The hallmark, perhaps the bedrock of civilization is the development of a commonality between citizens of a nation that connects the living population with the long deceased and will unite the unborn to that past.
Tales of past grandeur passed down orally or through the written word help maintain ties that bind those living to events that transpired long before their birth.
Black people in America, denied any connection to the rich heritage of Africa after their ancestors were sold into slavery by members of either their own or a warring tribe, have created new foundational myths that unite them as one.
Puzzling though is how impoverished the traditions of Africa and the Black experience in the United States has been, compared to that which developed in Europe and in the outposts of that civilization throughout the world wherever Europeans have propagated.
Art, literature, theater, music and dance are all different elements that when combined help create a rich cultural tableau that develops a clear portrait of the commonality binding a civilization together.
Black people have already been found to find classical music a most irritating nuisance to their auditory system, though the vuvuzela is a musical device that brings joy to the always ebullient Black face.
Though many scoff at the so-called fine arts as an avocation whose followers would never dare utter “No Homo” but graciously accept such so-called negative terminology, many of the theatrical performances, concerts, operas, ballets that are performed in cultural centers pay homage to a distinct culture, rooted in Pre-Obama America.
Yet Black people are rare in these areas that help entertain and educate those who view and appreciate them. The fine arts and the performance arts have a dearth of Black people – like the Winter Olympics – that underlie the deepest fears of Disingenuous White Liberals (DWLs): that Black people don’t want to be just like them.
You see, DWL’s are the ultimate white supremacists as they believe that Black people must be exactly like them: espousing the same fundamental beliefs; enjoying the same forms of entertainment and tastes; and conforming to a rigid interpretation of the world guided by DWL tastes.
Take our hand, white liberals say, and we will continue to be your guide on the Underground Railroad… but only do as we say.
These same white liberals bemoan the lack of Black involvement in the so-called fine arts, never realizing that Black people created their own forms of cultural commonality that bind them to their own community. They have purposely rejected all mores of Pre-Obama America and embrace the teachings that unite them to their community.
DWL’s writing for The Washington Post tell us about the lack of Black people in ballet, as they have decided to pull a Swayze in that particular field :
As a snapshot of ballet in this country, the six-day, nine-company Ballet Across America series at the Kennedy Center, which concluded Sunday, offered some good news but little revelation. The primary take-away is that whether you're talking Memphis or Tulsa, Seattle or Charlotte, there's an impressively high level of skill among the nation's ballet dancers.
The companies are also overwhelmingly white and dotted with Europeans -- as they have always been. Diversity in ballet remains a serious problem for the small companies as well as the large, on the coasts as well as in the heartland. In the 21st century, we can put a black man in the White House, but as last week's survey shows, we can't put a black ballerina in the Opera House. Clearly, not enough work is being done to foster African American dancers. But with public money in their coffers, ballet companies -- and the local, state and federal funders -- need to make equal opportunity in the dancer ranks a priority.
That's the story on the dancers. But what did the series tell us about their leaders? Here was the surprise: The last shall be first. In terms of repertoire, the greatest rewards came from the smallest companies, which appear to be doing the most creative work with the fewest resources: First, North Carolina Dance Theatre with Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux's "Shindig" and a live bluegrass band, then Ballet Memphis with Trey McIntyre's emotional take on Roy Orbison. Friday, it was the tiny, 10-dancer Aspen Santa Fe Ballet in Jorma Elo's "Red Sweet."
Black people have no incentive to joining ballet troupes, for the performances all glorify halcyon days of a past that had little to do with them. Culturally the most important ballets have their roots in Europe, a land historically deprived of Black people.
More to the point, DWL’s at The New York Times publish a story about the growing number of Black Broadway plays that cater to a specific, built in target market:
They thought it was about Elvis.
That’s what a focus group of a dozen African-American women concluded about the musical “Memphis” last summer when they were asked to assess the show’s tagline, “The Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll.”
But after seeing artwork featuring Felicia, the black R&B singer in the show, and after hearing about the turbulent romance between the character and a white D.J., the women in the focus group said the show was much more up their alley.
With that in mind, the producers changed the “Memphis” tagline before opening on Broadway to: “His Vision, Her Voice. The Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll.”
The use of focus groups is one of several diversity strategies, aggressive by theater standards, used not only by “Memphis” but also by another new Broadway musical, “Fela!”; the new play “Race”; and the revival of “Fences” — all shows centered on black characters, who are rarely in the forefront of major plays and musicals.
While the “Memphis” producers estimate that 25 to 30 percent of their audience is black, the producers of “Fela!” and “Race” say that their outreach has resulted in black theatergoers’ making up 40 percent of attendees. “Fences” and its star, Denzel Washington, are also drawing large numbers of black people, though the show began selling out early and has been a tough ticket to obtain, a spokesman said.
