AFRAM Blog Post #2

When reading Jack Hamilton’s “How Rock and Roll Became White”, it became very evident that rock-and-roll culturally segregated by the 1970’s in America. Hamilton described how “Rock and roll became white in large part because of stories people told themselves about it, stories that have come to structure the way we listen to an entire era of sound” (Hamilton, 2016). I am specifically interested in the role that mainstream media played in this process. Hamilton described how “In 1985, Back to the Future featured a climactic sequence in which history is altered so that Chuck Berry’s “sound” is retroactively invented by a Van Halen–obsessed white teenager”, exemplifying and echoing the media’s distortion of rock-and-roll history. (Hamilton, 2016). Mainstream media in the 1960’s and 1970’s was largely made up of television, film, and radio; all of which were dominated by a white male presence. This mainstream media generated by white men for white men resulted in widespread false narratives, that with the exception of Jimi Hendrix, painted the most influential rock-and-roll artists as white. I find it particularly interesting that this same white male driven media that drove the segregation of rock music in the 1970’s in many ways simultaneously led to the birth of hip-hop. In Theresa Riley’s Q&A with Jeff Chang, Riley and Chang discussed the use of hip-hop as an alternative media source that gave its listeners a perspective on cities and the country that were left untold by the dominant white male media sources. Chang described it as “if you were a fan of rap music, you could listen to artists from different cities and find out what was happening in those cities, whether it was how young people were feeling about the police situation, how young people partied or danced” (Riley, 2012). I think that much of the racial biases associated with music are based on the context of mainstream narratives previously written predominantly by white men. I am hopeful that as mainstream media continues to become more representative of minority populations, the narrative surrounding popular music will more accurately reflect the influence of black artists on various genres, including ‘historically white’ genres, such as country.

Personal Playlist
HUMBLE - Kendrick Lamar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvTRZJ-4EyI
No Black Person is Ugly - Lil B: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83p69JhDnwU

In HUMBLE, Kendrick Lamar samples a FOX News host who claimed “Hip Hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years.”, in what I imagine is an attempt to push-back against the white male driven media's view of black artists that has long been pervasive from as early as the development minstrelsy. Lil B raps in his song about a media driven by white people that has portrayed beauty exclusive of people of color. Both of these songs hint at a cultural progression towards calling out the mainstream media for how it has and continues to portray black artists in the popular music scene.