english

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BLACK RHYTHM, WHITE POWER

SAMANTHA AINSLEY

Introduction and All that Jazz

he lights went down at the Miller Theater, but not a note was played. Then a
voice rose above the muffled sounds of the crowd, followed by another, and
then another: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, interlaced

with words by Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. The three men’s tones resonated with
the rhythm of the African djembe beating in the backdrop. Soon, Christian McBride’s
anticipated bass riff joined the refrain. The great speeches faded along with the drum
line, and the jazz took hold, as was permissible since the foundation had been laid:
Jazz is a music, a history, a culture. That is, African American culture is intrinsic to
jazz.
The music has its roots in post-Reconstruction New Orleans, at a time when Jim
Crow laws lumped Creoles and blacks into one marginalized subgroup. Jazz evolved
as a synthesis of “African-derived rhythmic, tonal, and improvisational senses” and
French-inspired Creole string ensembles (Hall 36). The word “jazz,” in fact, derives
from the Creole jass, a slang term for sex. Granted, Creoles are light-skinned and hardly
black in the usual sense of the word. To that Perry Hall, director of African American
studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, adds, “Creole participation
in jazz came directly as a result of the discovery by Creole musicians of their Blackness”
(47). In other words, Creoles began to play jazz after relocation to and degradation in
the United States made them party to the black experience. Yet when jazz gained
mainstream popularity in 1917, its face was neither black nor Creole. The first jazz
record released to the masses was that of the self-proclaimed “Original Dixieland Jazz
Band,” a group of five white musicians (38). In the years that followed, a white
musician by the name of Paul Whiteman enjoyed great success performing
“symphonic jazz,” a style that tamed the “primitive rhythms” of original jazz and
therein became “more acceptable to white audiences” (38). In uprooting jazz from its
African American culture, Whiteman grossed one million dollars in a single year in the
1920s and was dubbed the “King of Jazz” (39).

Hail to the Thief1
Paul Whiteman’s success arguably lacked merit, but it was hardly unique. Since
Whiteman, white men have perpetually sat atop the thrones of black music. For
example, in the 1930s, Benny Goodman, a white man, became the “King of Swing”
(Hall 31). Decades later, Elvis Presley was crowned the “King of Rock ‘N’ Roll.” In
2003, Rolling Stone declared Justin Timberlake the “King of R&B” (Kitwana 156). And,
of course, there’s Eminem, who continues to be revered as “the Elvis of hip-hop”
(139). How can a white man be the face of black music?

T

© 2020 Samantha Ainsley

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To answer this question, we must examine the long-standing tradition of
mainstream absorption of black musical forms (Hall 32). Beginning with jazz and
leading up to hip-hop, white America has appropriated black music as its own. When
whites cannot stake claims to black music—as in the case of hip-hop—the nature of
the relationship between mainstream society and African American culture is simply
exploitative. This essay will examine the ethics of cross-cultural musical appropriation
in an attempt to discover why the Elvises and Eminems are able to reap the glory of
African American cultural innovation.

Gillespie, Gift-Giving, and Genocide

“You can’t steal a gift. Bird gave the world his music, and if you can hear it you can
have it,” Dizzy Gillespie declared in defense of Phil Woods, a white saxophonist who
had been accused of poaching Charlie “Bird” Parker’s style (Lethem 70). Jonathan
Lethem, in his essay “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism,” draws inspiration from
Gillespie in criticizing copyrights and exploring the concept of a “gift economy” (65).
According to Lethem, works of art exist in such an economy, which is rooted in the
poignancy of the product (65-66). This gift economy is independent of the market
economy in which art and music are commoditized because “a gift conveys an
uncommodifiable surplus of inspiration” (Lethem 66). No doubt black musical
forms—as is true of all art—function in such an economy both in giving and receiving.
To a greater extent, rock ‘n’ roll connoisseur Theodore Gracyk questions whether
there was ever an African American musical form “that wasn’t already the result of
miscegenation and hybridization” (86). For example, as noted earlier, the first jazz
musicians drew inspiration from both “the French tradition of military marching
bands” and the European-style string orchestra (Hall 36). As Lethem would argue for
any art, the making of music is a continual process of borrowing and sharing. Thus,
Gillespie and Gracyk are right to say that black artists cannot claim exclusivity to black
music. But what, then, distinguishes the use of black music by white musicians from
the continual borrowing and sharing of musical property upon which black music is
built?
In truth, the gift analogy is oversimplified. You certainly cannot “steal” a gift if it
has been given to you, but you can misuse it. When appropriating black musical forms,
white artists such as Paul Whiteman often reshape and redefine the styles to “minimize
their association with ‘Blackness’” (Hall 32). This type of cultural appropriation is less
an exchange of gifts than “a virtual stripping of Black musical genius and aesthetic
innovation” (Hall 33). To Gracyk, the very process of reshaping is what grants “those
engaged in appropriation . . . some right to claim ownership of the music they
perform” (107). Thus, symphonic jazz can be appreciated independently of the black
musical style from which it is derived, and its creation gives whites some cultural
ownership of jazz. Yet Gracyk fails to recognize the effect of appropriation on the
original musical form, which distinguishes unethical appropriation from the harmless

