used
| to be referred to as Top40 during the late 2000s, as a way to
| differentiate it from the "real" EDM scene. Not sure if that
| term lives on.
|
| It is usually pretty easy to tell when a song exists in the
| commercial realm. House is unique in that it has had more than
| one era of commercial success, but I think there has always
| been a delineation between commercialised house (stuff on the
| radio and in adverts) and the culture of house music (in the
| clubs and mixes)
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| > I think there is a split between commercialized EDM and
| "real" EDM.
|
| This could be a locale thing, but in the UK what you call
| "real" EDM is often known as the _underground electronic
| music_ scene (at least in my circles). I.e. the long tail of
| folks pissing about with machines in their bedroom.
|
| Note the lack of "dance" as not all underground electronic
| music needs to be danced to. Autechre is a good example of
| this.
|
| In the UK at least, EDM _as a whole_ is often viewed as a
| commercialisation that started over in the USA (e.g. with
| Skrillex) and spread. What the EDM term generally refers to
| has changed over the years, and is now closer to "pop trance
| with super saw synths EVERYWHERE" these days.
|
| So, at least for us Brits, it's a catch all term for a
| specific type of electronic music (and most of the time a
| disparaging term).
|
| I think we mostly agree on the differing content, and in
| disagreeing with the parent, but it's the general "lumping
| in" with the same terminology that is often protested by the
| underground folks over here.
|
| Personally, I would _hate_ for my tracks to be called EDM (I
| 'd rather stab myself repeatedly in the eye with a spoon).
|
| Disclaimer: I'm just one UK dude who has spent a lot of time
| around electronic music. Other UK residents may have other
| opinions or nomenclature that they prefer to use.
| ehnto wrote:
| That's really interesting, this thread is definitely
| telling me I am out of the loop anyway, as it seems that
| difference in understanding has even morphed over time. It
| doesn't surprise me at all though, there's still disputes
| about what "real" Bossa nova is to this day so that a genre
| as broad and eclectic as electronic music has a blurry
| cultural lexicon isn't all that shocking.
|
| I agree regarding EDM being a bit of a misnomer, I had
| always thought it was a weird term to use for everything.
| Another specific sub-genre in electronic music is IDM,
| Intelligent Dance Music, which occasionally doesn't even
| have a stable time signature, so it's not alone in that!
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| I wouldn't say you're out of the loop. Generally speaking
| I think you're right in what you're saying (commercial
| vs. underground).
|
| Ultimately it's just a label that people can apply to
| certain things to lump stuff into a category for them to
| conceptualise what "thing in category" is.
|
| In the UK (at least in my experience), we had an existing
| label to call this "thing". Then Skrillex, Steve Aoki etc
| happened and everyone tried to tell us it was called
| something different (EDM).
|
| We were like, no. Piss off. It's not that. What you're
| doing is not what we're doing.
|
| And it's sort of stuck as this "definitely not what we're
| doing" labelling category.
|
| Tomato, tomaaato.
|
| --
|
| IDM is an awful term. And I say that as someone who buys
| a lot of IDM.
|
| My friend has a different (arguably better) name for it:
| "hurty brain music".
| redis_mlc wrote:
| US racial harmony was ok in the 80s and 90s (aside from the
| 1992 LA riots) until the 2008 election when Obama promoted
| racial divisiveness to get elected.
|
| Like the 2020 Floyd riots, the 1992 LA riots were also about a
| video, but in that case videotape. A big difference with 2020
| is that Marxist elements (antifa and BLM) amplified unrest, and
| the corona lockdown left people with nothing else to do.
|
| The article has a long section on Hendrix, worth reading just
| for that.
|
| Note that record labels make a tenth of what they used to, and
| have that much less power. Overall that's not a good thing -
| musicians now have to wear 50 hats - besides writing and
| performing, they're doing ther own production, merch and PR.
| antihero wrote:
| You know, techno parties (and illegal raves) like the ones you
| talk about are still happening, especially here in Europe.
|
| EDM is pure garbage and rife with narcissism.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I think of EDM as a dance tool (not a criticism). It's
| practical, a tight design to serve a specific purpose.
|
| FTR I've adored techno my entire life - from back when synth,
| industrial and underground were more common labels.
|
| eg: Eno, Cluster, Tim Blake, Sensation's Fix, Klaus Schulz,
| anything produced by Conny Plank
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| >But for some of those years in the 1990s it really felt like
| we were living in the future.
|
| It certainly _felt_ like it. But people were quickly put back
| in their place.
| [deleted]
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| The article makes a very strenuous effort to make a point about
| something something racism in rock that sounds a bit boring and
| trite to my ears. After all, Bon Scott said it best years ago:
| In the beginning Back in nineteen fifty five Man
| didn't know 'bout a rock 'n' roll show And all that jive
| The white man had the schmaltz The black man had the blues
| No one knew what they was gonna do But Tchaikovsky had the
| news
|
| (Although, Tchaikovsky? What the...?)
