Black People: Conservatism & Rock and Roll
By HHR | December 4th, 2009 | Category: Featured, Music |
By: Vincent Jackson
A lot of People Wonder…
Why don’t black people listen to or produce Rock music?
Apparently, the music died on February 3rd, 1959 when Buddy Holly, Richie Valenz, and the Big Bopper died in a plane crash following a concert. Apparently, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Howlin’ Wolf, and Big Mamma Thornton were also on that plane, if in fact, the music had died. Oh they were not. Then what the Hell was that song about? Oh that song was about the day white music died. Got It.
Pictured: White music.
Unfortunately, Muddy, Chuck, Little Richard, Wolf, and Big Mamma did die that day. They were smothered in the ashes of their white successors. With Buddy dead and Elvis shipped off to war, the immediate “channelers” of Black blues and soul were gone. And so gone was the trail that led to the beginnings of Rock & Roll.
Black Music soon transitioned into the commercial Motown sound which served to make the distinction between polished R&B soul music and the new guitar driven R&B of white acts like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Who. The distinction grew even further as “Rock” music became more audacious and black music became tamer and tamer. Disco music had transformed black music so much that by the 80’s black music and rock music were as different as days and nights. However, there were grand funk bands in the 70’s like Funkadelic, Earth, Wind, and Fire, and Kool & The Gang. And What about Jimi Hendrix?
You forgot he was back, didn’t you?
But people soon forgot about that…
With the advent of Hip Hop, which has all but banished instrumentation from black music so that the distinction has become so great that a black band of musicians like The Roots are seen as a novelty. But even the roots only play instrumental versions of Hip Hop style. What if they did make Rock music? If black people don’t listen to Rock music, who do you sell it to? White people? We know where that leads to?
It all happened in the sixties. What else happened in the sixties?
Making a deal with the Devil.
People don’t wonder as much…
Why have African-Americans, on the whole, rejected conservatism?
Not only had a Republican president freed the slaves, but the original Republican party was populated by radical proponents of freedmen rights. Even the first black congressmen were Republicans. So why are blacks predominately Democrats? Well, there are many reasons, but here are four very good ones.
1) The Republican party sold black people down the river in the Compromise of 1877, in which blacks lost their equal protection under the law, by relinquishing Southern martial law back in the hands of vengeful Democrats.
2) African-Americans gained a lot economically overall, during the terms of the very popular Democratic president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Also, the charismatic Democrat, John F. Kennedy captured the hearts and minds of many African Americans.
3) After the Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson, signed landmark civil rights legislation, Republican candidate, Richard Nixon used pro-segregation sentiments to turn the once Democratic solid-South into a Republican stronghold.
“Vote for me and I’ll shoot all the black people”
4) While white people to tend to see the government as their enemy as per the Constitution, black people tend to see unregulated capitalism as an exploitative menace that means to subjugate them, and see a progressive government as the only thing that can protect them.
Short answer, The Republican Party abandoned black people, therefore black people abandoned it. I don’t blame the black people for making that decision either. The Democratic Party offered enfranchisement in return for loyalty. I’d say that is good deal. But while the Democratic Party has not abandoned us like the Republicans, they have also never given us anything we really needed. What black people really needed was education reform, but all we got were food stamps and blocked cheese.
This rock hard cheese is really going to help me get ahead in life.
In short, Black people don’t subscribe to conservatism or listen to rock music because they gave it away. Many of their reasons were valid but for the most part they are outdated. As long as we as a people limit our political perspective and our artistic tastes we’ll lock ourselves out of the mainstream and all the opportunities therein.
Music Reccomendation: Brooklyn Indie Rock Band TV on the Radio
Vincent Jackson is a Senior English/Film major at the University of Delaware. A lifetime resident of Wilmington, Delaware, Jackson grew up as a liberal but became a libertarian soon after attending college. Vincent Jackson is a filmmaker, screenwriter, poet, blogger, and political writer, and music critic.
Contact - vinnyjax641@gmail.com
Vincent…
You appear young / youthful, so I’m wondering about this perspective you have written. I’m older, white, and grew up in Ohio in what must have been some utopian small town universe. I watched the Birmingham riots on tv in the 60’s in total shock and disbelief….. because in our small town there were many middle class blacks with businesses and kids who went to school with me. The blacks I knew were Americans, not African-Americans. We interacted genially and I can think of no racial incidents in that town. I know that sounds unbelievable today, but I lived it and that was my experience. The hate, resentment, chips on shoulders, etc…..none of that entered my thoughts as we went about our lives.
Having said all of that, I also witnessed in the 60’s the SDS riots, the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground, Jane Fonda with Tom Hayden, and various other groups of dissidents promoting hate and communism and just tear this country apart while influencing young people to disengage with the premise of America. It is those young people who are now in the realm of influence in the White House and in Congress. They hate America’s premise.
As for blacks and conservatism (or Republicanism), I am dismayed at what seems to be a lack of understanding among blacks that the philosophies of Democrat Socialists are all about indentured servitude to the government. Selling their souls to be dependent on a socialist government seems to me to be the antithesis of what black people would buy into. How can anyone who has the blood and sweat and DNA of slave ancestors want to put themselves on the block for government programs which further undermine the freedoms so hard fought and won???
I refer you to two of my favorite writers, Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams. These are black men who “get it.”