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inspiration that Lethem supports. In the most basic sense, a gift can be considered
“misused” when it is damaged through usage. As is often the case when mainstream
America whitewashes black cultural property and then claims it as its own, the result
is what philosopher Amiri Baraka, one of the greatest voices of “spoken word” jazz,
describes as a “cultural genocide” (quoted in Gracyk 110).
Gracyk rejects this notion of cultural genocide. According to Gracyk, “the analogy
with genocide hinges on the thesis that, were it not for the nonreciprocal behavior of
the cultural imperialist, the ‘dominated’ culture would not have changed” (110).
Because African American culture would have evolved independently of white
influence, white America’s reshaping of black musical forms, he claims, simply gives
rise to a “legitimate transformation” (110). Gracyk depicts this instance of cultural
appropriation as natural, yet black musical forms have tended to evolve unwillingly.
New forms emerge in hopes of reestablishing “the distinctiveness of Black music in a
given sociohistorical context” (Hall 32). What is particularly unnatural is the continual
need for African Americans to reassert their cultural autonomy. For example, when
rock music became more closely associated with Elvis than Chuck Berry, black
musicians such as Ray Charles and Sam Cooke fused rhythm and blues with “gospel-
inflected harmonies” to create what became known in the 1960s as “soul” (44). Such
innovation is less the result of dynamism than of marginalization. Cultural genocide
arises when the art is separated from the people (31). The heavily consumed,
appropriated forms are “ineffective as expressions and affirmations of the unique
cultural experiences from which they arise” (32). Cultural meanings are thereby often
erased (35), as happened when whites appropriated soul music—which spoke to black
emotion and struggle during the Civil Rights Movement—and called it “disco” (45).
When whites appropriate black music, the art is stripped not only of its cultural identity
but also of its ability to function in the gift economy. Although Lethem agrees that
one cannot steal a gift, he argues that one can destroy it: “Where there is no gift there
is no art, [thus] it may be possible to destroy a work of art by converting it into a pure
commodity” (66). When black musical forms are completely dissociated from their
emotional foundation—as in the case of soul’s devolution into disco—the result is no
longer a work of art but a mere commodity, which Lethem defines by its inability to
create a genuine emotional connection (66). However, the mainstream need not
appropriate black music in order to commoditize it. We see this in the case of hip-hop.
Though rap has been reinterpreted by a myriad of races, including whites, it is
nevertheless identified with African American culture—a culture that is now bought
and sold.

Back Yard DJs to NWA: Origins of Hip Hop

“Rap in general dates all the way back to the motherland, where tribes would
use call-and-response chants. In the 1930s and 1940s you had Cab Calloway

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pioneering his style of jazz rhyming. The sixties you had the love style of
rapping, with Isaac Hayes, Barry White, and the poetry style of rapping with
the Last Poets, the Watts poets and the militant style of rapping with brothers
like Malcolm X and Minister Louis Farrakhan.”