Broadway shows about black characters often draw black theatergoers, but the producers of “Memphis” and “Fela!” as well as producers of some coming shows are particularly going after African-Americans, given that Broadway’s overall attendance has been on the decline, down 3 percent for the 2009-10 season. Whether black theatergoers become a larger, reliable part of the Broadway audience remains to be seen, as do the range and quality of the shows that are offered to appeal to them.
Yet producers clearly sense a market that has not been tapped out: This fall’s Broadway lineup already includes two new musicals about black men, “Unchain My Heart: The Ray Charles Musical” and “The Scottsboro Boys,” and possibly the new two-character play “The Mountaintop,” about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., depending on whether the producers can land the stars Samuel L. Jackson and Halle Berry.
Indeed, the producers of “Memphis” credit word of mouth among black people for helping keep the show alive through slow-selling weeks to reach the Tony Award voting season that began in May and ended when “Memphis” won the top award for best new musical this month.
While some theater critics and rival producers have derided “Memphis” as a conventional show and have spurned its story of racial reconciliation as simplistic, the musical’s success at building a black audience is anything but business as usual for Broadway. Yes, some of the marketing strategies were tried before with the 2005 musical adaptation of “The Color Purple,” but that show had a well-known title and Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement going for it.
By contrast, “Memphis” has no stars and an unknown score and story. But its producers believed that their show would become known as memorable entertainment if buzz spread among enough so-called Broadway taste-makers — who, in the case of “Memphis,” were not the usual critics, bloggers and veteran theatergoers, but instead African-American ministers, choir directors and black women.
“Anyone who says that ‘Memphis’ is somehow unoriginal as a piece of musical theater is missing the impact that the show is having on a wide cross section of people who feel that Broadway isn’t usually for them,” said Sue Frost, a lead producer of “Memphis,” who noted with pride that Michelle Obama took her two daughters to a performance of the musical this spring. (The three also caught “The Addams Family.”)
The R&B flavor of the show, and the serious treatment of African-American life in the segregated 1950s, were the selling points of the show for Willie Anderson, a tourist from Atlanta who took a group of 11 relatives and friends to a recent performance. Each paid $94 a ticket.
“We wanted to see something with some African flavor, and what we heard in Atlanta was that ‘Memphis’ was a show worth seeing,” Mr. Anderson said. “The main thing is, you want music that you’ll appreciate and like. I have nothing against ‘Mary Poppins,’ but I don’t see that as a show for us like ‘Memphis’ will be.”
One theater group-sales company that focuses on minorities, Full House Theater Tickets Inc., reported that “Memphis,” “Race,” and “Fela!” had drawn disproportionately large numbers of African-Americans. (Group sales are a cornerstone of commercial success for most shows.) “Fela!,” about the Afrobeat musician Fela Kuti, has sent vans emblazoned with the show’s logo and playing Mr. Kuti’s music to racially diverse neighborhoods, where the drivers hand out brochures for the show and talk it up to passers-by.
“Part of the appeal of these shows is that they give black audiences something to talk about,” said Sandie M. Smith, president of Full House. “For ‘Race,’ we went after and got African-American attorneys’ associations, groups that dealt with the justice system and, in some cases, created post-show discussions because there were rich topics to discuss.”
Many of these post-performance conversations have happened at the theater district restaurant B. Smith’s, named for its owner, the black entrepreneur and former television show host.
To expose young people to Broadway and, with luck, spread word about the show to more parents, the “Memphis” producers spent $75,000 on their own program, Inspire Change, that has sent cast members into schools and then students from those schools — nearly 1,000 so far — to the musical. The program began after a fifth-grade teacher at the KIPP Star College Prep Charter School, in Harlem, wrote to the “Memphis” producers after seeing a performance and asked if the musical had an educational outreach component and discount tickets for students.
“A week after we saw it,” said the teacher, Trenton Price, “I introduced the vocabulary word ‘integrate’ in class, and a kid used an example from ‘Memphis’ — about how the white D.J. goes into Felicia’s bar, but the bar wasn’t integrated at that point.”
Felicia, the R&B singer who is the leading lady of the show (played by Montego Glover), has proved to be a draw for African-Americans. The marketing team for “Memphis” played clips of Ms. Glover singing Felicia’s big first-act number, “Colored Woman,” at Harlem street fairs, as well as at beauty salons, churches and community centers in predominantly black neighborhoods in New York City.
The lyrics — “Colored woman with few chances/Has to do what she must do!” — proved captivating to women in particular, according to Ms. Frost, the producer.
Still, Ms. Frost and her main producing partner, Randy Adams, acknowledged that African-American support was not enough to sustain a Broadway show: “Memphis” grossed $835,071 for the week ending June 20, its best box office week so far, but the show has sold unevenly during some weeks and is far away from turning a profit.
“It takes time to reach a tipping-point moment where everyone is talking about your show,” Mr. Adams said. “We just have to keep faith that our fans will continue spreading the word.”
Like the Disney produced cinematic bomb, The Princess and the Frog, Black people will flock to Black produced shows, but the production will have a limited return on investment as targeting a negligible portion of the population will yield pitiable results. Unless your name is Tyler Perry, that is.
