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Why are rock bands so racially segregated? by Steve Sailer UPI, March 13, 2001 |
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The Dave Matthews Band's new album, "Everyday," debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 album chart this week. For all their mainstream success, however, there's something unusual about this group. Namely, they are racially integrated, with three blacks and two whites. Why have mixed race rock bands been quite rare? Even though the popular music of the last 100 years is an intricately entwined hybrid of black and white influences, there have been surprisingly few black-white rock groups. Jazz bands - and even opera companies - have been far more likely to blend blacks and whites together. In one representative listing of the top rock bands of all time, 90 percent were either all white or all black. Let's look in some detail at the Top 100 Rock Artists list chosen by the cable channel VH1. (VH1 is MTV for grownups who are a whole lot less hip than they used to be.) The list is heavily biased toward acts from the Sixties and Seventies, with Nirvana being the most recent artist listed. Still, for all its faults, VH1's ranking provides a reasonably unobjectionable compilation of musicians who have withstood the test of time. Its 40 solo artists are a model of racial balance, with 20 blacks and 20 whites. White solo stars, interestingly enough, have generally been quick to hire black musicians. The white singer with the three black ladies providing harmony vocals is a pop music cliché. Among bands, though, segregation is the norm. All-white bands number 44, ranging from the Beatles and Rolling Stones down to the Ramones, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, and Devo. There are nine all-black bands on the list, such as Bob Marley and the Wailers, the Jackson 5, and the Temptations. Two groups fell outside the black-white paradigm. Santana is of course led by Mexican guitar god Carlos Santana. And the seemingly all-white British glam rockers Queen are surprisingly difficult to classify since lead singer Freddie Mercury was a genuine exotic. Born "Farrokh Bulsara" on Zanzibar, the legendary clove island off the east coast of Africa, he was of Parsee descent. Parsees follow the ancient Zoroastrian religion of Persia. Centuries ago they migrated to Bombay, India, where a remarkable number have become fabulously wealthy. Parsees are Caucasians, but not Europeans. That leaves only four black-white integrated groups: the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Prince and the Revolution, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, and Sly and the Family Stone. And, as their names indicate, each one of these is less a true band, where several members share creative responsibility, and more the supporting cast for a single superstar. For example, Hendrix was responsible for what seemed like 95% of the sound volume on his albums, with his white rhythm section puttering along in the far background. Over the last decade, top rock acts may have become somewhat more integrated. The Smashing Pumpkins, for example, consist of three whites and one East Asian. In 1994, Hootie and the Blowfish sold 13 million copies of their debut album "Cracked Rear View." Critics had a hard time understanding why, since they were merely a solid but undistinguished band. Yet, they succeeded because they filled a market niche that the mainstream audience had evidently been waiting for. They were the first to put a resonant black voice in front of conventional white electric guitar rock. Why did it take so long in this instance for the rock industry to finally give the people what they wanted? Why have rock bands been so much less integrated than jazz bands? After all, Benny Goodman featured an integrated orchestra in the Thirties. Before the civil rights revolution, black and white jazz musicians put up with all sorts of nonsense in order to play together. When Charlie Parker's band toured the segregated South in the Forties, they told local sheriffs that their white trumpeter Red Rodney was actually a black man named "Albino Red." Like big league baseball, another highly integrated pastime, jazz is a meritocracy. The jam session, where anybody with a horn can get up on stage and try to show he belongs, ruthlessly distinguishes the poseur from the professional. In contrast, professionalism is not a high priority for rock stars. They rise to the top not through a wide-ranging, proven musical ability, but by creating a single novel sound and look. Starting a rock band is often an excuse for trying to live out the male adolescent fantasy that you'll find a way to make a living hanging out with your buddies. That's also why rap groups tend to be absurdly overstaffed. Wu-Tang Clan has nine members, for instance. Similarly, NBA stars buy giant Lincoln Navigators to ferry around posses consisting of all their unemployable friends from junior high school. Not surprisingly, therefore, most rock bands stink. But great rock bands often are great precisely because they consist of a bunch guys who grew up together and thus embody the spirit of a particular time and place. The Beach Boys, for example, were some kids from the Southern California coast during the golden age of the American teenager. The Beatles were three teenage friends from Liverpool in search of an adequate drummer. The Ramones were creepy outcasts from Queens. The Sex Pistols were fashion victims on the dole who hung around Malcolm McLaren's Sex clothing store in Chelsea. Of course, most kids grow up with friends of the same race, and therefore start single-race bands. So, how did the Dave Matthews Band end up as integrated as a jazz quintet? Precisely because the band consists of three jazz musicians, one jazz fan, and one classically trained violinist. Dave Matthews himself is a white South African who ended up tending bar at a jazz club in Virginia. He wrote some songs, then asked his favorite local black jazz musicians, veteran drummer Carter Beauford and pianist/saxophonist Leroi Moore, to try them out. They liked what they heard, so they recruited a 16-year-old white jazz prodigy named Steffan Lessard to play bass. Then the band added Boyd Tinsley, a classically-trained violinist. All this highly professional virtuosity allows the Dave Matthews Band to jam in a wide variety of styles: jazz, rock, folk, world beat, and reggae. The downside is they don't get to live out the rock dream of you and your friends never having to grow up.
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