—Afrika Bambaata, 1993 (quoted in Perkins 2)

Rap is revolutionary as a black musical form because every path traces its lineage
back to an element of African American culture. Granted, today there are countless
cultural varieties of hip-hop from Asian to Hispanic rap; still, all of these styles are
indisputably derived from black music. So far, hip-hop has inspired imitations but it
has nevertheless resisted cultural genocide. That is not to say, however, that it has
escaped exploitation.
Hip-hop was born in the South Bronx in the mid-1970s as the product of the yard
culture of West Kingston brought to New York by Jamaican immigrants in the late
1960s: “Yard DJs brought huge speakers and turntables to the slums, where they
rapped over the simple bass lines of the ska and reggae beats. . . . The DJ ruled during
hip hop’s early days, and it was the DJ who established the foundations for the lyricist
(MC)” (Perkins 6). In the 1980s, black middle-class rappers L.L. Cool J and the group
Run DMC, both from suburban Queens, were representative of the first wave of hip
hop artists to achieve mainstream success (Perkins 15)—that is, until their minimalist
style gave way to controversial “gangsta” rap in the 1990s: “The gangsta was
epitomized by the now defunct group NWA (Niggas with Attitude), which consisted
of the MCs Dr. Dre, Ezy-E, Ice Cube, MC Ren . . . and Ice-T” (Perkins 18). Then
came the “message rap” of artists such as Long Island’s Public Enemy, which was
followed by the much less political “booty rap” of groups like 2 Live Crew (Perkins
19-20). Rap’s decades-long transformation exemplifies the natural cultural dynamics
about which Gracyk theorizes. Its cultural autonomy remained intact at this point.
Then, in the late 1990s, a white rapper from Detroit emerged on the scene and started
down the path to becoming hip-hop’s Elvis.

The Blue-Eyed Baller

If I have a cup of coffee that is too strong for me because it is too black, I
weaken it by pouring cream into it.2

—Malcolm X, 1963

In 2003, a well-established hip-hop magazine, The Source, acted on a personal
vendetta against the industry’s most successful artist of the time, white rapper
Eminem. In an attempt to derail the rapper’s career, The Source published lyrics from
unreleased tracks by Eminem that featured blatantly racist attacks on black women:
“Girls I like have big butts / no they don’t, ’cause I don’t like that nigga shit . . . Black

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and whites they sometimes mix / But black girls only want your money / cause they
be dumb chicks” (quoted in Kitwana 136). After a public apology in which Eminem
attributed his racist remarks to teenage angst and bitter resentment toward an African
American ex-girlfriend, Eminem’s success and popularity were unaffected (141). But
The Source’s crusade against the white rapper did not end there; the magazine’s greatest
concern was not that rap’s most successful artist was racist, but that he was white and
that hip-hop rightly belonged to a black youth subculture (136). Granted, Eminem was
not the first white rapper to enjoy mainstream success. In fact, the first No. 1 hip-hop
album was the all-white hip-hop group The Beastie Boys’ 1986 License to Ill (White
201). Similarly, the first hip-hop single to top the charts was Vanilla Ice’s “Ice, Ice
Baby” in 1991 (Perkins 37). But the most successful white rappers often parodied the
genre, which led some listeners to write them off as “wiggers.” Eminem’s music was
revered as genuine hip-hop, and The Source feared the familiarity of his success.
Countless times, owners of The Source declared that Eminem was on “the fast track to
becoming hip-hop’s Elvis” (Kitwana 136). That is, as had happened with Elvis, yet
another black musical form would be more closely identified with an iconic white artist
than with black artists.
In the early 1950s, Sam Phillips—the Sun Records executive who helped Elvis rise
to stardom—proclaimed, “If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and
the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars” (quoted in Perkins 38). Unlike his
wannabe predecessors, Eminem can produce rap with that very “Negro feel.” His
lyrics have thematic similarities to some black rap because Eminem grew up in the
marginalized class of impoverished white Americans. Hence, his music preserves the
emotional aspect of the hip-hop gift. Perhaps Eminem’s music exemplifies hip-hop’s
ability to function as a gift economy. After all, whereas Elvis’ stardom catalyzed rock
‘n’ roll to become the predominately white musical form it is today, Eminem’s success
has not given hip-hop a white face. Has the music industry evolved beyond racial
exploitation, or is the mainstream interested in keeping hip-hop black?

