Thursday, May 14, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Blacken up and sing that song we love
Blacken up and sing that same old song we love.
By Abrahim Appel
Over Christmas dinner my grandma tells me that the first African-American couple she has ever lived next to moved in recently. She had been nervous, but she had them over for dinner. She was so very glad that everyone enjoyed each other’s company. She seems relieved that they could share an intelligent conversation with her and that they did not seem too “black.”
With me being an African-American studies major the conversation stays on this issue at moments like this. It is agreed by the whole family that no one here is racist; it’s just that everyone agrees how violent and uneducated so many Black rappers and singers are; Black people are capable of much more the family tells me. It seems that some in the family conclude that through the “Blacks” they hear on the radio that Black people are just so misguided and it is so sad. If only we could get Black Americans to stop the violence and find a better way. The family feels very positive that if Black people were less “Black,” like my grandmas “Black” neighbors, that “Blacks” could be a great community with potential and respectability.
But does the African-American decide His/her own place in our society? When a contract is landed and the money is paid out what are the expectations the record and TV and Movie companies have of African-Americans? And besides entertainment where does America show Black Americans? And how does the African-American Artist successfully make enough income for the corporation that their own career continues and remains personally profitable. In these creases falls the American struggle for the Black Body.
The conflict is especially clear when we consider huge rap Album sales and the fact that African-Americans make up only 13 percent of the American people.[i] To be a successful rapper for a major label you are competing for the majority’s attention and trying to coax profit from these predominantly European-American buyers while working for predominantly European-American bosses.
Now consider that the African body within the America’s has been considered a tool for labor and entertainment sense the first hijacked bodies, in around 1500 C.E., were taken from Africa. The history begins as genocide with millions of people stolen and millions dying in the transportation phase of the genocide alone[ii] with some arguing that slavery truly ended in 1965 with Dr. martin Luther King JR. not 1865 with the United States’ Civil war. That leaves us with only 50 years of full post slavery America[iii]
The current pop-culture Image of African-Americans may have its roots in the mid millennial European use of Black to disguise themselves during what were called “anti-holidays.” In these “un-holy-days” such as “Mumming Day,” the rituals would be quite similar to current day Mardi Gras or Carnival. The crowed would drink, sing; walk the streets and demand (without punishment) food and money from the cities rich and business owning class. But memory is memory and so many disguised their appearances with chimney soot to “Blacken up” and become “the other” for a short time.[iv] It is possibly here that we see the Psychological first connection, with the background being the beginning of the slave trade and the debates concerning uncivilized Africa in theology and parliament, of black being an excused “uncivilized” for European-Americans. And thus, maybe here, black found its place in the European psyche and town square.
Around 1820 the pop-culture war between the elites and the commoner gave birth to pop-culture we know today.[v] Sam Patch drew thousands to the Niagara Falls where the crowed watched him try to cross the falls while already drunk and fall to his death. For the first time the poor could afford a newspaper for a penny and a man named Taylor Barnum placed an enslaved women who was partially paralyzed and blind in his circus to claim she was 161 and had once taken care of the father of America; George Washington. [vi]
Also In 1832 Thomas Dartmouth Rice watched a slave singing while cleaning a barn. Rice proceeded to place black cork on his face and baggy awkward “Black clothes” and imitated on the stage an African-American folk song imitated the crow. It created such a stir that the crowed made him sing 20 encores[vii] of “Weel about/ and turnabout/ and do jis so/ Eb'ry time I weel about and jump Jim Crow.”[viii]
For many African-Americans there had already been a created culture for entertainment for the “dancing, the music and the laughter not only elicited small rewards from white spectators but also provided momentary release from hard times. Whether dancing for eels in the streets or whether entering the noisy, multiracial world of taverns, oyster houses, and gambling dens, (African-Americans) found brief alternatives to the rigors of work and hard-scrabble existence.”[ix]
Blackface had been used before in the circus. In fact it was so common that a circus would have to advertise if it was not going to use a Blackface performance.[x] It should be recognized, that though Minstrel shows are today decidedly seen as racist, we can miss their similarities to today, if we do not see that they were also a bonding between the white poor class and their adoption of the Blackface. Blackface at the time was debated in the Black community much as we debate the effects of Hip Hop today. Also the Blackface Minstrel was originally loved by European-Americans as a way to challenge authority[xi] and find refuge from the aristocratic yoke of sexual, language and thought control. The Blackface Minstrels, like the European Mumming Day carnivals, became the time when the working class could hide behind the wit and sound of the Black American and mock the bourgeoisie.