One article at The Root asked why so few Black people go to Broadway plays, and the answer is simply that the performances have little to do with their culture:
About 75 percent of Broadway theatergoers are white, though according to the Broadway League, which co-sponsors the Tony Awards, audiences have become ''slightly more diverse over the past decade.'' Blacks, Latinos and Asians made up the balance. In the 2008-2009 season, when shows included In the Heights, Rent, Thurgood and Joe Turner's Come and Gone and the all-black version of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, less than 3 percent of 12.15 million tickets sold were to black Broadway theatergoers. In recent years, when the lineup included the Oprah Winfrey-produced The Color Purple and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof--starring James Earl Jones, Phylicia Rashad, Terrence Howard and Anika Noni Rose and directed by Debbie Allen--black turnout was double that. (There was some overlap between seasons with Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.) The overall gross annual revenue is something like $700 million--even in these dire and confused economic times.
DWL’s at The Los Angeles Times had the temerity to question whether white people should direct Black plays and if Black people should direct white plays:
Randolph-Wright and Epps are among the relatively few African American theater artists who have had the chance to direct major productions of nonblack plays, including Molière, Shakespeare, Stoppard, Noel Coward, Ibsen and more. Both have also worked in television; Epps directed many episodes of "Frasier" and "Friends." And yet, despite their personal successes, they both perceive a systemic ill.
"The problem is, there is no balance," says Randolph-Wright, who appeared in the original Broadway version of "Dreamgirls" before turning to writing and directing. "I don't think by any means that Bart Sher can't direct an August Wilson play or any kind of play. But people of color don't get the reverse opportunity."
Penn says that among SDC rank and file, "most didn't begrudge Bart the opportunity. The conversation was about Wilson having been for so long something African American directors could count on and that there should be more access and opportunities for artists of color." Penn was formerly the managing director of the Intiman Theater in Seattle, where she worked with artistic director Sher. During their years working together there, the Intiman, like Pasadena, successfully mixed it up in terms of assignments, with white directors directing nonwhite works and vice versa.
Yet because opportunities that have traditionally gone to black directors -- such as Wilson's plays -- may now be open to directors of any color is of concern to Randolph-Wright. "There was not one black director on Broadway last season," he notes. "And the frightening thing now is, I'm not even going to get the black project."
Classical music is another avenue that Black people believe is a path that leads directly to white people, and thus a corridor that must be avoided:
For some Americans, Barack Obama’s election was the fulfillment of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of equal racial opportunity. Others, less starry-eyed, knew there’s still work to do. Nowhere is that point more obvious than in a typical symphony orchestra.
Like the Sunday morning church service, the Sunday afternoon concert is basically segregated by race, allegedly for similar reasons— black (and brown) people don’t like classical music, and that’s why we don’t patronize it, never mind perform it. So goes the theory, which once believed becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy even if it’s fallacious.
I speak from experience. In Western Canada, where I grew up, people of African descent comprised such a tiny minority that we greeted each other with a smile or a nod as a show of solidarity and an acknowledgement that our shared melanin meant we were collectively swimming against the prevailing tide. My siblings and I were always the only black people in our class when we competed in local music festivals— it was just a given.
Nor can this situation be dismissed as a western Canadian phenomenon. Since my graduation from Juilliard in 1993, I’m told, that elite music school hasn’t enrolled a single black female pianist.
All humans are aware, from an early age, of visual differences. When you’re constantly identified as “them,” you yearn to be part of “us”; and when you’re black, the virulent history associated with racism stalks you, regardless of your financial bracket and education. I’m constantly aware that, as a black woman with unprocessed hair, I’m not what comes to mind when most people think of a classical pianist.
Whenever I attend a classical concert, I know I’ll be in a very small minority. I accept this fact of life; but for others, that degree of conspicuousness may suffice to deter them from attending at all (even if most of the whites in the audience couldn’t care less if we’re there or not).
All the more reason, then, to salute Jeri Lynne Johnson, a Philadelphian who has challenged conventional wisdom.
Rejected as ‘unmarketable’
Johnson, formerly the assistant conductor of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, founded the Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra in 2008 after the selection committee of an American orchestra told her that it didn’t matter that she was good enough to be one of three finalists out of a group of 300 applicants— as a young, black female conductor, the search committee said, she’s unmarketable to their audience. Instead of accepting this assessment, Johnson decided to disprove that theory by uniting a diverse group of passionate musicians.
“I never thought of starting an orchestra as ambitious,” she told me. “It was just something that needed to be done in order to prove my point.”
So far, Johnson’s goals are being met and more. Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra has played to large audiences and received enthusiastic reviews.
Top-flight musicians, a strong business plan and efficient administration have helped, of course. But the key factor appears to be Johnson’s decision to market to audiences largely ignored by other orchestras: African- and Latin-American people.
You see, the activities listed above are all actions that if a Black person participated in would qualify them as Acting White. Accordingly, they would be the Token Black.
