AFRAM Blog Post 1: Traditionalists or “Rockists”?

Danisha

Traditionalists or “Rockists”?

Insiders, those who live the music, know who is who. Just as was the case in my generation, the popular narrative in hip hop has been that men are the Emcees, Djs, Bboys and Graph artists. Those who live hip hop know that women have ALWAYS played a fundamental role in every aspect of the culture. 

I suspect the same is true with the Blues and other genres as well. Those who frequented the Juke Joints knew that women were blues singers. (Especially if you consider that the Blues came from the fields. Those freedom songs were predominately female sung.) Those who “lived the blues” could likely rattle of a list of female blues artists of the time. I don’t believe Big Mama Thorton or Memphis Minnie were anomalies. I suspect there were many female blues singers that aren’t on the mainstream’s radar. If my Grandfather was still alive, I’m sure he would be happy to school me.  I would categorize Bluesmen like him, people who “lived” a genre, as the “traditionalists” of the genre. Those who helped develop it and breathed life into it. These traditionalists I would regard as experts on the subject matter. Would these same experts be considered “Rockists” in deeming songs as NOT the “real” blues? Or would they be just is passing such judgement? 

While it’s important to tell an accurate history of music and/or culture, it likely to happen in community than academia. Thus, the imperative need for Participatory Research. Accademia never has accurately represented cultures from which I belong. I wouldn’t expect it to do so with music. I do understand the desire to try to challenge the popular narrative or incomplete histories, however. Capturing stories from community will be priceless to future generations.

As described in Memphis Minnie's "Scientific Sound" Langston Hughes described the Juke Joint where he  “contrasts Minnie’s performance with the unsmiling white men who run the club ringing up sales on the cash register—men who do not move in time with the music but still profit from the partial/martial inclusion of black people  in  the  wartime  economy” (Retman 2020).  “Memphis  Minnie’s  music  is  harder  than  the coins that roll across the counter”(Hughes, 1943). The quote reflects the profit driven incentives of those that had a front row voyeuristic seat to the blues movement- and the power of the music to transcend the profiteers and those whom the music was not made for. Community research, by those who truly live a musical genre, would provide a very different account of the Blues and juke joints than that of those ringing up sales and sitting on the wall. Should these experts with an opinion on legitimacy of a culture and genre be considered “rockist?” I don’t believe so. People with a legitimate, community- based expertise, from lived experience on the dance floor and jam sessions on stage; do exists and I believe their opinions on what is categorized in the genre that they helped build, is valid. 

– In full disclosure, these are the opinions of a Generation X, Hip hop head, daughter of a Jazz trumpet player and grand-daughter of a Bluesman. J