Mr. Ambassador at the Minstrel Show

In late 2002, the New York Times Magazine ran a cover story on hip-hop’s cultural
bandit, Marshall Mathers, a.k.a. Eminem, and titled it “Mr. Ambassador” (Kitwana
160). The astute title was fitting for the rap superstar who had previously been labeled
the “king” of hip-hop, for Eminem is just that: the envoy of white America to the hip-
hop nation. Eminem has attracted many mainstream listeners to hip-hop essentially
because he looks like they do. Before Eminem, true hip-hop—which excludes the
whitewashed works of Vanilla Ice and the Beastie Boys—was exclusively black and
therefore incomprehensible to most white audiences. It does not follow, however, that
Enimem is the white man’s rapper. Quite the contrary: “although rap is still
proportionately more popular among blacks, its primary audience is white and lives in
the suburbs” (Samuels, quoted in Kitwana 82). In February 2004, Forbes reported that

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of an estimated forty-five million hip-hop consumers between the ages of thirteen and
thirty-four, eighty percent are white (82). This begs the question: Why do white people
love hip-hop, that is, hip-hop in its true form? According to pop journalist Arnold
White, “Rap flourished into corporate-sponsored hip hop because of the symbiosis
that held whites enthralled to Blacks and kept Blacks indentured” (183). White
America’s embrace of hip-hop culture is hardly a move toward racial acceptance and
cultural understanding. Rather, it is the product of “white supremacy (i.e., black kids
selling black images of black criminality and inferiority and white kids buying them to
reinforce their superiority)” (103). Hip-hop perpetuates the American tradition of
minstrelsy, except that rather than whites painting their faces black, black artists have
succumbed to stereotypes of themselves. In the case of hip-hop, white supremacy is
enforced not through imitation but consumption of the “minstrel portrait” of black
“dehumanization” (Baraka 328). In the eyes of the mainstream, hip-hop reinforces
conventions and stereotypes of blackness that foster white power.
Though Eminem may honor hip-hop as a gift, the mainstream renders it a
commodity. A commodity fails to establish an emotional connection between two
people (Lethem 66). Though rap music showcases black suffering, mainstream
America receives it not with compassion but with mockery—white supremacy
prevents an emotional connection. Previous musical generations saw white artists
destroying the gift of black music by failing to recreate its poignancy; the hip-hop
generation sees poignancy destroyed through direct commoditization. In the case of
hip-hop, whites are able to reap the power and profits of black culture not by
marginalizing black ingenuity but by exploiting it. Simply put: whites couldn’t do it
better themselves.

Why Deny the Obvious, Child?3

Hip-hop may have broken the appropriative trend between mainstream America
and black music, but it has done little to end the marginalization of African Americans.
It seems that the key issue is not so much the act of appropriation as the driving force
behind it. Incidentally, when discussing mainstream absorption of black music, few
scholars aside from Theodore Gracyk acknowledge its contributions. We cannot deny
that “rock would not exist without appropriation” (Gracyk 97), nor can we blame
individual artists for acts of appropriation.
Take, for example, Paul Simon’s Graceland, which is often criticized for Simon’s
arguably exploitative use of a group of South African folk singers to enhance the tone
of the album and, ultimately, his own success. The accusation runs: “Visually and
aurally, Simon appears as the white master who exerts a benign rule over his black
subjects” (Mitchell, quoted in Gracyk 91). Yet to suggest that Simon’s work with the
South African choir had imperialistic motives is excessive. In truth, he was motivated
by “a genuine love of South African music” (98); we cannot criticize him for that.
Concomitantly, the South African tribal leader Joseph Shabalala praised Simon for