It was the opinion of the early Blackface performers (who originally were all white but eventually African-Americans performed as long as they put even Blacker make-up on) that they were authentically copying the Enslaved Africans and freedmen. One Blackface performer named Ben Cotton remembered “twanging” the Banjo with some Black-Americans and saying that they “did not quite understand me. I was the first White man they had seen who could sing as they did; but we were brothers for a short time.”[xii]
Like Rap today the Jim Crow character may have been discovered within the context of the Black community but it began to evolve into a much tougher and confrontational super confident character over time. “When I got out I hit a man/ His name I now forget/But dere was nothing left/ ‘Sept a little grease spot/” and Jim Crow could also “Wip my weight in wildcats,” or “alligator,” and was part “snapping turtle/ Nine Tenths of a bulldog, and I’ve turned Mississippi/ all for a pint of grog.” [xiii]
The minstrel shows never really ended. Around 1915 D.W Grifith came out with the blatantly racist “Birth of a nation,” and along with rebirthing the Ku Klux Klan this movie was so popular that it also changed entertainment into a recording based culture. Next came radio and TV where Amos ‘n Andy were the main portrayers of African-Americans. Like the minstrel shows before, Amos ‘n Andy’s European-American creators felt they were reflecting Black-Americans accurately but also found that to make the show appealing and popular they had to not challenge the white audiences fascination, fear or disgust with African-Americans.[xiv]
Television today still displays African-Americans in a one dimensional and negative light. “The Minstrel Show character “step-it-‘n’-fetch-it has been updated by the jive-talking swaggering Black man or the hands on Hips Black woman that were hall marks in popular shows like Good Times, Beulah and That’s My mamma.”[xv] In her testimony to the Commission of Civil Rights, Actress and a star of the TV Show The Jefferson’s, Marla Gibbs said “We are more or less told who we are, rather than asked…we sing, we dance, we tell jokes-that’s all we are allowed to do; we entertain.” [xvi] Something that was supported in the Emmy winning movie Crash as the Black Character who did not speak in the Black stereotype was asked to be more “Black.”
Warrington Hudlin who Produced films such as House Party(1990) and Ride ( 1998) believes “ the Black experience in America has had two incarnations on TV and Film…one is the comic performer who usually has a buffoonish, demeaning persona. The other is the pathological victim in so called “hood” movies. Both images do very little to promote the notion of Black equality in American Life.”[xvii]
Andre Braugher who acts on Homicide: Life on the Streets, says He would “love to see complex images of African-Americans in domestic life…The middle of all images (but Instead were) shown at what we do best or what we do worst…I’d like to see breadth and depth of characteristics. A drama would be fantastic. I’d like to be in a drama.” [xviii]
Even characters that are seen as positive by European-American audiences are also possibly fulfilling stereotypical dreams of a racist power structure. In movies like the Green Mile the main character sits in jail and performs magic for his European-American jail guards but doesn’t do anything for himself or anyone Black and doesn’t try to get of jail either. Likewise Will Smith’s character in the legend of Bagger Vance works magic for Matt Damon’s gulfing but doesn’t even attempt to stop the lynchings in Georgia.[xix] In the movie Blood Diamond the Djimon Hounsou’s character follows Leonardo Dicaprio’s character around Africa as if he is lost without the white man. In another scene Hounsou kills a man screaming like an animal while DiCaprio always shoots “cool.”