|
| What I want to know is why young black Americans, do not, in
| their majority, do rock anymore. I get that the music industry
| always tries to control what gets airtime, but who needs the
| music industry today, and who needed the music industry in the
| past? If it was for the music industry, nobody would have heard
| of Jimi Hendrix- a black man with a guitar? That'll never sell!
|
| Look at metal and how it took hold. Growing up in Athens, Greece,
| it seemed like every neighbourhood had a metal band and you would
| never know by looking at billboards, or even coverage in the
| metal press (a lackey of the music industry, if there ever was
| one). Euro kids took Rock from the Americans and ran with it and
| made something new, all ours, and all working class (see the
| early years of Sabbath and Priest in Manchester; remember the
| apocryphal story of Ozzy and Tony having one pair of good shoes
| between them and wearing them on alternate days to go out). Metal
| quickly became the authentic popular music of entire generations,
| without ever any need of mainstream acceptance. Metal grew from
| below, with no help from above and despite the disdainful snorts
| of mainstream music critics.
|
| So why didn't the black grasroots ever sprout an analogous new
| rock scene, instead of turning towards the mainstream, big stage,
| light show, for-profit music that comes from black artists for
| the last few decades?
|
| Why Rihana and Beyonce, rather than a new Jimi Hendrix? Female,
| even. Why is Rock 'n' Roll pretty much dead to black kids,
| nowadays?
| derwiki wrote:
| "Roll over Beethoven" by Chuck Berry has the line "And tell
| Tchaikovsky the news"---I presume that is the reference?
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Right! That explains it I think. Thanks!
| jrm4 wrote:
| I mean, it's important to remember that the racist segmenting
| of the industry (again, mostly the fault of the sellers not the
| artists) never really went away, it just changed in a lot of
| ways. So there's the difference between "Rock n Roll" the
| sound, and "Rock n Roll," the product.
|
| As a sound, it pretty consistently stays there, though perhaps
| not as crisply defined. Prince, Michael Jackson, and later Run
| DMC et al. But for a very long time, those artists are
| explicitly not given space on Rock n Roll stations. Later on,
| these same stations would go on to explicitly and openly
| denounce hip-hop, but the play Beastie Boys, and even EMINEM.
|
| What's really interesting is early Hip-Hop on this; how it very
| consistently both sampled Rock-n-Roll, but also frequently
| explicitly "hated" it. Not too hard to see why this division
| happens, given the disparate treatment (i.e. hip-hop comes out
| a little after most of the Satanic Panic has died down. Rappers
| get treated as "scary" for basically just being black, RIGHT
| AFTER and in the face of rumored blood rituals etc etc.)
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Run DMC count as rock? That explains why I dig them :)
|
| (or it might just be the Aerosmith cover/ duo)
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > hip-hop comes out a little after most of the Satanic Panic
| has died down
|
| That's not the way I remember it. For example, the McMartin
| trial started the same year as 'Paid in Full' dropped, and
| the West Memphis Three the same year as 'Enter the Wu-Tang'.
|
| > Rappers get treated as "scary" for basically just being
| black, RIGHT AFTER
|
| Young men 'get[ting] treated as "scary" for basically just
| being black' has a history way longer than rap music.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| As a black English man who enjoys a bit of rock and metal
| myself I have wondered this myself. I have some theories, which
| I fully admit are half baked and quite possibly incorrect.
| However, I think that a lot of the culture around rock and
| metal is off-putting to a lot of black people.
|
| If you look at something like black metal and it's sub-genres,
| a lot of the culture and imagery revolves around satanism and
| European paganism; which is popular with a certain segment of
| European people but would hold little to no interest to those
| of an Afro or Caribbean heritage. Especially since so many
| black people have quite strong Religious beliefs. (Less so
| these days possibly, but many still pay lip service at the very
| least.)
|
| If you then look at the 80's hair metal and glam metal genres
| with the emphasis on long hair and make up and an image of
| sexual ambiguity. I think we can all agree that there (sadly)
| exists a big homophobia problem amongst many black communities;
| which means that the aforementioned sexual ambiguity would be
| very off-putting to them.
|
| Those are obviously extreme examples, but I think I've maybe
| made my point.
|
| I'm probably talking out of my ass, but those are my thoughts
| for what it's worth.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| No, I agree. I listen to black but sometimes I'm happy that a
| few of them choose to sing (ish) in their native Scandinavian
| languages that I don't understand. I think I'd be very
| disturbed if I knew what they're singing about. Brrr.
|
| And indeed casual racism, sexism, hooliganism, homophobia,
| sexism, and general assholeness was common among my metalhead
| friends growing up (and for some it wasn't just poseuring).
