Posted on 10/20/2006 10:57:46 AM PDT by qam1
Middle age has been disturbing for people of the baby-boomer rock-and-roll generation, waiting with dread for the day when Mick Jagger wanders on stage with a walker. Rock music of the Rolling Stones vintage is now in danger of being seen as Muzak for retirees. You can certainly hear it at the supermarket.
Rap music and the hip-hop culture is about 25 years younger than rock, and believe it or not, it’s happening there, too. Today’s children are now beginning to look askance at their parents for liking "old school" rap rather than today’s truly toxic stuff. The Washington Post captured a bit of this horror from Generation X when Post reporter Lonnae O’Neal Parker wrote a piece for the Sunday "Outlook" section titled "Why I Gave Up on Hip-Hop."
Born in 1967 in the middle-class southern suburbs of Chicago, Parker described the liberating nature of the early rap tunes for young blacks. She recalled getting in a musical shouting match on the school bus with the white students, "transfixed by our newfound ability to drown out their nullification." At first it was a vehicle for racial pride, but then it all changed. Rap was transformed into a musical ghetto for gangsters and pimps, and Parker sadly concluded, " I could no longer nod my head to the misogyny or keep time to the vapid materialism of another rap song."
In raising her two daughters, Parker had one very definitive image in mind capturing what’s wrong with today’s dominant trend in hip hop. At the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, rappers Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent added pomp to the song "P.I.M.P." by featuring black women on leashes being walked onstage. This past August, she added, MTV-2 aired an episode of the cartoon "Where My Dogs At," which had Snoop Dogg again leading two black bikini-clad women around on leashes. She explained: "They squatted on their hands and knees, scratched themselves and defecated. The president of the network, a black woman, defended this as satire."
And the audience, mostly teenaged boys and girls, thought this was wonderful.
To protest the glamorization of the gangsta, itching to kill, loaded with bling, and treating every woman like a subhuman plaything, Parker and her friends protested, including the printing of T-shirts for girls with messages like "You look better without the bullet holes" and "Put the guns down" and "You want this? Graduate!"
It’s easy for parents to get discouraged. But in an online discussion on washingtonpost.com, Parker argued that her loving, determined, "old school" parental pressure on her daughters is more than a match for peer pressure and the popular culture. "I just keep playing my music, reinforcing my lessons, repeating my rhymes. My kids will hear whatever on the streets, but not in their momma’s house. Ultimately, it's my voice they'll hear in their heads until they grow old. Ultimately it's my voice that's more powerful."
A few days later, the Post added another reporter’s voice to the mix, another example of a black woman who loves the music, but rejects the reigning message. But Natalie Hopkinson saw it in a different, more racially conspiratorial light. She wrote about how she reacted in horror when a middle-aged white female professor of hers said her five-year-old son Maverick was a fine boy and added, "I just can’t wait to watch him grow up and see his wonderful career as a rap star."
The horror was understandable, but the edge of paranoia creeped into the article. Hopkinson didn’t think the remark was innocent, but "confirmation" of a "conspiracy to destroy black boys," citing an author named Jawanza Kunjufu. (His book by that title is harsher. He calls it "genocide.")
Seeing in a seemingly innocent and admiring remark a desire to keep black men oppressed -- or worse, dead – is jaw-dropping. Like Parker, Hopkinson wants to do a balancing act, to raise her son to be proud of black culture without buying "the Foul-Mouth Hip Hop Star CD." But her hostility against whites is nothing like Parker’s acknowledgment of a cultural problem raging across the races. Parker noted that white children are just as likely to subsidize and memorize the fouler brands of today’s hip-hop.
It might be controversial for mothers to fight for their daughters and their sons from a culture that glamorizes garbage. But fighting against the grain of music that places the stamp of "cool" on violent crime, greed, and misogyny is laudable work for mothers and fathers, black and white.
Rock and roll is dead man. It's been dead for years. My 17 year old son likes my old records. Zepplin, Cream etc.
Teach the kids personal responsibility and everything else will fall into place.
Evil white man BTTT.
"Rock and roll is dead man."
Yep. Every now and then a decent band will show up but as a genre, it's dead.
