In the Beginning There Was Rhythm

"In the mid- and late eighties, as MTV began granting equal airtime to videos by black musicians, academia was developing a doctrine of racial sensitivity that also had a sobering effect on white musicians: political correctness. Dabbling in black song forms, new or old, could now be seen as an act of appropriation, minstrelsy, or co-optation. A political reading of art took root, ending an age of innocent—or, at least, guilt-free—pilfering. This wasn’t a case of chickens coming home to roost. Rather, it was as though your parents had come home and turned on the lights."

In The New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones ponders a current lack of "musical miscegenation."


"Yet this is a problem having to do with the muddled state of white masculinity today, and it's not soluble by imitating some image of black male sexuality (which, as hip-hop and R&B amply demonstrate, is dealing with its own crises). Are we supposed to long for the days when Zeppelin and the Stones fetishized fantasies of black manhood, in part as a cover for misogyny? If forced to choose between tolerating some boringly undersexed rock music and reviving the, er, 'vigorous' sexual politics of cock rock, I'll take the boring rock, thanks—for now."

In Slate, Chris Wilson complicates the issue.


"'There's this periodic rediscovery by indie rockers that dancing is fun,' said Simon Reynolds, author of the rave and post-punk histories 'Generation Ecstasy' and 'Rip It Up and Start Again.' 'Lots of these bands are going back to the punk-funk thing. . . . Kids hearing it now maybe don't realize that in the '70s, for instance, every white band wanted that Chic guitar sound.'"

And Margaret Wappler in the Los Angeles Times explores the new international dance-rock
scene.


"When hip-hop was called rap and emcees still wore leather pants and mascara, the music was up-tempo and DJ-driven, just like the super-club sounds of today. When rap helped to spawn 'electro' in the early ’80s heyday of Afrika Bambaataa’s 'Planet Rock,' Cybotron’s 'Clear,' and the Jonzun Crew’s 'Space is the Place,' it was one of the last times that hip-hop and electronic dance music were truly in the same gang."

Dennis Romero in Los Angeles City Beat sees a current-day reunion on the dance floor.


"And Van Zandt is doing something that is going to be increasingly necessary for foundations and civic groups. We live in an age in which the technological and commercial momentum drives fragmentation. It’s going to be necessary to set up countervailing forces—institutions that span social, class and ethnic lines."

And David Brooks in The New York Times references both Sasha Frere-Jones and Chris Wilson in discussing the rise of segmented culture.

In the Los Angeles Times, Ann Powers and contributors recommend various acts that challenge Frere-Jones's arguments.


"'Swing' and 'feel' are in short supply on 'The Brit Box.' This is partly due to the lingering influence of punk, which treated virtuosity as something to be avoided. British rock once boasted many of the finest drummers in the world--Keith Moon, John Bonham, Charlie Watts, Ringo Starr, Ginger Baker... the list goes on. But it's hard to imagine anyone other than die-hard fans being able to name the drummers in the vast majority of bands on 'The Brit Box.' Rarely contributing anything to the music beyond marking time, the drummers mostly seem to be there because that's what rock bands are supposed to have. Anybody in Britain who really cares about beats and has a feel for the construction of that commonplace miracle, a groove, has long since gone to work in dance music or hip-hop."

Simon Reynolds in Salon reviews Rhino Records' The Brit Box: U.K. Indie, Shoegaze, and Brit-Pop Gems of the Last Millennium. (And has a uncut version on his website.)