| So I can see why black kids wouldn't feel welcome in today's
| metal scene at least. At times I didn't either.
|
| (My friends were equally dismissive of hair metal as
| "faggots" also, of course. Goes hand in hand with the rest.
| Oh, I did mention homophobia).
|
| But, why not raise a middle finger to today's metal scene (or
| the rock scene back in the day) and go do their own thing-
| their own _rock_ thing, like they did their own rap thing
| etc? That 's what I wonder about.
|
| Although, I guess I might as well ask why white kids don't
| all dig classical music, or their respective folk musics.
| Tastes change across generations.
| mellosouls wrote:
| _So why didn 't the black grasroots ever sprout an analogous
| new rock scene, instead of turning towards the mainstream, big
| stage, light show, for-profit music that comes from black
| artists for the last few decades?_
|
| I think this claim speaks more to your perception of music that
| isn't "rock" (there is no greater association with stadium-
| filling and dull commercialism than that label for some of us)
| than it does about what young creative people (of whichever
| colour) should be making.
| tolbish wrote:
| Right. Isn't rock the most mainstream, big stage, for-profit
| genre in existence? Their comment just sounds like they want
| to criticize black people as a whole for some reason.
| Like...do they also criticize Indians for not being really
| into rock and for only being into stereotypically Indian
| music?
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| I don't understand why you say that I am criticising black
| people. I wondered why black kids don't, as a rule (some
| do) make rock anymore. How is that criticising anyone?
|
| I think you and other posters here are jumping the gun and
| making associations between my comment and other comments
| you may have heard or read elsewhere and in a different
| context.
|
| If that is the case, please consider again the HN
| guidelines about responding to the strongest interpretation
| of other users' comments. Assuming I'm criticising blacks
| just because I ask why they don't make rock music anymore
| is a very weak interpretation of my comment.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I didn't know metal was so big in Athens, Greece. Thanks.
|
| > So why didn't the black grasroots ever sprout an analogous
| new rock scene, instead of turning towards the mainstream, big
| stage, light show, for-profit music that comes from black
| artists for the last few decades?
|
| For me, that's like asking, 'why didn't Van Gogh ever develop
| something innovative, like the abstract artists, instead of
| painting in his popular impressionist style?'.
|
| Is there any subculture in the world that has invented more
| music on the grassroots level than African-Americans? There's
| jazz, blues, gospel, turntableism (i.e., two turntables and a
| microphone), rap, techno (yes, created by African-Americans in
| Detroit), and all their derivatives: R&B, soul, hip-hop, etc.
| etc.
|
| All of that began at the grassroots. Just because people aren't
| inventing rock genres, doesn't mean they aren't inventing
| musical genres - does that need to be said? Just because you
| hear it now on the big stage doesn't mean it was born there, or
| that there isn't grassroots innovation still going on that you
| don't see.
|
| > The article makes a very strenuous effort to make a point
| about something something racism in rock that sounds a bit
| boring and trite to my ears.
|
| White people's skepticism of racism, every time it's mentioned,
| is tired and old - as old as racism, I suppose.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| To clarify, I'm skeptical of the article's attempt to point
| at racism, not of the existence of racism in general, neither
| even in the context that the article places it in. I'm
| criticising the article.
|
| I must say I don't appreciate your attempt to connect my
| comment with racist views you may have encountered in the
| past. I invite you to consider your comment in the context of
| the HN guidelines about responding to the strongest
| interpretation of others' comments, which I believe you
| ommitted to do in this case.
|
| (And I edited this and deleted other comments to make the
| whole exchange less combative, also in the spirit of HN
| guidelines).
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I'm sorry you feel that way. To be clear, I am not calling
| you racist (whatever that means exactly) and I am not
| calling that sentence racist, etc. But I have said racist
| things and held racist perspectives in my life; I'm human;
| I probably still do, unwittingly. I take that seriously -
| it hurts people, maybe more than anything else in humanity.
| (To make clear my position: I'll be damned if the scourge
| continues, on anything like its current scale, past my
| generation.) Also, sometimes I say things that unwittingly
| contribute to racism. _If_ you did one of those things - I
| 'm not saying you did - it wouldn't make you the devil.
| It's not about judging you; I assume you don't want to do
| these things either.
|
| This is my personal point of view in more detail. From the
| GGP:
|
| > The article makes a very strenuous effort to make a point
| about something something racism in rock that sounds a bit
| boring and trite to my ears.
|
| IMHO that sentence makes a joke of the article's points
| about racism, and calls them "boring and trite". Also,
| importantly it's an expression of feelings, not facts and
| reasoning.