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“the opportunity to disclose [their] music all over the world” (quoted in Gracyk 105).
Though not Simon’s fault, Graceland failed to inspire interest in South African music.
Most people I know who own the album admit to skipping the only track that features
the South African choir almost exclusively. The only music Graceland successfully
promoted was that of Paul Simon—just as when Keith Richards and Mick Jagger
started the Rolling Stones, in Richards’ words, “to turn other people on to” African
American blues artist Muddy Waters (quoted in Gracyk 15), they really only turned
people on to the Rolling Stones.
The crime, then, is not the use of black musical gifts but the bigotry that often leads
to their commoditization. The success of Graceland and the Rolling Stones speaks to
whites’ lack of interest in the black experience and their desire not simply to steal black
music, but more basically to de-contextualize it—that is, to avoid establishing
emotional connections. Appreciation of black music goes hand in hand with
appreciation of black people, except in the case of hip-hop through which blacks have
allowed themselves to be dehumanized. That is not to say that non-hip-hop black
musicians enjoy no mainstream success—we know that to be untrue. Rather,
mainstream America tends to depreciate black music, for connecting emotionally with
such works of art might bring about an understanding of black suffering that would
undermine white supremacy. Moreover, the commoditization of black music
continues to foster white power by granting financial success to those who control the
music industry: whites. The power disparity between whites and blacks in the music
industry suggests that music is another tool the mainstream uses to perpetuate black
marginalization. As Amiri Baraka has observed, “The laws once openly stated blacks
inferior. Now it is the relationship these laws uphold that maintain the de facto
oppression” (329). In the shift from de jure to de facto racism, mainstream America
reshaped bigotry in much the same way it did black music—through the simple
process of whitewashing.

NOTES

1. An allusion to Radiohead’s 2003 album.
2. From a speech by Malcolm X entitled “God’s Judgment of White America (The

Chickens Come Home to Roost),” delivered on December 4, 1963, in New
York City.

3. An allusion to the title of a Paul Simon track from 1990’s Rhythm of the Saints.

WORKS CITED
Baraka, Amiri. The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues. New York: William Morrow and

Company Inc., 1987.
Gracyk, Theodore. I Wanna Be Me: Rock Music and the Politics of Identity. Philadelphia:

Temple University Press, 2001.

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Hall, Perry A. “African-American Music: Dynamics of Appropriation and
Innovation.” In Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation. Eds.
Bruce Ziff and Pratima V. Rao. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1997: 31-51.

Kitwana, Bakari. Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the

New Reality of Race in America. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2005.
Lethem, Jonathan. “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism.” Harper’s Magazine. Feb.

2007: 59-71.
Little, Malcolm (aka Malcolm X). “God’s Judgment of White America (The Chickens

Come Home to Roost).” Speech delivered in New York City on December
4, 1963. Accessible online at
http://www.blackcommentator.com/42/42_malcolm.html.

Perkins, William E. “The Rap Attack: An Introduction.” In Droppin’ Science: Critical

Essays on Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture. Ed. William E. Perkins. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1996: 1-45.

White, Armond. “‘Who Wants to See Ten Niggers Play Basketball?’” In Droppin’

Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture. Ed. William E.
Perkins. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996: 182-210.

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“Can White People Play the Blues?”

by Corey Harris

Sunday, May 10, 2015

What is the blues? Life. Life as we live it today, life as we lived it in the past and life as I believe

we will live it in the future.

—B.B. King

I have a question. Can white people play the blues? Does anyone and everyone who call

themselves white have the right? Does it matter? I say that it most definitely does. Your answer

depends on where you stand in the debate. Those who have no personal stake in the debate and

those who have a clear understanding of history will answer the most honestly. But those who

have invested their energy into the art form while denying the history of the music and the people

will always aggressively defend their privilege to play the music and will fight with all their might

like a prospector guarding his claim in Native land. This is not about policing the music-making of

white people, nor is it about giving out permission slips or licenses to perform the blues. Does the

prospector worry about losing his claim if it was never really his to begin with? This is neither

about ownership, since everyone knows that blues is Black music, the product of Black survival

despite a system that worked overtime to snuff out Black lives. There would be no blues without

Black people, and Black people still set the standard by which all other players and singers are

measured. This is about being able to tell the difference between the blues of Eric Clapton and

B.B. King. Some people are offended by the question, calling it racist. The knee jerk reactions will

always be expected, especially in a nation that is in full denial of its past. Any uncomfortable

discussion is immediately called ‘racist’ by those who are comforted by this denial. This isn’t

about race, but the culture and the history of a people. This is about why it matters.