The 60’s were a nightmare. Lyndon Johnson was a typical, hardball, southern politician who was buying the blacks into the welfare state for their votes. I don’t remember Nixon being pro-segregation and as I said before, my experience was Ohio, integrated schools, and amicable societal relationships between blacks and whites. So what do I know?
As far as FDR goes…..the man was a big government progressive who kept the depression going through Keynesian economics, 25% unemployment, and as far as I’m concerned completely dissed the Constitution with the Social Security ponzi scheme. The country lost….what did blacks gain? Another Socialist taking America down.
I guess I wonder if blacks want government goodies because they think it somehow is payback for the real and imagined discrimination they carry around with them all the time these days. But if that payback comes with strings of bondage …how can that be the good and decent outcome for anyone’s life? Maybe I’m naive, but I believe the set up by founders in the 1700’s was the beginning of real freedom for everyone including blacks, though gradually implemented and finally realized. Now we are being subjected to indentured servitude of the ENTIRE country, ie Health Care, Cap and Trade, debts we will never get out from under.
Capitalism is economic freedom. If you don’t have economic freedom, what do you have? Tyranny. Enslavement.
I can’t speak to your music connection….other than to say that I think blacks have made wonderful contributions to our American music culture….until rap and hip-hop, which I can do without. You are the music critic…I’m happy to leave that one to you!!
Anyway…those are my thoughts on your post here. I hope we can all unshackle ourselves from the huge and dire errors taking place in our government today. It’s going to take a lot of us to fight to get our freedom back after this.
Four tiny paragraphs that sound like history are not history. Man you got to get out of Delaware.
1. The Republican Party was born as an anti-slavery party. To ignore that singular fact is to put everything you say about it’s history into question.
2. There is no greater deception than the ignorant belief that the economic fortunes of a people is determined by the personality of a political leader.
3. Lyndon Johnson was not the key individual in getting the Civil Rights Act passed. It was Everett Dirksen, and proportionately more Republicans voted for the bill than Democrats. Richard Nixon invented Affirmative Action.
4. If black people actually do see capitalism as an exploitive menace, then they deserve socialism and worse. I’m not so convinced that black people are as dumb as you portray them to be. On the other hand, you’re representing Delaware in an interesting light.
All of those points you cited are stereotypes about black people, and stereotypes about the Republican Party, not history. It’s too bad that there are millions of Americans who remain uneducated enough to take such stereotypical thinking seriously - then again it’s a big country and even idiots are free to choose.
By the way, ever heard of Fishbone?
From Vincent Jackson,
I agree with all of your points. And you are definitely correct. But I think you mistake the simplicity of my article for an argument. I understand fully what the democratic party has done to Black people as far as dependency and economic enslavement. I also understand what the real estate agency did to African-Americans in the 60’s. This does not change the fact that the Republican party did not reach out to blacks at all. And it is un-arguable truth that the segregationist of Democratic party switched to GOP after the Civil rights Act was signed. I find it uncommonly silly that you felt the need to write this much in response to a cultural article that was mostly music criticism. I am not defending liberalism or the democratic party. I only mean to encourage all back people to open their minds, not to conservatism or Republicanism, but the fruits of liberty that liberalism denies.
1. I did not ignore the Republican parties origins as an anti-slavery group.
“Not only had a Republican president freed the slaves, but the original Republican party was populated by radical proponents of freedmen rights. Even the first black congressmen were Republicans.”
2. I did not endorse FDR and JFK’s leadership. I merely said that many blacks were endeared to them and that many blacks gained a lot economically. However, I did fail to mention that was because of the war.
3. I didn’t say LBJ was the fore bearer of civil rights. I said he signed the bill. Richard Nixon did not invent Affirmative Action. He mandated it for companies who contracted with the federal government.
4.I know not all black people don’t fall into these stereotypes. Otherwise this website wouldn’t exist.
Vincent, the following is not scientific but are observations. Black people don’t listen to or produce Rock music because black radio stations don’t program rock music into their format. This is a true story, one Sunday afternoon in 1967 in Savannah, Georgia, a dee jay bought an album into the studio of WSOK. He identified the artist as Jimi Hendrix and played some selections from the album. The dee jay classified the music as “underground music”. One title I remember was something called “All Along the Watchtower”. This was the first and last time I heard a “rock” musician on the station. I guess there was no way to fit Jimi Hendrix between the Motown Sound, Stax Records or James Brown. I never really understood Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie by Don Mclean( he has a lyric in it alluding to the day the music died) but to me Elvis Presley is not the king of Rock and Roll. Chuck Berry is the king and he is the real deal. Motown was patent leather soul music. Stax Records was down home soul music. Motown was tame because Berry Gordy was marketing to the white audience. It is a known fact that white people have more diposable income than black people. Vincent, you and I would buy one Motown album, white folks can buy twenty and then come back for more. Hip Hop did not banish the instrumentation from black music so much. Actually Rap music deserves the credit for that. Why have African-Americans on the whole rejected conservatism? Conservatism is synonymous with maintaining the status-quo. Keep those black folks in their place. Lessons which have been learned from the likes of Senators: Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, John Stennis and James Eastland plus one from an earlier era Senator Theodore G. Bilbo of Mississippi. Good of you to mention Richard Nixon, old Tricky Dick who implements Black Capitalism on one hand and conducts a “Southern Strategy” on the other to steal some political thunder from George Wallace(the white one who was Governor of Alabama) Both the Republican and Democratic party leave a lot to be desired. Independent is the way to go.