|
| I'm saying it fits a general pattern: Very often IME, when
| racism is mentioned, people express skepticism in the same
| manner. The manner is an essential factor: It implies (and
| the GGP sentence says almost explicitly), 'these people can
| be ignored; I won't give them the time of day'. The power
| imbalance, that the vulnerable can be ignored, is at the
| core of racism; it allows racism to continue and be
| perpetuated; it puts the vulnerable under constant threat.
| Whether intended or not, I think the sentence repeats and
| reinforces that.
|
| To dramatize it, imagine a city council hearing: Someone
| says they are the victim of ongoing violence and threats
| from their neighbors, and gives a reasoned, factual
| account. The city council member doesn't ask detailed
| questions and explore the issue and possible solutions,
| they say, 'something something threats - how boring and
| trite'. It's a clear message that nobody need care and the
| attacks can continue.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> IMHO that sentence makes a joke of the article's
| points about racism, and calls them "boring and trite".
| Also, importantly it's an expression of feelings, not
| facts and reasoning.
|
| I understand what you are saying but I think it's an
| overgeneralisation. My comment said that the way the
| article frames the subject is boring and trite, not that
| the racism it is trying to point to doesn't really exist.
| I agree it does.
|
| I don't want to have to give ideological credentials here
| because I don't think that's healthy in any situation,
| but of course I think that the existence of racism in the
| music industry, as anywhere is a problem. But everyone
| who tries to point out the problem doesn't do an equally
| good job and I've sure seen people do it very clumsily. I
| think the article is all over the place and doesn't quite
| hit the spot when it comes to sensitising the reader to
| the issue.
|
| Edit: to clarify, in the following sentence:
|
| >> The article makes a very strenuous effort to make a
| point about something something racism in rock that
| sounds a bit boring and trite to my ears
|
| The phrase: "that sounds a bit boring and trite" has "a
| very strenuous effort" as a subject, not "a point about
| something something racism". I find the effort boring and
| trite, not the point.
|
| I admit that this is not the only interpretation of my
| comment, but, again, I think it is the strongest
| interpretation - and it's certainly my intended
| interpretation.
|
| Edit again: And the "something something racism" is meant
| to express my frustration at the author's inability to
| pin down the subject they're trying to discuss, not to
| deny racism exists. I mean, I read a huge article that
| kept meandering and never really getting to the point. I
| wanted to read more about what Dylan said and why, what
| were his experiences that formed his opinions. But I read
| a bloated piece stitching together bits and pieces of
| rock and roll history that may have been related, or not.
| I just didn't like the article.
| nzeribe wrote:
| That's not true. Afropunk was a response to the question you
| pose. White people stole the rock from Black kids the way
| Ancient Greece stole the Hippocratic Oath from African culture.
| It is almost the same. Today, it's almost impossible to know Bo
| Diddley, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and other Black pioneers created
| rock in almost it's complete form. "History is written by the
| winners", they say, and our cultural memory is like a hard
| drive which has been written over. Show the typical rock fan
| footage of Black women going hard at a rock guitar in 1955, and
| they will profess shock. The re-writing of history has been
| successful. The "analogous new rock scene" you are searching
| for is called rap. It is rock music without guitars and for
| years in the early days, without white people. Think about Run-
| DMC in 1982, and how "punk-rock" they were with the stripped
| down sound and hard lyrics. Black artists were hounded out of
| rock music by racist promoters and a hostile music industry,
| and their answer to it was hip-hop. The history of Black music
| has been of flight, an attempt to escape white cultural
| aggression stealing their music and style without accreditation
| or compensation. Promoters defunded and starved out Black
| performers, and the answer to that is two turntables and a mic
| on the underground, sound systems plugged into street lights -
| where they can't get defunded, have control, and have no white
| people. The Beatles up until 1964 were almost identical to the
| Isley Brothers but racism in the US was so entrenched that
| Americans had to re-import the music on their doorstep being
| made at home through 4 white kids from Liverpool. How ironic is
| that?
| [deleted]
| xphilter wrote:
| I mean, if you exclude racism and structural racism as an
| answer, you'll be wondering for a long time "why black people
| don't rock anymore." But it's not my job to educate you, I'd
| suggest you look into yourself.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post ideological flamewar comments to HN or
| cross into personal attack. Neither of those makes for
| interesting conversation, only dumbed-down hostility. If you
| have a substantive insight to offer about the topic, that of
| course is welcome.
|
| It's no one's _job_ here to educate the others, thankfully.
| But _learning_ from each other is the point of this place,
| and that only works if we don 't get stuck in ideological
| tropes and internet putdown culture.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.
| ..