What about Opera? Though many DWL’s would enjoy the sight of Black people participating in this cherished form of entertainment, thus far integration has been moving at a snail’s pace.
No matter how poorly they are received, Disingenuous White Liberals and Crusading White Pedagogues have an ingrained notion of hegemony over Black people and earnestly believe they can remake the entire race in their own image if only Black people would capitulate to their superior culture.
Yet Black people reject white culture by refusing to participate in events that are insufficiently part of their shared cultural experience as departing from their culture means acquiescence to the mores peddled by DWLs and white teachers.
Black people want to participate in Black cultural events and traditions that glorify their shared commonality and the struggle that they have endured at the hands of white people.
Liberals trying to get them to embrace the cultural that enslaved them for so long through enjoyment of classical music, ballet, the opera and Broadway fail to understand that Black people want nothing to do with these “white” forms of entertainment for they are part of the cultural history of a people they find intolerable.
Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes the fine arts, for unless Black people have written, produced, directed and starred in any of these various disciplines then it is axiomatic that the aforementioned endeavor is a celebration of white people and their past.
James Baldwin expressed this view best in Stranger in the Village, when he wrote:For this village, even were it incomparably more remote and incredibly more primitive, is the West, the West onto which I have been so strangely grafted. These people cannot be, from the point of view of power, strangers anywhere in the world; they have made the modem world, in effect, even if they do not know it. The most illiterate among them is related, in away that I am not, to Dante, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Aeschylus, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Racine; the cathedral at Chartres says something to them which it cannot say to me, as indeed would New York's Empire State Building, should anyone here ever see it. Out of their hymns and dances come Beethoven and Bach. Go back a few centuries and they are in their full glory-but I am in Africa, watching the conquerors arrive.
38 comments:
Alot of the fine arts are over run with liberals and fags. I don't give a shit about Opera or classical music.
Altho, "Repo the Genetic Opera" was pretty good.
"No matter how poorly they are received, Disingenuous White Liberals and Crusading White Pedagogues have an ingrained notion of hegemony over Black people and earnestly believe they can remake the entire race in their own image if only Black people would capitulate to their superior culture."
This seems so fucking hypocritical. Of course, all whites, no matter how seemingly altruistic, feel they themselves are superior to everyone not of their hue. But, jeez, how can you bash them? Is that not a better goal then to want complete and utter extermination?
Brain-dead minions, that was rhetorical.
"Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes the fine arts, for unless Black people have written, produced, directed and starred in any of these various disciplines then it is axiomatic that the aforementioned endeavor is a celebration of white people and their past."
LOL. You should know that afrocentrism does not indicate a lack of ability. If I were a betting woman, I'd feel pretty confident putting 10,000 on the likelihood of a complete takeover of the fine arts if black people were helplessly enthralled with the forms.
Because, you know, we seem to do everything so damned well when we put our hearts into it.
PS. Don't bust a nut at Baldwin. You are reading into it a little too deeply... But that's hegemony for you. Self-aggrandizing bastards...
That must be why rap/hiphop incorporates classical music (violins, pianos, cellos, etc) into their grunts and hollers.
They always need to hijack white inventions and accomplishments, even into their jungle music. Its both pathetic and offensive.
I've got to throw the yellow flag here because that was a little too inverse stuff white people like. SWPL/SBPDL: Snowboarding, Indie Flix, Sushi, Traveling, Academics, Being Investment Bankers...
"Of course, all whites, no matter how seemingly altruistic, feel they themselves are superior to everyone not of their hue."
Of course, all blacks, no matter how seemingly benign, hate all white people with every fiber of their being.
"all whites, no matter how seemingly altruistic, feel they themselves are superior to everyone not of their hue."
All whites? Really? And how did you determine that? It must have been pretty painstaking since only one exception would render you an utter fool.
You are a racist in the true sense of the word, and have lost your right to be taken seriously.
"This seems so fucking hypocritical. Of course, all whites, no matter how seemingly altruistic, feel they themselves are superior to everyone not of their hue."
Good point "Desiree". I am of course, a White Nationalist. Are you better than me? Has the jewish propaganda effectively conditioned you as a enemy of my people? Yes, yes, it has. You were a slave right? No! I was a slave holder right? No! Sorry... these thoughts are detracting from the main point.
Let us get back to our racial war. I'm sure the bankers will make no money on that...
Dave
I know the trolls are going to probably jump all over the hypocrisy of this post, but I am a hardcore guitar nerd and a large number of the best guitar players in the world have often been black dudes and guitar is the most complicated instrument to learn. About guitar, I have to be objective. Greg Howe is probably the best shredder alive; he is the only man alive who can exactly duplicate Eddie's solo on "Beat It". Tony MacAlpine, one of the top pianists and guitarists at the same time. George Benson, the best jazz player ever. Stanley Jordan, speaks for himself. Buddy Guy. Hendrix. Albert Collins. Vernon Reid. Kevin Eubanks.
