- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
1. A whole lot of musical genres have been moving away from the confines of 'black music' (or, what white liberals like to think of as 'black music' - most of it is, at its root, Anglo-Celtic folk music as interpreted by poor people, black and white, in the American South) since the early 1970s. You can decry it as subtle racism if you want, or you can see it for what it is, an attempt to liberate music from a limited and limiting sonic and conceptual palette (I IV V progressions through the pentatonic scale, verse-chorus structures, syncopation in four, the emphasis on rhythmic impact over melodic expansiveness, and a relentless focus on the pursuits of hedonism). Bands didn't turn away from 'black' musical styles out of racism, they turned away because what could be done in those styles has already been done: hip hop was the last frontier, as 'black' music had nowhere to go but to become pure rhythm music, not very satisfying in the end. Not surprisingly, the visionary musicians saw where all this was going, and instead took a radically different turn.
2. World music is mind-blowingly bland garbage basically dreamed up to sell shitty compilations to the kind of morons who think buying loose tea is sophisticated.
3. As great as Bad Brains were, they were hardly the 'template' for hardcore. Minor Threat, The Exploited, Crass, Discharge, The Misfits, and, yes, Black Flag were all much more important in development of the genre. Bad Brains' biggest impact was moving hardcore toward what it has become today: sawed off metal riffs in punk rock structures.