Today American pop culture considers Rap a Black type of music. It is most likely the greatest Image former of what it means to be African-American in the world because of this. So if one watches BET and watches video after video of rappers throwing money at the camera, money at women and Nelly “running” a credit card down a Black girl’s ass to get her “started,” [xx] you begin see Afro-Americans in almost the exact same way that Euro-American viewers saw African-Americans through Blackface. In fact it can be argued that “Hip Hop videos have taken a view of woman of color that is not radically different from the views of 19th centaury slaveholders;”[xxi] “African-Americans in Hip Hop today are portrayed as lazy, untrustworthy, oversexed and dangerous; particularly to white women.” [xxii]
“America” though “has always been about business; Establishing an industrial empire;” Beginning with slavery which created tremendous wealth and has served as a floor plan for the future of the American economy. Some sectors growing even more powerful after taking advantage of their workers, which then brought the anti-monopoly wars the of the early 20th century. But in the music industry business can still take advantage, legally, with such a large talent pool of yearning and dreaming artists. Thus the white singers such as Elvis and Pat Boon benefitted from the “coercion” of the record companies and grew filthy rich off of the talent of people like Big Mamma Thornton and Little Richard. It is true that Black record companies came into business in the 1970’s and funded the art that grew out of the Inner-cities of New York (but only after they ignored it) and in much the same manipulating way of the American business’ within the European-American model, and only to sell it to the huge record companies which now own the art of the inner-city and shape it. [xxiii]
For a short time though Hip Hop was its own beast with its own flaw’s and beauties. Hip Hop was ridiculed in main-street media and likewise the Hip Hop community didn’t trust anything out of their own control. [xxiv] Hip Hop did not turn out to be a fad and slowly the big record companies began to buy out the Black owned record companies. It was around this time that Rap started getting more shelves in the record store and access to Rap became more accessible; and it was at this time that gangsta’ rap began to play the dominate role. Former president of Def jam records remembers the music becoming less conscious at this time, “Def Jamm went to Columbia, and then the next thing I know our producers for Public Enemy were over producing an Ice Cube Album and then the next thing I know were pushing a group called BWP (Bitches with Problems) …and I don’t think it was a coincidence.” [xxv]
In 1991 what is considered a major moment in Hip Hop occurred. Public Enemy’s “fight the power,” which was the title track to Spike Lee’s Malcolm X movie, lost its top spot on the record charts to Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s, Gin an’ Juice. Big record companies saw the profit margins and continued to market the misery, poverty and the Crack epidemic that had ravaged Black community’s in places such as Compton throughout the 1980’s. And imitations of “The Hood”, like the private lives of the enslaved in 1830 and the character Jim Crow, became a commodity that white people would buy.
“After 700,000 (record sales all your buyers are) White people,” says Hip Hop star Jadakiss. And “Nobody wants to hear that (conscience) shit anymore… The white people want to hear that killing and everything. They want that shit…so when (the rapper) 50 Cent say he killing up shit, he’s selling out the roof. He’s got not one kind of soothing educational song and he selling like mother fucking hot flower..and (the people) that’s eating the most off of me and 50 Cent your never gonna see. There in Kalamazoo somewhere…chillen. The real people that’s eaten off of the (rap) industry, the corporate guys, the big men that at the end of the day stamps the check (are) all scratch white; there is nothing Black about them.” [xxvi]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[i] Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy. Selling Black Entertainment Telivision.
[ii] Bazil, Davidson: the African Slave trade.
[iii] Spike Lee: directors cut of bamboozled and script of Bamboozled.
[iv] With amusement for all
[v] With Amusement for all
[vi] With Amusement for all
[vii] With Amusement for all
[viii] http://www.musicals101.com/lycrow.htm
[ix] With Amusement for All
[x] With Amusement for All
[xi] With Amusement for All
[xii] With amusement for All
[xiii] With Amusment for All
[xiv] Adventures of Amos ‘n Andy
[xv] Alin F Poussaint. M.D . African-American viewers and the Black situation comedy.
[xvi] African-American Viewers and the Black situation comedy
[xvii] Author Fine
[xviii] Author Fine around pg 30
[xix] Bamboozled directors commentary by Spike Lee.
[xx] Tip Drill.
[xxi] Dr Jelani Cobb; Spellman college in Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes
[xxii] Award Winning Performer Sarah Jones in Hip Hop: Beyond beats and Rhymes.
[xxiii] Beef 2 into.
[xxiv] Talib Kweli in Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhyme
[xxv] Carmen Ashurst-Watson. Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes.