Thank God my daughter likes everything from Bach to Linkin Park but does not listen to garbage. (well, except some of that thrash metal crud). She is a classical musician so she knows music from meritless noise.
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
Pop music has hit a dead end, in my view. The future is in niches.
Regards, Ivan
"She recalled getting in a musical shouting match on the school bus with the white students, "transfixed by our newfound ability to drown out their nullification.""
I guess that's a difference between the north and south. Old hip-hop was more of a unifying force in our school in the early 80's. I don't remember being "transfixed by (blacks) newfound ability to drown out (whites) nullification". I remember black kids being pleasantly surprized that we liked the early hip-hop. I have a CD of old-school-rap in my changer right now.
I agree with you 100%. My pre-teenage kids can't even listen to the new 'so-called' pop music out now. Everything is fusion music or teeny-pop that just does not have lasting appeal or a solid fan-core base.
Anyway, I just listen to my generation of music with a toouch of nistalgia and am good to go. :)
Thrash metal is not garbage. Using an example, Iced Earth "The glorious burden"
Also take what i say with a grain of salt, I am a Freeper metalhead.
Regards, Ivan
Creed - My Own Prison...oh, damn, that was almost 10 years ago, already...damn...
Check out Social Distortion...
My daughter (in her mid-twenties) and SIL went to the ACL Music Festival to see none other than Tom Petty (Or as I like to call them, TP and the HBs). A few years back, they went to SA to see AC/DC. Rock and Roll never really dies, it just gets recycled for a younger generation.
There's a new The Who album coming out in a few weeks.
>>>The horror was understandable, but the edge of paranoia creeped into the article. Hopkinson didn’t think the remark was innocent, but "confirmation" of a "conspiracy to destroy black boys," citing an author named Jawanza Kunjufu. (His book by that title is harsher. He calls it "genocide.") >>>
Let me get this straight. So the demoralization of the young black people in America is the fault of white people who held guns to young black people's head to force them to wear 'bling' and spout nasty, racist, sexist, disgusting lyrics to entice other youth's to copy and repeat? It's a WHITE PERSON CONSPIRACY??? But if a white person spoke out against this black "CULTURE", they would immediately be called a racist???
I've heard it all now.
>>>Also take what i say with a grain of salt, I am a Freeper metalhead.>>>
ME TOO!! Is there a club?
I like this new-to-me sub-genre called "opera metal". I've been collecting the Therion catalog recently. Iced Earth rocks. I've read that they're working on a new album.
>>>I like this new-to-me sub-genre called "opera metal". I've been collecting the Therion catalog recently. Iced Earth rocks. I've read that they're working on a new album.>>>
There is a movement in Europe called metal symphony. Check out this group http://www.kerion.net/
Thanks. Most of the best stuff in metal is from Europe these days.
I find that a name worth 40 points or more on a Scrabble board invariably goes along with a toxic point of view.
"In The End" by Linkin Park, IMO is a pretty good song from 5 years ago. (at least, I THINK it's from 2001)
Also, "Alive" by POD is pretty good. (again, I'm a bit fuzzy on the year it came out) There are actually some pretty good Christian rock bands out there now. Christian music has progressed quite a bit from Amy Grant or Stryper.
Precious by Depeche Mode (whole album's good IMO). Not surprisingly, the band has been around for a quarter of a century.
She would do well by introducing him to jazz, R&B and Motown, all high-quality innovations that came from black Americans.
Rammstein rules! The Toronto Argonauts use "Du Hast Mich" for their pre-game player intros. It's a song that was made for football.
>>>Can anyone remember a single from 5 years ago worth repeating?
Precious by Depeche Mode (whole album's good IMO). Not surprisingly, the band has been around for a quarter of a century.>>>
Oh God. I feel old.
She is also a very good student--is yours also?
Haven't heard Snow Patrol, but I am right with you on Sugar Cult, All American Rejects, and especially Green Day. They definitely have an 80's tinge to their sound, which is right up my alley! Very likeable. Also Evanescence, AFI, and The Killers, as well as Bowling For Soup (more pop, lots of fun!).
My kids and their friends are very amused that this 40-something old lady watches MTVHits channel nearly every night! And that I enjoy a good lot of what I hear! (I especially love when VH1 does Alternative music hours - there are some really decent bands out there, and they still play the old ones too.)