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| [deleted]
| gaucheph wrote:
| Probably needs a (2016) label.
| dang wrote:
| Eventually added. Thanks!
| WJW wrote:
| It's just https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths all over
| again. As old as the world.
| mycologos wrote:
| I like that theory, but TFA doesn't really advance it. Among
| other things, TFA argues that commercially powerful interests
| like record companies deliberately fractured rock and roll's
| racial integration into segregated genres. I don't think
| "geeks, mops, sociopaths" covers this kind of intentional,
| external crackdown on a subculture.
| WJW wrote:
| The way I read the article, the actual "crackdown" was
| motivated more by financial than racial reasons by the record
| companies. The racial segregation was just collateral damage
| from that process. Doesn't that fit super neatly in the
| "sociapaths extracting value from a subculture at the cost of
| internal coherence" part of the theory?
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| TFA? What are you referencing?
| friehe wrote:
| TFA - The fucking article
| bserge wrote:
| > For the record, rock is far from dead
|
| Alright then.
| dang wrote:
| I've posted this before but it belongs here:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnyCJDYONSU#t=57
| l-_l-_l-_lo_ol wrote:
| In the age of computation I think the real dichotomy is between
| rhythm-focused loop-based composition and music made by people
| playing instruments. It's easy to see why hip-hop and technology
| is winning: it's easier music to make. Why compose minutes of
| music when you can compose 20 seconds and loop it? Or sample it
| altogether? Why spend thousands of ours learning an instrument?
| TOSSAWAY_1 wrote:
| Haha I guessed racism. Man I'm like 10/10 at guessing the
| proposed american narratives lately.
| ObserverNeutral wrote:
| Mad respect to Bob Dylan, he's the best at what he does and this
| inteview proves it, because he touches the social and human
| aspect.
|
| You need these capabilities to write great songs.
|
| To me the reality is much simpler. A rock n roll song needs more
| time to be appreciated compared to other styles of music.
|
| Modern society goes much faster than the 60s and 70s. Also
| competition with other forms of entertainment...music quality has
| remained essentially the same compared to the 60s...whereas the
| quality of video based story telling (TV, movies, live sports
| etc.) improved from distorted out of focus sporadic content to 8K
| whenever you want
| ilamont wrote:
| Popular music has been on a fast-track evolutionary cycle since
| the invention of the radio and LP. Other factors have
| contributed, from the music press to cable television to more
| disposable household income in the United States after WWII. The
| idea that popular youth music would stay locked into the modes of
| mid-1950s America while culture and society shifted, millions of
| new teenage humans entered the scene every year, musicians
| absorbed new influences, and musical trends crossed borders and
| linguistic barriers -- and sometimes came back -- seems like a
| stretch.
|
| But one thing that is not a stretch is what might be called
| Payola 2.0, after the 1.0 scandal described in the article died
| down. Record companies couldn't give outright cash payments to
| DJs, but there were many other ways of exerting influence on
| influential media gatekeepers. In my opinion, this is where the
| suits really were really able to promote biases and sideline non-
| mainstream musical trends.
|
| Some of the influence was obvious. Picking artists that had the
| "right" look. Promoting "safe" artists. Selective access and
| backroom benefits for powerful DJs and music journalists and
| other influencers. Ignoring, sidelining, or co-opting trends
| bubbling up from the underground, from proto-metal in the late
| 60s to punk in the 70s to rap in the 80s.
|
| And then there are the charts, which were segmented according to
| race and other factors aligned with the needs of the music
| "industry." Did you know that until the early 90s music charts in
| the United States were based on a sample of _self-reported_ sales
| from record store managers? Can you imagine the bias and BS that
| went on with those numbers? As soon as soundscan was implemented,
| there was an _immediate_ realignment, with rap and grunge and
| techno and country storming the pop charts.
| (https://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/22/arts/billboard-s-new-char...)
|
| Since then, the digital transformations have resulted in an
| interesting fragmentation of pop music and youth tastes ... but
| with the music industry literally controlling major streaming
| platforms, we're shifting into Payola 3.0, and with whatever
| algorithmically dictated patterns that will entail.
| stuart78 wrote:
| I think that the narrative of last twenty years has been a re-
| blending of genre in a way that is not fully appreciated. While
| you can certainly find plenty of music that fits the mold
| established in the 60s, 80s or 90s around you also find much more
| at the top of the charts that challenges those categories. Right
| now the top 10 Billboard chart includes Lil Nas X and The Weeknd,
| neither of whom fits comfortably in the genre they are assigned
| to by the RIAA.
|
| And if you look at what is happening on Bandcamp or Soundcloud or
| YouTube or wherever else young people are trying new things you
| see a tremendous heterogeneity of inspiration and not a lot of
| concern for where the sound fits in.
|
| The parallel trend of course is the power migration from labels
| and producers to artists, and these are intrinsically related.
| The artist wants to experiment and find their own path, the label
| is always trying to replicate success (to radically oversimplify
| on both counts). Labels have a role to play in supporting
| artists, but the power dynamic is different when the artist
| brings the audience they've been building independently for
| years.