I don't know about fine arts, but some of those black guys can really play guitar, but how many black people even care about this? Very few, other than MJ fans in the case of Howe. This is what disgusts me about the idiocy of hip hop; it minimizes and almost erases the great musical achievements that blacks have made. Blacks helped invent rock n roll, but so many blacks despise rock? Why? How many young black kids know who the fuck Charlie Parker is, or Robert Johnson? How many would ever give a shit because it is not rap? I say that no talent hip hoppers are ruining the legacy of these greats. These are achievments on par with any Western music. Why don't they have more black fans? Fuck the latest bling, "gangsta sheeiit" and keepin it real. Hendrix didn't keep it real?
I think if more black people embraced their actual valuable contributions to the world, as opposed to glorifying the ephemeral fad of stupid hip hop, a better dialogue would be unavoidable. I also believe that a higher black culture would be unavoidable. Perhaps if more blacks derived their moral compass from Bill Cosby rather than "Fiddy Cent" they would be better off.
No white person in the world would turn down a hit off Hendrix's joint. Can Ice Cube say the same?
"If I were a betting woman, I'd feel pretty confident putting 10,000 on the likelihood of a complete takeover of the fine arts if black people were helplessly enthralled with the forms."
What unit do you suppose was visualized in the claim of betting 10,000? Heads of infidels? Clitoris foreskins? Machetes? Spearheads? Clicks of the tongue?
I trained myself for a few months years ago to learn forex trading. Somehow, the name of one single African currency eludes me tonight. When you start out studying such enterprises, you cram as much trivia into your head as possible, as if memorizing Grant's sixth in command could be of some consequence to you beyond getting a five on your high school AP test and earning 3 college credits.
Perhaps you play around in world history or political science as you specialize your pursuits (and maybe you don't). Some meaningless major general is unlikely to reoccur unless you choose to master their tiny nuance within the massive fabric of your options. Such is African currency in the realm of global consideration. I might check the Nikkei late on a Friday night, but Africa does not have any published exchanges.
A couple years ago, during one particularly drunken stupor, I announced to a crowded room of sympathizers that Africa should create a godless stock exchange that trades only on Saturdays and Sundays. It would corner the market on boredom and serial gambling addiction, perhaps its only avenue to ever attract "rational" actors.
You all would know that Beethoven was black if you had read Brother Malik Shabazz's book which is available only from his website deadhonkeys.com. In the book, which comes in at a hefty 35 pages (his longest yet) he shows that Beethoven's mother had an affair with a Moor outside of wedlock, and that Beethoven was conceived in a small barn. The white historians, particularly those false Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish bagel-eating Hymietown dwellers, suppressed the truth because they knew that if black children knew Beethoven was black, then it would have caused a domino effect, whereby a black man would have been the first to the moon. This will all be covered in Brother Malik's forthcoming work, "The Cracker Time Machine Conspiracy."
It's not jungle music for one so stop the silliness. I do want to post about that awesome movie Zulu. I first sawit with my father about 25 years ago and it is startling to see how images effects on people have changed since the early 60s while of course the moive has stayed the same. My father is from Latin AMerica and we watched it thinking, "Wow what preparation and heart it took to stand up with so few against a large angry mass of people". I watched it again in college and the consensus of those who watched it was to dissect how much of an advantage the British had because of guns and military planning over the blitzing Zulus who had fervor, but not much planning or weaponry. Finally when anyone watches it now it is simply black vs. white. Evil colonials and their guns destroying the natives or simply look at the simpler days when Hollywood could portray blacks as faceless hordes that must be stopped by white civilization.
It's sad really that most of our "image" problems today are so illustrated by this movie.
Do you ever wonder why people with inflated egos bother to write long-winded posts on internet message boards, when no one bothers to read said long-winded posts anyway?
ps--YT dun stole da fine arts from da Nubians. My afrocentric history professor told me so.
Desiree,
"But, jeez, how can you bash them? Is that not a better goal then to want complete and utter extermination?"
Silly little colored girl, whoever called for the extermination of black people? You give such a fine example of blacks, who trump up accusations to fit into their victimization fantasies. Now everyone on this site wants to exterminate blacks. LOL.
"You should know that afrocentrism does not indicate a lack of ability."
No, just a lack of common sense, logic, reasoning skills, and historical perspective.
"Self-aggrandizing bastards... "
Now now desiree dear, haven't you been plenty schooled already by the people on here, and masa himself, as to who the true bastards are? Remember that blacks have many many many more kids out of wedlock. That by definition is a bastard. So be careful when you throw black terms around towards whites.
"Alot of the fine arts are over run with liberals and fags. I don't give a shit about Opera or classical music."
I tolds you!! He beez blak!! I's knu it, son!!
CWN, you are a credit to your (white) race. *curtsies*
Yes, blacks are so autistic.lol.
this is the greatest blog in the history of western civilization
I think if more black people embraced their actual valuable contributions to the world...