[xxvi] Jadakiss interview: Hip Hop; Beyond beats and Rhymes
By Abrahim Appel
Over Christmas dinner my grandma tells me that the first African-American couple she has ever lived next to moved in recently. She had been nervous, but she had them over for dinner. She was so very glad that everyone enjoyed each other’s company. She seems relieved that they could share an intelligent conversation with her and that they did not seem too “black.”
With me being an African-American studies major the conversation stays on this issue at moments like this. It is agreed by the whole family that no one here is racist; it’s just that everyone agrees how violent and uneducated so many Black rappers and singers are; Black people are capable of much more the family tells me. It seems that some in the family conclude that through the “Blacks” they hear on the radio that Black people are just so misguided and it is so sad. If only we could get Black Americans to stop the violence and find a better way. The family feels very positive that if Black people were less “Black,” like my grandmas “Black” neighbors, that “Blacks” could be a great community with potential and respectability.
But does the African-American decide His/her own place in our society? When a contract is landed and the money is paid out what are the expectations the record and TV and Movie companies have of African-Americans? And besides entertainment where does America show Black Americans? And how does the African-American Artist successfully make enough income for the corporation that their own career continues and remains personally profitable. In these creases falls the American struggle for the Black Body.
The conflict is especially clear when we consider huge rap Album sales and the fact that African-Americans make up only 13 percent of the American people.[i] To be a successful rapper for a major label you are competing for the majority’s attention and trying to coax profit from these predominantly European-American buyers while working for predominantly European-American bosses.
Now consider that the African body within the America’s has been considered a tool for labor and entertainment sense the first hijacked bodies, in around 1500 C.E., were taken from Africa. The history begins as genocide with millions of people stolen and millions dying in the transportation phase of the genocide alone[ii] with some arguing that slavery truly ended in 1965 with Dr. martin Luther King JR. not 1865 with the United States’ Civil war. That leaves us with only 50 years of full post slavery America[iii]
The current pop-culture Image of African-Americans may have its roots in the mid millennial European use of Black to disguise themselves during what were called “anti-holidays.” In these “un-holy-days” such as “Mumming Day,” the rituals would be quite similar to current day Mardi Gras or Carnival. The crowed would drink, sing; walk the streets and demand (without punishment) food and money from the cities rich and business owning class. But memory is memory and so many disguised their appearances with chimney soot to “Blacken up” and become “the other” for a short time.[iv] It is possibly here that we see the Psychological first connection, with the background being the beginning of the slave trade and the debates concerning uncivilized Africa in theology and parliament, of black being an excused “uncivilized” for European-Americans. And thus, maybe here, black found its place in the European psyche and town square.
Around 1820 the pop-culture war between the elites and the commoner gave birth to pop-culture we know today.[v] Sam Patch drew thousands to the Niagara Falls where the crowed watched him try to cross the falls while already drunk and fall to his death. For the first time the poor could afford a newspaper for a penny and a man named Taylor Barnum placed an enslaved women who was partially paralyzed and blind in his circus to claim she was 161 and had once taken care of the father of America; George Washington. [vi]
Also In 1832 Thomas Dartmouth Rice watched a slave singing while cleaning a barn. Rice proceeded to place black cork on his face and baggy awkward “Black clothes” and imitated on the stage an African-American folk song imitated the crow. It created such a stir that the crowed made him sing 20 encores[vii] of “Weel about/ and turnabout/ and do jis so/ Eb'ry time I weel about and jump Jim Crow.”[viii]
For many African-Americans there had already been a created culture for entertainment for the “dancing, the music and the laughter not only elicited small rewards from white spectators but also provided momentary release from hard times. Whether dancing for eels in the streets or whether entering the noisy, multiracial world of taverns, oyster houses, and gambling dens, (African-Americans) found brief alternatives to the rigors of work and hard-scrabble existence.”[ix]
Blackface had been used before in the circus. In fact it was so common that a circus would have to advertise if it was not going to use a Blackface performance.[x] It should be recognized, that though Minstrel shows are today decidedly seen as racist, we can miss their similarities to today, if we do not see that they were also a bonding between the white poor class and their adoption of the Blackface. Blackface at the time was debated in the Black community much as we debate the effects of Hip Hop today. Also the Blackface Minstrel was originally loved by European-Americans as a way to challenge authority[xi] and find refuge from the aristocratic yoke of sexual, language and thought control. The Blackface Minstrels, like the European Mumming Day carnivals, became the time when the working class could hide behind the wit and sound of the Black American and mock the bourgeoisie.