|
| The direct connection between artist and audience shows how much
| more open to new ideas we can all be. It is the same receptivity
| that powered the integration Dylan describes taking place in the
| 1950s, and I think its great.
| tarsinge wrote:
| That's my take too. Also for The Weeknd it's especially true
| with early releases, like
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPp5Ty9EE6k. On the hip hop
| side Lil Peep (RIP at 22 unfortunately) is also typical of that
| blend, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAMgQQMZ9Lk or
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOujzvtwZ6M, with a huge 90's
| alt rock vibe.
| fossuser wrote:
| One hypothesis for why genres matter less is musical abundance
| and identity as a result of that.
|
| I think when you had to buy a record or CD people would
| consider themselves a "punk rock" person or whatever for any
| genre and they'd tend to buy and listen to/show their friends
| that music.
|
| With streaming services, and easy access to wide variety
| there's not much need for this kind of thing so tastes blend
| more on the consumption side. They then start to blend more on
| the creation side too.
|
| One thing I've noticed is that music has gone from an activity
| (listen to this record I got) to entirely personal and mostly
| ambient.
|
| Maybe that's a factor of my age, but I think it's mostly
| related to higher stimulus activities now available on the
| internet.
| moomin wrote:
| The "Old Town Road" Billboard kerfuffle was a great
| demonstration of the thesis of the piece: that the hard
| categorisations of music are racially driven.
| dangerbird2 wrote:
| Yep. If you listen to "hillbilly music" and "blues" from the
| 20s and 30s, or "rock" and "r&b" from the 50s or 60s, they
| are musically indistinguishable. The difference almost always
| solely lies in the race of the musicians or the target
| audience
| krapp wrote:
| Literally the reason "rock and roll" exists as a label was
| to segregate "ethnic" (read: Black) music in record stores
| and on the radio for a white audience.
| Balgair wrote:
| > And if you look at what is happening on Bandcamp or
| Soundcloud or YouTube or wherever else young people are trying
| new things you see a tremendous heterogeneity of inspiration
| and not a lot of concern for where the sound fits in.
|
| One way I have heard to mentally categorize things: What is the
| stereotypical musical instrument of that generation/genre?
|
| For jazz and the silent generation it was the saxophone, maybe
| others though.
|
| For rock-n-roll it's the electric guitar, no question.
|
| The 80's was the electric keyboard and synths, kinda.
|
| Today? The laptop.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| To compare this to the 1950s is... very strange. For listeners,
| the broadening of access to the full diversity of music between
| 1950 and 1990 was unprecedented in history and will never
| happen again, simply due to the rise of technology, and the
| sudden access to all the traditions of the world within a
| single generation.
|
| > Lil Nas X and The Weeknd, neither of whom fits comfortably in
| the genre they are assigned to by the RIAA.
|
| For me, this is generic and formulaic music that could have
| come out any time in the last thirty years (except for the
| ubiquitous "autotune/overcompress" sound I suppose).
|
| "Not fitting comfortable into a genre" is so bland a
| compliment!
|
| But I agree with this - all the action is in Bandcamp and
| similar.
|
| -----
|
| A composer named Steve Reich wrote several pieces of tape music
| (processed tape recordings) back in the 70s that were a huge
| hit (in avant circles), but then he went to study in Ghana and
| decided that this was a mistake. He felt that the purpose of
| music was for humans to play and sing together as a group
| activity, and that pre-recorded music did not fulfill this very
| deep human need.
|
| I was skeptical when I first read this, but time has proven him
| entirely right.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| This widens my immediate perspective, thanks. One can get
| caught up in the topic as framed.
|
| And great points: > "Not fitting comfortable into a genre" is
| so bland a compliment!"
|
| > Steve Reich wrote several pieces of tape music (processed
| tape recordings) back in the 70s that were a huge hit (in
| avant circles), but then he went to study in Ghana and
| decided that this was a mistake. He felt that the purpose of
| music was for humans to play and sing together as a group
| activity, and that pre-recorded music did not fulfill this
| very deep human need.
|
| That is very interesting. (Also, I've only heard Reich's
| music live, but I've never played along.) In folk music, it
| is a core belief (long ignored): It's music for folks. Woody
| Guthrie's songs were written so anyone could play or sing
| them, as I understand the story. His successors often played
| more complicated and challenging stuff, much that ordinary
| people couldn't hope to perform or isn't singalong music.
| It's hard to imagine sitting around a bar or a living room or
| out under the stars, singing 'Like a Rolling Stone' together.
| ebiester wrote:
| You miss the point.
|
| Lil Nas X and The Weeknd are placed in R&B almost exclusively
| because they are black. In your eyes, sung by a white person
| in 1986, would be synth pop.
|
| Did Billy Ray Cyrus make Old Town Road suddenly country? Is
| Montero (call me by your name) rap or a gay dance anthem?