@Abe:
This is due to haterism or "hatin' on". Blacks, needing to be the token or "first black" to accomplish something, will hate-on and ridicule any other black who one-ups them in anything. They all try to keep each other in check and so, no one excels. They say things such as "you still just a nigga", and "you think you somethin'" and calling each other sell outs and Uncle Toms. Blacks who can repel this pressure would have had to escape from the black collective in order to see the larger world and their true potential. Maybe those black guitarists did not just identify as black first, talented human second, and actually integrated more into the mainstream and were able to deflect the criticism and "crabs in a barrel" syndrome.
"Blacks helped invent rock n roll, but so many blacks despise rock? Why?"
Because most blacks think of rock as a "white thing", and because most blacks detest anything that they associate with whiteness.
Blacks regularly flee genres of music that they invented (Jazz, R&B, Blues) when White people like it. Wynton and Branford and Ellis Marsalis, great Black musicians, have almost entirely White fanbases. When Whites like Black music, Blacks flee it.
Jazz surely rates as one of the fine arts, including wealthy White folks past 50 loving it. Its younger than Opera or Ballet, but still a fine art.
Blacks should not fear competing on an even level. The NFL, NBA, college hoops and football, were all lily-White sixty years ago. Today Blacks dominate, all on merit. Black athletes are simply superior. They muscled out White athletes in almost every sport and position, by virtue of being ... BETTER. No Whites demand an all-White NFL, or more opportunity for White WR, CB, Safeties, or RBs.
If a Black musician, composer, conductor, and so on is sufficiently talented, audiences will seek them out. Particularly since most fine art outside of ballet is consumed via radio and CD where no one knows or cares what color the musician is. Marian Anderson had a long, and distinguished career in the heart of Jim Crow's segregation. Paul Robeson, while being excoriated for being a Communist, was in demand as a Broadway singer.
The very best will always win out. Those of marginal talents will end up like Brian Bosworth -- hype that did not match the talent.
Abe Stinkin' (lol): So you probably could analyze a Miles Davis solo, good for you! Or, wait, do you actually play the guitar? Just wondering. I play the piano and have been playing since I was young. I also play some guitar, it comes naturally to me, but I have invested a lot of money into my computer rig. To make, among many, many other things, hip hop beats. I absolutely LOVE classical music. I also absolutely LOVE Indian music, Middle Eastern music, Gypsy music, Chinese Music, Japanese music, etc etc etc... and of course, AFRICAN music. Black Africans have a LONG history of being virtuoso creators, not only of various instruments but also of innovative forms of music to be played on them! The Kora is a great example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfRUH2fKUgA
Here's another great video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6CFAbVHMBQ
Anyway. The vast majority of real Hip hop (not the bullshit bankrolled and demanded by white label executives) is one long ode to ALL music, though black music has a special significance therein. Most records actually contain samples from black artists. These artists careers are often revitalized thereby, and to the devoted liner notes aficionados, true hip-hop records also function as music history notes.
Young white people are actually the dominant buying force when it comes to mainstream hip-hop, and I doubt you knew this, but they are also a very large portion of the people who produce those garbage beats that you and I hate so much. As an industry insider, I KNOW this. Visit soundclick.com for just a few examples. The majority of new-school hip-hop beats are over-quantized and lacking in flexibility, swing, and that elusive quality dubbed 'soul'. The Roots are an excellent example of true musicianship in hip-hop, and are by no means the last word on the subject. They also have expressed disappointment that the black community doesn't support the arts more, but they have an acute understanding of the reasons, and work towards correcting the hypnosis that affects the community concerning this and so many other issues, in their music.
One thing that is commonly over-looked when white people try to talk about hip-hop is that hip-hop grew out of abject poverty, from a people who could scarcely afford food and rent much less instruments and music lessons, but by salvaging discarded turntables the art-form was born. It has never been an instrument-focused genre, so those criticisms are invalid. It has always been an improv art form that in many ways is closer to installations and performance art than it is to live music. Music was really more of an afterthought, as the main focus for most people has always been the poetry, the words, the expressions and so forth. What you call grunts. LOL. Like metal isn't filled with grunts and growls.
And since you seem to get most of your info concerning black people from the TV and other white racists I'm not at all surprised that you have no idea that many, many black people LOVE many forms of music. It's just that when we come together in large gatherings we often prefer a more celebratory sound, as do so many other peoples of all races. Like white ravers. Like that trance shit is so innovative...thumpthumpthumpthumpthump...lol, but even a lot of that has creative producers working away making art far from the view of the mainstream media.
I like that quote at the end, thanks for putting that up there, though I doubt you have any real understanding of it.
My grandmother, African and Iroquois was an opera singer. She also sang soul music with some people who will go unnamed.
My father, also African, was an excellent guitarist. He loved rock, funk, jazz, soul, all of that.
My mother was in plays that successfully toured the country.
My grandfather is a well known jazz musician.
My entire family, and it is large, are patrons of the arts, regardless of what race that art is commonly associated with.
