Something That Bothers Me...

...Is the way people tend to define music by racial categories. And I don't just mean the people who think of rap as "black music," though that is obviously a major instance. The white counterpart to that one, I suppose, is certain aspects of rock. Obviously, people remember black rockers like Hendrix, Chuck Berry, and Bo Diddley, but it seems that people assume that later stuff (post '70s) became the sole province of white guys. And, true enough, there's not a whole lot of black metal-heads, but it still shouldn't be defined in that way.

But the one that bothers me the most is the idea that white men playing blues are doing something wrong, or being tacky or something. For instance, Pitchfork Media says of Guy Blakeslee: "His white blues jones... at best was a hard sell, at worst insufferable." I really don't see the reasoning behind that. Yes, the blues started with black musicians in the Mississippi Delta, but classical music started in Europe, and I think that anyone who claimed that an African-American violinist was "insufferable" would be very quickly shouted down. Please don't misunderstand: I am not interested in discussing any double standards, real or imaginary, in race relations. I am only interested in defending my right to enjoy my favorite genre of music. After all, the blues itself claims ancestry in both European and African musical styles, and its primary instruments (guitar, harmonica, and piano) have origins in Europe. That's part of what makes it so appealing: the ubiquity of blue notes and call-and-response structures are taken from African music, and some melodic and instrumental elements come from folk music of North America. It's a collaborative sort of musical style.

In closing, I just want to point out the fact that many modern musical genres owe a great deal to the blues- rock, R&B, hip-hop, some sub-genres of folk- and that, if it's okay to be interested in those styles of music, it should also be alright to be interested in their common ancestor. I've never heard someone argue that it was "insufferable" for white people to love rock, and I don't like hearing it about blues.