| svantana wrote:
| Interesting, I didn't know that about Reich. Another
| leftfield hitmaker, Bill Drummond of the KLF, came to a
| similar conclusion, which prompted him to start a series of
| collaborative live music projects ("the 17" maybe the most
| well-known)
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I personally don't feel music has to be anything.
|
| Some music would just come to me (Gong, Sensation's Fix) and some
| I had to meet half way or more (Can, early Kluster).
|
| Some groups like Negativland aren't very tonal. Are they music?
| Who cares. It occupies the same space and will make it's own
| changes in our brain, if allowed.
|
| Ultimately, music is what it is.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _Whatever Hendrix was, he was the only performer capable of
| reconciling the broken, racially-charged, and dichotomized state
| of rock 'n' roll._
|
| I guess the author forgot for a moment who Prince was when they
| wrote that sentence
| dang wrote:
| I wouldn't have thought the article was very good, and the title
| is neither an accurate representation of what Dylan said, nor
| really what the article is about. But this thread is surprisingly
| pretty good!
|
| As a gloss on what Dylan is saying about race and the music
| business, this clip where David Bowie turns the tables on an MTV
| interviewer in 1983 is worth watching, in a high-tension sort of
| way. He's pretty impressive as an investigative journalist: cool
| as steel, conceding nothing, and charming even as he drives the
| knife in deeper:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3i53rjh-PA#t=11m3s
|
| (If you watch to the very end, he makes the same point as Dylan:
| "yeah but let's face it, somebody laid the ground rules down in
| the beginning".)
| bumbada wrote:
| What killed rock n roll is the same thing that "killed" every
| other music genre before: Demographics.
|
| People get older and young people want to differentiate
| themselves from older people, so they just do different things,
| including listening to different music.
|
| This even happened with what we consider classical music, from
| Beethoven Eroica to Stravinski Rite of Spring and specially
| Operas.
|
| Old people will consider a new style an "scandal", specially
| established musicians and young people will adopt it.
|
| It is not different from Einstein being a revolutionary against
| the Elders and then being the Elder against Heisenberg.
| wayneftw wrote:
| Why hasn't rap died?
|
| It's been popular for multiple generations now.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Hip hip is the philosophy of survival in a racist culture. It
| dies when the racism dies.
| ramphastidae wrote:
| Oh come off it. Little to no mainstream hip hop addresses
| racism in any meaningful way. It's still mostly sex, drugs,
| objectifying women, glorifying the rich, and violence.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Since when has mainstream music been what is listened to
| outside of White American culture? Beyond the marketed
| artists is a voice you're not hearing and it speaks from
| a culture emerging out of lies told about itself and
| shunted from economic stability. The economic situations
| of 99% of the readers of HN is science fiction to large
| portions the economic underclass in the United States.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| It doesn't have to address racism in any meaningful way
| to fulfill the function of being centered around
| identity. When that identity becomes meaningless, the
| culture around it will lose meaning as well.
|
| The Martians and the Belters will have their own music.
| fourtrees wrote:
| I hope it doesn't. I'd like to see a world without racism
| and with hip hop. Also, there have been so many changes in
| the popular sub-genres of hip hop, with each new generation
| of musicians altering the popular form (maybe not always
| for the better (RIP DMX)), that it's almost like rap has
| died and been reborn several times since the 80 -- a bit
| like rock between the 50s and 2000s.
| tomgp wrote:
| Let's say hiphop started in 1980 so it's abouyt 41 years old.
| That's the begining of the 90's for rock music (if we
| consider it's origins to be the early 50's, though of course
| none of these dates represent hard boundaries) which feel
| about right. Hiphop and it's ofspring are the dominant forms
| of popular music but the tide of creative progress has
| perhaps slowed somewhat since the peak. Maybe. I don't
| necessarily believe this because the technological/ cultural
| landscape for music is so different from the late 20th
| century that making these broad comparisons doesn't really
| make sense. I guess my point is that 40ish years isn't that
| old for a musical genre to still be hanging around.
| splithalf wrote:
| Raps not dead it just smells funny.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Classical music is 300+ years old. I also love Opera as do my
| parents and grandparents.
|
| I think it is more about what gets played on the radio. The
| music is good and new. That tricks our brain into pursuing it.
|
| Eventually each genre finds its own classics that basically
| capture most of the attention.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Is the classical you all listen to all "top 40" "oldies" from
| folks like Bach and Beethoven or do you listen to anything
| reasonably new? I'm talking 20th or 21st century classical.
| Say John Adams or Kaija Saariaho, maybe?
|
| That's the classical music that I enjoy that my mom can't
| stand. And that is the difference this is talking about.
| analog31 wrote:
| The new stuff. My mom introduced me to Hindemith and
| Bartok.