I can tell you that today, when I go to museums and classical shows, which I do from Philly to LA, Kimmel to Getty, I feel out of place and I am stared at and watched, even scowled at. So I don't go so much on my own anymore.
I remember being young and playing the piano in a music store I would regularly go to. Most of the employees, white and black, were cool with me being there and always commented on my playing telling me I should really take lessons because I was advanced for my age and level of teaching (aside from some Suzuki method at an early age I am self taught). One day the manager was there, who always looked at me as if I was capable of fitting a piano under my shirt and walking out with it. Apparently he had enough and angrily banned me from ever coming into the store again. I had been saving to buy a digital piano from them, but he fucked up his own commission and I ended up buying it from zZounds.com a short while later.
Well. Fuck it. Keep posting bullshit derived from an absolute lack of understanding and empathy. Keep proving yourself to be exactly what you are.
I'll keep not hating white people or classical music or anything else you post on, aside from the racism itself that makes you post. Stupid humans. Add that to the list, huh? And be sure to twist it all out of proportion so your buddies get a laugh out of it.
Zuma Says Country Could Hold Olympics
http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/news/story?id=5348176
Then I guess you guys haven't seen these(go ahead and try just one of them):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwIL-THkfKI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnOvqyzbDEs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCXVCpcopa8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqCJocQDal4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTG2BXDLT7I&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FlDQzcc9n0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suaH-NJm12U
Speaking of the moon, I just rediscovered The Right Stuff. Since the level of daring and expertise required for the space program is foreign to the negro, it would make for a great article, if SBPDL hasn't done it already.
Hillary, give it a rest, no one gives a shit.
wow. one bucket full of words. not one of them with any value.
I see Anonymous (nee Hilarity, nee Oswald Bates) is still edifying his white audience. Well, for those of you unfamiliar with Mr. Bates I'd like to offer a video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6868F53rgKw
I will quote something that illustrates just how ignorant of a peoples true motives too many Europeans can be when inebriated on their own sense of moral and cultural superiority:
"Exactly how important is the idea of fire in the western mind? That the control of fire is what distinguishes humans from animals? It may seem an academic point to us these days, but in the 19th Century, when the British began to colonize Tasmania, this distinction was what provided the rationale for genocide. According to the settlers, the Tasmanian Aborigines were so incredibly primitive and backward that they had forgotten how to make fire. The Tasmanians were so primitive that they did not wear clothes even during the frigid winters, and yet they wore decorative fur capes and stoles around their necks. Other Aboriginal tribes also went mostly naked, but the Tasmanians had become no better than animals to the white settlers because, to compound their irrational nakedness, they had also apparently lost the ability to make fire. They had regressed so far down the evolutionary scale that they had to keep watch over burning sticks that were initially lit from natural fires. They could hardly be called human, and so they were displaced from their tribal lands and hunted for sport until they were, for all practical purposes, exterminated.
Irony of ironies. The Tasmanians knew how to make fire all along (recent examination of 18th-century exploration journals document that they used fire drills), but it was their religious practice to stay as close to nature as possible; it was in obedience of their most sacred Dreamtime Law that the Tasmanian Aborigines willfully did not make fire. They had, in a sense, given back the gift of Prometheus so as not to pay its heavy price. I think they knew, in practice, that the use of fire was convenient for culture, but that in the end it only contributed to Entropy, what they used to call 'The Heat Death of the Universe.'"
-Heinz Insu Fenkl
My husband and I go every year to the Shakespeare Festival in the state north of us. The audience is nearly 100% white (probably 40% Jewish if the ratio of guests at our bed & breakfast hotels is characteristic) and, aside from the sizable cohort of students, is middle-aged, but the Festival insists on "color-blind" casting. This means that the Elizabethan and Restoration dramas and the musical comedies are cast with black actors in completely inappropriate roles (they did a production of The Music Man with a black actress cast as the Irish librarian Marian Paru! She had an operatic, not a musical comedy, voice, and essentially ruined what would otherwise have been a charming and innovative production)! However, the plays that they produce by black playwrights NEVER cast white actors in traditionally black roles. They spend countless hours and dollars on "outreach" to "communities" which have no interest in Shakespeare. They pounce on any opportunity to produce plays by young black writers. If they wanted to pander to the audience they actually have, they would do "Cocoon" and "Fiddler on the Roof". By the way, the crime rate in the town in which the Festival is held is essentially zero. In the twelve years we have been attending, I have seen a total of two police officers, and one was a young blonde woman on a Segway. I would like to keep it that way. I don't see any advantage to attracting people who are not seeking out this form of entertainment on their own.
Did you even read what Ms. Corley wrote before you copied and pasted it? She wrote, concerning your proposal that black people don't like the 'Fine' Arts: "So goes the theory, which once believed becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy even if it’s fallacious."
