The Grammys As White Nostalgia?

The Grammy’s like the Oscar’s are not and have never been for or about blacks or other people of color. They are industry pagents celebrating their individual industries  power structure. This has nothing to do with the artists, white or black. These are celebrations for the corporations that own and steer the ships of popular music.

The status quo in most things is the easiest and most natural state for almost anything. Music and film are not different.  The other factor is pure economics. Blacks with the exception of Simmons, Sean Combs, Master P and a few other movers and shakers, aren’t part of the power structure. And even those black industry leaders are beholden to white consumers. As musicologist Arthur Kempton researched more than 70 percent of hip-hop is purchased by whites. I’m sure that the majority of Rhianna’s and other young black stars owe much of their wealth and success to whtie consumers. However, the industry will never turn over the “face” of their industry to people who don’t look like them

This conversation happens every year with the Oscar’s and the Grammy’s ( and the Emmy’s, remember the lack of Emmy love for  The Wire ). Every year these industry awards shows promise to diversify and they throw a bone every now and then ( Black Maids or prostitutes win, POC who reflect positive aspects of life don’t get any love).

I am not the demographic for the Grammy’s or most of the music, black or white, they promote

I haven’t watched the Grammy’s ( or Oscars or Emmy’s) since the 90′s. I just heard Lady Gaga and Adele for the first time in January and couldn’t tell Nicki Minaj from Taylor Swift if you held a gun to my head ( I haven’t knowingly heard either artist).  There’s plenty of music out there other than corporate rap./ rock/ and sort of R and B.  That said, I am, like every other person in Austin, I semi-professional musician. I took Dave Grohl’s comments not as a racist slight. Grohl has stated several times that one of his favorite artists is Little Richard. Grohl has made similar comments that music should  authentic and personal in every aspect not just in vocalization or the overuse and abuse of Auto-tune.

I’ve always thought the Grammy’s and other industry beauty shows were there not to reward true artists, but to remind all of us that we should enjoy what we’re force fed

The Grammys just reflect what is.  The majority of the US are my generation, baby boomers.  Pure and simple.  I also agreed with what Grohl said because I’m tired of autotune and I to wish for the days when singers could really sing and not relay on too much technology.  If that makes me an old fuddy duddy, so be it.

damn if grohl do,damn if grohl don’t. 

People like Adele are often well-liked because they reinforce the old
ways while providing comfort to those who have a disconnect from the way
music actually works. Thinking autotune is only ever used to cover up
bad singing, rather than for artistic effect in the same way other
electronic tools are is a way to undermine the artistry involved in
using technology to craft complicated sounds. They also represent the fear of a previous
generation of music listeners that they are somehow being fooled, like the
erroneous idea that autotune can make a bad singer good seems to come
from a fear of being deceived by technology and that the emotional
expressions are “inauthentic”. That this dislike and disrespect always 
comes from people rooted in old white male rock traditions and is often aimed
at the forms of musical expression most embraced by women, people of
color and gay people is not coincidental. Entire genres of music have
had to work much harder to even be noticed because they didn’t embrace
the straightforward approach or instrumentation of white guy rock.

That the Foo Fighters continue to win Rock Album of the Year despite not evolving much in sound or approach between records says a lot. Coldplay’s music may be anodine, but their recent efforts at least showed a greater expansion of their sound and a willingness to embrace some of the electronic sounds and sonic efforts of modern music and incorporate them into their current sound. As generally “meh” as they remain, you can tell they at least listen to recent music and find it fascinating enough to function as a reference point.

Ironically, Neil Peart is actually Grohl’s favorite drummer and Rush is one of his favorite groups.  It’s even more ironic that Grohl talks about people learning their instruments, since the musical genre in which he rose to fame, most of the critics who fawn over his music, and his own drummer in the Foo Fighters all have a healthy contempt for the display of musical competence.   Rush has never really been respected by the “alternative” critics who love the Foo Fighters so much because Rush actually took the time to learn how to play their instruments well.  

That said, it should be pointed out  that technology has turned many forms of pop music into producer’s mediums that downplay actual vocal and instrumental ability, rather than enhance or improve it.  The rare examples on the other end of the spectrum seldom win awards.   

You probably feel the same way that I do: disgusted and then some. I’m not complaining at all about Racialicious … I’m just making a statement about this shi**y state of affairs. Honestly, I’m depressed as hell and this history loop is … I can hardly express how it makes me feel: mental health,  the isms are detrimental to my mental health.

On a cheerier note, I admire the work that all of you do and sometimes I wonder how you keep it up. You will always have my support.

I most certainly agree, as
the author posited, that the Grammys was a reenactment of the era when white
producers stole copyrights and actual musical numbers from black artists and
had them copied by white performers (always watered down), an enactment of the
times when black creativity and artists of such musical genres were not (and
still are not) given their fair due nor just visibility. I guess I want to make
sure that music wasn’t being defined in terms of the “whiteness” or “blackness”
of music. Before any protestations, please hear me out. If the Grammys was such
an exercise of white nostalgia, the real issue then is the image of the white
man, the white body as, “mark[ing] the boundaries;” if white men are framing
the show, then they have also framed music in terms of racially-dependent
categories, ones they apparently believe they need to defend.  Yes, forms of music are the artistic
creations of communities, just as jazz and related artistic expressions were
the creations of black artists and their communities. But to reduce music in
terms of racial-constants, to suggest that the color of one’s skin lies therin
an ability or a capacity to perform certain types of music, perform music
“less-human,” “more human,” OR to display (as the Grammys did) black performers
as “only being made legitimate by being allowed to perform with more
established, authorative, and, most importantly, white figures,” is another
falsity being perpetuated by such reenactments of “white nostalgia.”

        The choice of
“conservative rock” music certainly reflected an attempt to, as the author
said, maneuver “whiteness itself as the apex of cultural iconicity,” but let’s
not buy into the conceptions of the white producers and bigwigs themselves—to
believe that music exists on a spectrum of “racial essentialisms.” As stated
before, certainly genres and musical forms are the creations of communities,
racially-stratified by the racially-informed identity caste present within
America, and now, as such, are defined as the musical genres of a race, of the
group of people put in the same, racial categories. Yet, Tracy Chapman is an
unbelievable folk singer; Eva Cassidy was an amazing blues singer—two examples,
for which I’m sure there are many others, just not those (again indicative of
this issue) that are VISIBLE. Did some unchanging principle within the color of
their skin, whether deemed “white” or “black,” make them less or more capable
of such music outside of their “racial” genre? No. To think so would be to
again buy into the myths of those arbiters of the status quo who assume such
social dominance and perpetuate such ideas of racial categorization and
typology. The racial categories that this culture puts us in, supposedly
informing us of our “status” and intrinsic nature, are so completely reductive
to the individual, to human beings. It’s not the skin, it’s the category based on the skin, society puts us in that “informs” us
of our privileges, abilities, and lack thereof—it’s not some unchanging essence
within pigmentation itself rendering our musical proclivities or capacities. We
can talk of music being representative of racial communities and traditions,
but let’s not define music in terms of racial-constants. It’s the choice of the
WHITE IMAGE, the choice of Adele’s “western, white-defined” image, the opening and closing of white men, and the
choice to “legitimize” musical forms as being safer and better when surrounded
AND played by white figures that makes this endeavor to claim some sort of
“white,” musical authenticity so completely “a defiant stand of yesteryear.”