Mission accomplished

Well, New Yorker pop critic Sasha Frere-Jones did warn that his Get Whitey article was meant to stimulate discussion.

The story has, as they say in old journalism lingo, legs. The responses to the article continue to pile up, mostly to say how he's oh so fuckin' WRONG. Part of it is that S/FJ hit a nerve -- the white guilt of indie rockers/hipsters -- and part comes from the "High Fidelity" boyish obsessiveness that has spawned a million and one music blogs.

Many bloggers repeat criticisms I mentioned before, but the latest rock tossed at S/FJ that caught my eye comes from Slate, where Carl Wilson makes several good points, including: how the segregation of musical forms is also related to the rise of Black Power and disillusionment in integrationist ideals; how minstrelry became a "capital cultural crime," not just a matter of political correctness; that the post-Reagan widening class gap has as much to do with the isolation of indie rockers as the shift in racial dynamics; that indie rock is coping (badly) with a crisis in white masculinity; and, in a point similar to the one made here and here, that

When "miscegenation" does happen in music now, it's likely to be more multicultural than in Frere-Jones' formula, as in rainbow-coalition bands such as Antibalas and Ozomatli.

Amen, brother! Preach! (Oops, is that too "black" of me?)

Comments

[Kiko Jones]

http://kikojones5.blogspot.com/2007/10/sky-is-blue-music-critic-sasha-frere.html

[Caro]

Kiko, I appreciate your very valid opinions, but I'm a little puzzled. If you care so little, why bother posting on it? Me, I'm willing to fess up to my music fangirl obsession with indie rock, even if I listen to it less than I used to.

[Kiko Jones]

Personally, I may not care for every hype-driven Tom, Dick, Harry, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, fauxhemian object of devotion that is affixed the indie rock label, but there is plenty of it past and present—the former, mostly—that floats my boat. I just don’t have time for the day-to-day minutiae of nonsense that comes with it.

But make no mistake, I care enough to point out a faulty premise that has led to a small deluge of ink—figuratively speaking, of course—to be devoted to a flawed discussion. Sasha Frere-Jones is a noted music critic, and if people start repeating and delving into an erronesous statement of his—such as indie rock losing a soul/R&B influence it never had in the first place—and using it as a springboard that eventually leads to other perhaps flawed conclusions, I feel those who know better should speak up. I also care because a subject that originates in a fallacy getting so much more play than other more pertinent and relevant music-related topics is quiet disappointing, to say the least.