And it's really no surprise that "about 75% of Broadway theatergoers are white" when whites make up about 68-70% of the population! It's no surprise that the majority of people who attend classical concerts are white since white people are the majority on this continent! What are you even talking about, really? How white racists, even if they are in the minority, make people of other races feel really uncomfortable at their functions? Oh, big surprise.
Yeah, sort of like the way blacks comprise something like 60% of violent crime and murder in my city but are only 13% of the population. So statistically, blacks CAN appear to be a dominant population, even though they are not the majority. What is the percentage of blacks who attend Tyler Perry movies, like 99.99%? You would think that blacks are the majority in that case, but surprise!! The majority of blacks are not interested in theater, classical performances of music, dance or anything else. Thank God for Gospel stage plays, african drumming circles, african dance troupes and def poetry jamz.
"Yeah, sort of like the way blacks comprise something like 60% of violent crime and murder in my city but are only 13% of the population. So statistically, blacks CAN appear to be a dominant population, even though they are not the majority. What is the percentage of blacks who attend Tyler Perry movies, like 99.99%? You would think that blacks are the majority in that case, but surprise!! The majority of blacks are not interested in theater, classical performances of music, dance or anything else. Thank God for Gospel stage plays, african drumming circles, african dance troupes and def poetry jamz."
More of the same old, meaningless, one note posturing. If cocaine and heroin were legalized and regulated like alcohol was after prohibition the vast majority of violent crime in black communities would END. Just as it did when alcohol was legalized. Yet today the bootleggers are often viewed as heroes and championed as honorable crusaders against the tide of rampant law-making and intrusive authoritarian legislation on what human beings can and cannot put in our bodies.
In the U.S., alcohol consumption is responsible for more than 100,000 deaths each year. "In the U.S., smoking kills more people than cocaine, heroine, alcohol, fire automobile accidents, homicides, suicides, and AIDS combined." In 2000 559,600 people died due to consumption of alcohol, tobacco, prescription drugs and over-the-counter non-steroidal and anti-inflammatory drugs. 20,308 were murdered. 17,000 died from the use of illegal drugs.
You should take off the blinders people. You are your own worst enemy.
"If cocaine and heroin were legalized and regulated like alcohol was after prohibition the vast majority of violent crime in black communities would END."
LOLOL Of course, because once you take away the ability to make huge amounts of money selling illegal drugs, the murderers, rapists and thugs will all suddenly seek legitimate employment.
Right.
Simpleton, there would be very little to kill for, since so many murders are related to territory disputes, etc. No, hustlers would keep hustling, kids gotta eat, but since the drugs were no longer an issue there would be far fewer cops patrolling and thus a lot less stress. You must not understand. But I don't think that will happen anyway, because the US gov still makes way too much money off of us. Besides, I said "the vast majority" anyway. And 'legitimate employment' in this economy is whatever you can get anyway... Ask the crazy meth-heads in your area.
Besides, if crack disappeared, as it has been anyway (actually, heroin is really big again, thanks to the US invading Afghanistan and taking over their poppy fields) then we'd just find alternative hustles. You could say we'd have to start outsourcing. I'm sure the CIA doesn't want that.
You might not recall, but I definitely do, that before the US used the same destabilizing tactics on the black community that the British used against the Chinese, our communities were a lot more peaceful than they are now. When cocaine and heroin were introduced things started to spiral and when crack came along they all but collapsed.
If these things were eliminated then it is quite reasonable to assume that a lot of things would change for the better. What is your problem? You can't understand basic probability suddenly?
And it is also reasonable to assume (though I don't have to) that the vast majority of black rapists are users, not dealers.
Here's a little something you may not know, or believe, but that's fine; in the black community rapists are extremely looked down upon by most, to the point where they are often handled outside of the law. You wouldn't be privy to this info because, as the blog author pointed out, we understand the basic assertion that nobody likes a tattletale. Please don't ask me to cite any sources, I won't.
"Simpleton, there would be very little to kill for, since so many murders are related to territory disputes, etc."
Of course, and then all the penniless gangbangers are going to forsake criminality, and just get accustomed to being poor yet peaceful.
LOL You're the simpleton.
Oh yeah, I forgot. You're incapable of intelligently addressing anything I say and instead prefer to spout your racially motivated prejudices and unadulterated pessimism because your identity is tied up in your hatred. Negative feedback loops are a bitch, huh?
And calling me what I called you doesn't change the fact that everything you say still paints the picture of an unrepentant fool.
CWN,
What kind of christian are you? Calling someone a little colored girl? Weren't you taught anything at church? Or do you go to those white racist churches that teach about white dominance? It's really sad to see a fellow christian go down the wrong path. All I know is that if you keep this up you may not find yourself heading for heaven.
The last sentence in the first paragraph isn't a threat either. I'm basically implying that your hatred and constant racism which is sin isn't going to allow you a spot in Heaven. Haters their whole lives never go to Heaven.
Tradition definitely says a lot to the creation of art and culture. Black has transform major development through their relative culture and significant art value. Their influence are just indispensable to all sets of cultural development.draw
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