By now you probably know about the recent brouhaha over “rockism”. If not, check here to see what started it. Here’s a pretty well thought out argument for “popism”. (Sorry, but I can’t make myself use “poptimism” without fear of slipping into a diabetic coma). As far as I can see, both sides get a few things right. Both sides have some complete and utter fools arguing their cases, too. Nature loves symmetry.
My approach to music is via the aesthetic of the gut. I get a pretty good idea as to whether or not I like something the first time I hear it. It’s not set in stone, of course; if it were, I’d be able to turn around a review in no time. More often than not, though, that initial take is the one that sticks. The rest of it is formulating the explanation.
Race doesn’t really enter into the process. There are a lot of people who’d argue that point. Just to keep everybody happy, let’s revise that statement to “race doesn’t consciously enter the process”. Or, to put it another way: I don’t bother to find out what race an artist is before making a decision about their music. To me, it has no bearing. Again, there are people who’d argue with that, too. There are people who’d argue with just about anything. Contradictory fuckers, they are. And this time, they’d be wrong.
As the philosopher said, I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam. Yes, I am a construct of my culture and conditioning – up to a point. Perhaps I flatter myself, but I like to think that I’m able to make up my own mind, that I’m not some automaton robot B.F. Skinner nightmare creature. I have examined my cultural biases and prejudices, and my conscience is remarkably clear.
One of the things that pisses me off the most about the whole “rockism” argument is that it is so often framed in a way that anyone who doesn’t toe that party line is forced into the ol’ “some of my best friends are ________” defense. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Be that as it may: if anyone were to examine my music collection, they’d find a fair amount of (old school) R&B, soul, funk, blues, and jazz in among the rock and country. They wouldn’t find much in the way of hip hop, current pop, or current R&B, just as they wouldn’t find much techno/electronica.
Why not? Well, for one thing, I find most of the music I’ve heard from those particular genres to be either really cold (hip hop, techno) or really overblown (pop, R&B – the amazing tool that is melisma has been stretched to the breaking point and beyond). That’s not to say that I can’t get behind cold or overblown music from time to time, but generally it doesn’t float my boat. Also, in the case of hip hop, I find myself missing melody. There are some hip hop tracks I’ve really enjoyed, but truthfully in most cases that was down to the message rather than the medium. If you want to point me toward exemplary mp3s I should hear, by all means do so. I’ll be happy to check them out. My past experience says don’t expect any sort of damascene conversion, but never say never.
I fully recognize that there is a fully-realized aesthetic and a set of skills and talents involved in such music. It’s just not an aesthetic that I embrace, just as I don’t embrace that of opera. I do buy into the idea of authenticity, in large part, and I don’t really buy much of the post-modern theorizing I’ve been exposed to. And if you’re waiting for me to apologize for any of that, you’re gonna be waiting a long time. One of the tenets of “popism” that I buy 100% is that there’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure. I like what I like. We can discuss why I like it (try and stop me). But I’ll be damned if anyone is gonna make me feel an iota of guilt over my personal taste, and I refuse to feign interest in something just to pass some hipster doofus' litmus test.
Am I a “rockist”? According to some, yes. They might get farther aguing that I’m, er, old, but whatever. Anyone who wants to extrapolate racism out of anything I've said here is a fucking idiot, though, and I will gladly stand on their coffee table and tell them so.
As for Hopper and Frere-Jones… there’s a story in Terry Southern’s wonderful collection, Red Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes, entitled “You’re Too Hip, Baby”. The other thing I was reminded of was this story from a little while back: "Deejay’s Appeal: 'Kill the Whiteness Inside'."
Making a fetish of The Other, if I may borrow a culture studies term, demeans both the object of the fetish and the fetishizer. The contention that music is automagically superior because of the racial background of the performer is just as racist as anything attributed to any putative “rockist”. That shit was condescending when the beats did it, it was condescending when the hippies did it, and it remains condescending now. Treat people like human beings and see what happens.