It was the opinion of the early Blackface performers (who originally were all white but eventually African-Americans performed as long as they put even Blacker make-up on) that they were authentically copying the Enslaved Africans and freedmen. One Blackface performer named Ben Cotton remembered “twanging” the Banjo with some Black-Americans and saying that they “did not quite understand me. I was the first White man they had seen who could sing as they did; but we were brothers for a short time.”[xii]
Like Rap today the Jim Crow character may have been discovered within the context of the Black community but it began to evolve into a much tougher and confrontational super confident character over time. “When I got out I hit a man/ His name I now forget/But dere was nothing left/ ‘Sept a little grease spot/” and Jim Crow could also “Wip my weight in wildcats,” or “alligator,” and was part “snapping turtle/ Nine Tenths of a bulldog, and I’ve turned Mississippi/ all for a pint of grog.” [xiii]
The minstrel shows never really ended. Around 1915 D.W Grifith came out with the blatantly racist “Birth of a nation,” and along with rebirthing the Ku Klux Klan this movie was so popular that it also changed entertainment into a recording based culture. Next came radio and TV where Amos ‘n Andy were the main portrayers of African-Americans. Like the minstrel shows before, Amos ‘n Andy’s European-American creators felt they were reflecting Black-Americans accurately but also found that to make the show appealing and popular they had to not challenge the white audiences fascination, fear or disgust with African-Americans.[xiv]
Television today still displays African-Americans in a one dimensional and negative light. “The Minstrel Show character “step-it-‘n’-fetch-it has been updated by the jive-talking swaggering Black man or the hands on Hips Black woman that were hall marks in popular shows like Good Times, Beulah and That’s My mamma.”[xv] In her testimony to the Commission of Civil Rights, Actress and a star of the TV Show The Jefferson’s, Marla Gibbs said “We are more or less told who we are, rather than asked…we sing, we dance, we tell jokes-that’s all we are allowed to do; we entertain.” [xvi] Something that was supported in the Emmy winning movie Crash as the Black Character who did not speak in the Black stereotype was asked to be more “Black.”
Warrington Hudlin who Produced films such as House Party(1990) and Ride ( 1998) believes “ the Black experience in America has had two incarnations on TV and Film…one is the comic performer who usually has a buffoonish, demeaning persona. The other is the pathological victim in so called “hood” movies. Both images do very little to promote the notion of Black equality in American Life.”[xvii]
Andre Braugher who acts on Homicide: Life on the Streets, says He would “love to see complex images of African-Americans in domestic life…The middle of all images (but Instead were) shown at what we do best or what we do worst…I’d like to see breadth and depth of characteristics. A drama would be fantastic. I’d like to be in a drama.” [xviii]
Even characters that are seen as positive by European-American audiences are also possibly fulfilling stereotypical dreams of a racist power structure. In movies like the Green Mile the main character sits in jail and performs magic for his European-American jail guards but doesn’t do anything for himself or anyone Black and doesn’t try to get of jail either. Likewise Will Smith’s character in the legend of Bagger Vance works magic for Matt Damon’s gulfing but doesn’t even attempt to stop the lynchings in Georgia.[xix] In the movie Blood Diamond the Djimon Hounsou’s character follows Leonardo Dicaprio’s character around Africa as if he is lost without the white man. In another scene Hounsou kills a man screaming like an animal while DiCaprio always shoots “cool.”