| eplanit wrote:
| "I'm talking 20th or 21st century classical"
|
| I can't consider anything so recent to be "classical" -- it
| might imitate the style of older music, but to call that
| 'classical' makes the word basically meaningless, or that
| it's only a style (however that would be defined). To me,
| 'classical' means that it has survived and thrived across
| _many_ years.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > . To me, 'classical' means that it has survived and
| thrived across _many_ years.
|
| Classical _is_ either all of Western art music or a
| particular style within that body whose original heyday
| was between that of Baroque and Romantic; creating a
| third definition doesn't aid in communication.
| stephenhuey wrote:
| I am close to people who write and play compositions with
| these traditional orchestral instruments today and they
| refer to these pieces as "new music" although most people
| would hear them as "classical" pieces. Most people call a
| wide swath of several centuries of music "classical" but
| in the music world, there was technically a very
| particular Classical music period in the 1700s and early
| 1800s. When musicians today study at top music schools,
| no one there calls "classical" what most people outside
| that world call classical. They refer to the particular
| time period because they distinguish unique traits
| between each in the way we might distinguish fairly
| similar genres today. So, as I said, if some composer
| today comes up with a new concerto the people in that
| world call it "new music".
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >To me, 'classical' means that it has survived and
| thrived across _many_ years.
|
| I believe that would normally be referred to as a
| classic.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| I thought the same way and referred to modern classical
| music as symphonic music or composition. But a professor
| friend and composer taught me that modern symphonic music
| is referred to as classical music. Probably because the
| approach is a classical one, even if the composer is
| Stockhausen.
| acomjean wrote:
| I like modern classical.. some of it.
|
| There is a radio show with some interesting modern
| classical I check out weekly. (They archive the shows on
| the wmbr site for 2 weeks.
|
| https://wmbr.org/cgi-bin/show?id=6708
| criddell wrote:
| Do you think radio still matters?
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| For people who drive, yes. It does to me at least.
| criddell wrote:
| Most of the time when I'm driving, I'm streaming music.
| I'd be okay if my next car had no radio as long as it has
| Android Auto or CarPlay.
| analog31 wrote:
| I find it super convenient to turn on one of the streaming
| radio stations such as WFMT in Chicago. It eliminates all
| of the organizational overhead of curating the music that I
| listen to, and it's good enough. I certainly hear a lot of
| stuff that I've never heard before.
|
| Also, re streaming, I have a throttled cell phone service,
| so my data usage isn't unlimited.
| criddell wrote:
| I don't have unlimited data either, but have found that
| streaming doesn't seem to use up all that much data. I
| think it's something like 100MB / hour.
| sunstone wrote:
| Apparently Sun Records was on the look out for a white kid who
| could sing black music and they found him in Elvis Presley. It
| wasn't by accident.
| cainxinth wrote:
| What's interesting to me about the music scene of today is how
| closely it now hews to a "long tail" model. The publishers have
| so much data about what streams, so the most popular stuff has
| become incredibly homogenous (not that pop music wasn't always in
| a pretty narrow groove). But at the same time, thanks to the
| proliferation of music production tools and channels to share it
| on, the long tail is filled with diverse and interesting stuff
| from every conceivable genre.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| Lotta early-rock-history-for-newbs in there, I'll give it that.
| Dylan's insights - race, payola, manipulation - were already
| gospel long ago, for example in 1984 in Patrick Montgomery's
| _Rock and Roll: The Early Days_ (1984). [0] (Despite the
| resolution) Enjoy! (About the garage-band thing supposedly
| happening? Not on the radio!)
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL2K-KrtBNs
|
| Edit: while I'm on it, if you'd like expert rock history, Alan
| Cross is your man. Check into all those 900+ 'Ongoing History of
| New Music' casts, about 25m each. The man's accurate and
| thorough.
|
| https://omny.fm/shows/ongoing-history-of-new-music
| yummypaint wrote:
| People interested in the Alan Cross content might also like the
| five watt world short history videos.
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5OAMxnvhTyc3rjgpY6u8cA
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _Lotta early-rock-history-for-newbs in there, I 'll give it
| that._
|
| I think this is not giving the article enough credit. It's not
| just that people are "newbs" to music history, it's also that
| real music history is buried under manufactured-consent style
| industry narrative, which the article explicitly points out
| halfway through:
|
| > _the rest is music industry history -- something we need to
| make an discerned effort to divorce from actual music history._
|
| By the time I write this comment, the article has received 1.8k
| "likes" (or whatever they are called on Medium), and has
| probably been read by an order of magnitude more people. It
| pushes back against this narrative.
|
| The fact that you already knew this as a music superfan (or
| whatever the reason might be) does not reduce the article's
| value in this regard.
|
| Thanks for the links though!
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-05-08 23:01 UTC)