Yes, but AP anatomy is really kicking her hard. SAT coming up so we shall see how that goes. She is a good kid all the way around; kinda lonely though because she can run mental rings around her peers.
I don't think anyone did until that night. I haven't heard of it since, thankfully. I watched 10 minutes of the dumb show to begin with, and that's what I got for it. :(
Regards, Ivan
Alvin Toffler's subcultures are the new reality ...
Not until you hear this:
A few years ago a black community leader in Detroit said the reason that young black males turned to crime was because all the stores in the city had plexiglass shields in front of the cashiers and that hurt the black males self image, so they had no choice but to turn to crime.
This man actually spoke these words with a straight face!
The plexiglass isn't there to protect the employees from criminals - no, the criminals are created because of the plexiglass!
NOW you've heard everything.
The music is still played, but as a force in pop culture, I'm afraid you're right. The Buggles were right; Video DID kill the radio star. Now, instead of singers and musicians dominating the charts, we have scantily-clad models with thin voices squeaking out songs laden with soulless electronic rhythms and white noise native to no instrument. We have gold-plated toothed, cubic-zirconium wearing court jesters who shout into a microphone in rhyme while strippers without poles gyrate and shake behind them to give their performances entertainment value.
With the ushering in of MTV, the sound was no longer the important thing, it was the look. And performers with the pipes -- such as the obese but outstanding Martha Wash, and the real vocalists of Milli Vanilli -- are replaced by aesthetically-pleasing women and men whose greatest talent was lip-synching.
If you think rock ain't dead, Get a load of this. This schmuck has the #1 song in America and around the world.
Good luck to yours :)
In the same vein as your comments, I remember playing an Ella Fitzgerald CD at my place and a coworker of mine said, "Wow, she sure sings amazingly well! Too bad she's ugly, never would have made it today"
Sigh.
He never would have even picked up a CD of hers, because:
A) Swing/Jazz is not 'cool'
B) She didn't gyrate on stage and look like a vixen.
So instead he missed out on one of the most beautiful voices in popular music EVER. Same goes whenever I play Sinatra -- people can't believe how great the music is.
The trend in popular music since the jazz and early motown days has gone really downhill.
" In the same vein as your comments, I remember playing an Ella Fitzgerald CD at my place and a coworker of mine said, "Wow, she sure sings amazingly well! Too bad she's ugly, never would have made it today" "
This is even more true in Japan where many " groups " are manufactured by the record companies , that is to say auditions are held and members chosen by looks and how well they can dance/gyrate/etc...It has nothing to do with music/art whatsoever . Every male/female singer looks like a fashion model , and has no musical talent at all . And the kids , who are brainwashed by the media and have parents who don't care what they listen to , go for it hook , lime and sinker .
"Under The Bridge" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is a pretty good song.
Hmmm, but I bet it was more than five years ago.
You're right.
Look, Bella. Another Social D fan. Who knew?
Doesn't matter if a genre is dead or not, as long as you like it, that is all that matters.
"This is even more true in Japan where many " groups " are manufactured by the record companies , that is to say auditions are held and members chosen by looks and how well they can dance/gyrate/etc...It has nothing to do with music/art whatsoever . Every male/female singer looks like a fashion model , and has no musical talent at all . And the kids , who are brainwashed by the media and have parents who don't care what they listen to , go for it hook , lime and sinker ."
__________________________________________________________________
The Japanese manufactured-for-TV model has been ongoing for decades, I remember reading an article about that in a 1980 Far East Asian Economic Review when I was a teen.
Of course! They are the best.
It's been going on since the 60's ...and at that time they used to re-make US hits with Japanese lyrics and probably didn't pay any royalties ...99% of Japanese were happily unaware that their fave songs were in fact re-makes ...and the record companies make gazillions ... This was the era of " group sounds " ...
>>>I've heard it all now.
Not until you hear this:
A few years ago a black community leader in Detroit said the reason that young black males turned to crime was because all the stores in the city had plexiglass shields in front of the cashiers and that hurt the black males self image, so they had no choice but to turn to crime.
NOW you've heard everything>>>
I stand corrected. Sheesh.
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