Today American pop culture considers Rap a Black type of music. It is most likely the greatest Image former of what it means to be African-American in the world because of this. So if one watches BET and watches video after video of rappers throwing money at the camera, money at women and Nelly “running” a credit card down a Black girl’s ass to get her “started,” [xx] you begin see Afro-Americans in almost the exact same way that Euro-American viewers saw African-Americans through Blackface. In fact it can be argued that “Hip Hop videos have taken a view of woman of color that is not radically different from the views of 19th centaury slaveholders;”[xxi] “African-Americans in Hip Hop today are portrayed as lazy, untrustworthy, oversexed and dangerous; particularly to white women.” [xxii]
“America” though “has always been about business; Establishing an industrial empire;” Beginning with slavery which created tremendous wealth and has served as a floor plan for the future of the American economy. Some sectors growing even more powerful after taking advantage of their workers, which then brought the anti-monopoly wars the of the early 20th century. But in the music industry business can still take advantage, legally, with such a large talent pool of yearning and dreaming artists. Thus the white singers such as Elvis and Pat Boon benefitted from the “coercion” of the record companies and grew filthy rich off of the talent of people like Big Mamma Thornton and Little Richard. It is true that Black record companies came into business in the 1970’s and funded the art that grew out of the Inner-cities of New York (but only after they ignored it) and in much the same manipulating way of the American business’ within the European-American model, and only to sell it to the huge record companies which now own the art of the inner-city and shape it. [xxiii]
For a short time though Hip Hop was its own beast with its own flaw’s and beauties. Hip Hop was ridiculed in main-street media and likewise the Hip Hop community didn’t trust anything out of their own control. [xxiv] Hip Hop did not turn out to be a fad and slowly the big record companies began to buy out the Black owned record companies. It was around this time that Rap started getting more shelves in the record store and access to Rap became more accessible; and it was at this time that gangsta’ rap began to play the dominate role. Former president of Def jam records remembers the music becoming less conscious at this time, “Def Jamm went to Columbia, and then the next thing I know our producers for Public Enemy were over producing an Ice Cube Album and then the next thing I know were pushing a group called BWP (Bitches with Problems) …and I don’t think it was a coincidence.” [xxv]
In 1991 what is considered a major moment in Hip Hop occurred. Public Enemy’s “fight the power,” which was the title track to Spike Lee’s Malcolm X movie, lost its top spot on the record charts to Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s, Gin an’ Juice. Big record companies saw the profit margins and continued to market the misery, poverty and the Crack epidemic that had ravaged Black community’s in places such as Compton throughout the 1980’s. And imitations of “The Hood”, like the private lives of the enslaved in 1830 and the character Jim Crow, became a commodity that white people would buy.
“After 700,000 (record sales all your buyers are) White people,” says Hip Hop star Jadakiss. And “Nobody wants to hear that (conscience) shit anymore… The white people want to hear that killing and everything. They want that shit…so when (the rapper) 50 Cent say he killing up shit, he’s selling out the roof. He’s got not one kind of soothing educational song and he selling like mother fucking hot flower..and (the people) that’s eating the most off of me and 50 Cent your never gonna see. There in Kalamazoo somewhere…chillen. The real people that’s eaten off of the (rap) industry, the corporate guys, the big men that at the end of the day stamps the check (are) all scratch white; there is nothing Black about them.” [xxvi]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[i] Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy. Selling Black Entertainment Telivision.
[ii] Bazil, Davidson: the African Slave trade.
[iii] Spike Lee: directors cut of bamboozled and script of Bamboozled.
[iv] With amusement for all
[v] With Amusement for all
[vi] With Amusement for all
[vii] With Amusement for all
[viii] http://www.musicals101.com/lycrow.htm
[ix] With Amusement for All
[x] With Amusement for All
[xi] With Amusement for All
[xii] With amusement for All
[xiii] With Amusment for All
[xiv] Adventures of Amos ‘n Andy
[xv] Alin F Poussaint. M.D . African-American viewers and the Black situation comedy.
[xvi] African-American Viewers and the Black situation comedy
[xvii] Author Fine
[xviii] Author Fine around pg 30
[xix] Bamboozled directors commentary by Spike Lee.
[xx] Tip Drill.
[xxi] Dr Jelani Cobb; Spellman college in Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes
[xxii] Award Winning Performer Sarah Jones in Hip Hop: Beyond beats and Rhymes.
[xxiii] Beef 2 into.
[xxiv] Talib Kweli in Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhyme
[xxv] Carmen Ashurst-Watson. Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes.
[xxvi] Jadakiss interview: Hip Hop; Beyond beats and Rhymes
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