In reality, white people around the world already play the blues, by the millions. There are

blues festivals around the world where the appearance of a Black artist from the US is a novelty

or even a rare exception to the usual all-white roster. There is no doubt that these white artists

are doing it because they love the music. They may even have some personal connection to the

music. But none of them ever asked permission from any Black person to do so. In fact, they

never had to. In the USA, and around the world, a white man did what he pleased to a Black

person. So, when did white people ever ask to play the music of another culture? This is not how

history works. In truth, just as they have laid claim to lands across the globe without asking the

original owners of the land, white people have had the privilege of playing whatever music they

want to play. When they do, the music they make is often promoted (by white people) as being

the same thing. But just as klezmer music performed by a Black man may be great entertainment,

it can never be the same as when a European Jew plays it. Why? Without culture, there is no

music. Music is the voice of a culture. Separate the two and the music can never be the same. Of

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course, it may be in the same style as the original, but the meaning of a song such as Son

House’s “My Black Mama” will always be changed with a different performer. This is especially

true if the performer is not from the Black culture that gave birth to the blues.

Some people say that the culture of the performer (aka ‘race’) it doesn’t matter. They say

that everybody gets the blues, music is universal. Anything other than acceptance of this position

is attacked as being ‘divisive’. It is obvious that this position serves non-Black people well,

opening the door wide open for anyone and everyone. More disturbing is that being Black is seen

as incidental or meaningless—an insane position in an art form that Black people created to bring

meaning to their experience. It is curious that whenever white mainstream culture develops an

affinity for a particular type of Black music, this music suddenly becomes ‘universal’. Now, Black

people and white people who value genuine Black expression are all told that the ‘race’ of the

performer doesn’t matter. There is even a popular t-shirt that reads, “Not White, Not Black, just

Blues.” The Black blues player wonders to himself, “well damn can’t Black folk have nothing?”

The fact that Black people do not play traditional blues popularly as they did during the golden era

of the music (20s, 30s, 40s, 50s) means that many white players actually believe that they are

somehow ‘keeping the blues alive’ because Black folk don’t like it anymore. In fact, it was the

blues that kept Black folk alive, giving them a pressure valve for the stress of living in Babylon.

The truth is that Black folks never stopped playing music, but the musical culture demands

change in reaction to the present times. The blues kept growing and spawning new forms of

music. Freshness in style is highly prized among Black folk and this has always kept the music

moving forward.

But what is ‘the blues?’ It means different things to different people, depending on their

history. Mainstream white America (and many Black people) has typecast the blues as the sad

music of broke down old Black folk. By this measure, to play the blues means to them that one

must have suffered. But how much? Is it only about suffering? No, but in this way people who

have no connection with Black folk from the south can feel free to claim their ‘right’ to play the

blues based on the pain that they or someone in their family or their people may have felt due to

mistreatment. Many of these arguments are based on who suffered more in human history, when

the music was never only about being sad and lonely or meeting some quota of pain. It was

deeper than that. The blues is a book of the life of Black people. There are happy blues, love

blues, homesick blues, preaching blues, east coast blues, west coast blues, gospel blues, jump

blues, and uptown blues. There is a blues for everything under the sun. As the saying goes, ‘the

blues is news you can use.’

Blues existed in a particular space and time. That time is now clearly gone. From the

days of Blind Lemon Jefferson and Charley Patton to the era of Muddy Waters and B.B. King was

definitely blues time. Blues was the popular music and the lowest common musical denominator.

The blues of the thirties, forties and fifties, the way it was played and sung—can never be

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recreated, no matter how many modern blues fanatics rehearse the old songs. Blues is still

relevant, but now more as a reference point within other styles of Black music that it spawned and

not as a predominant style. Blues endures in Black music. It is our musical home. But it is a home

that is always under renovation. It was once said that Black people didn’t have the blues until we

stepped onboard the slave ship. The sound of this ongoing tragedy imprinted itself in the music

and the memories of the people. How could millions of people be stolen from their ancient

civilization and thrown into the belly of the beast and it not matter? How could the experience of a

people who lived the blues not matter?

The blues was the voice of Black people’s lives. It still is. The only difference is that it has

never stood still, it has never stopped evolving and changing. Whatever happened to Black

people, happened in the music. And since Black culture is obsessively fresh, as soon as the new

influence became standard, a new standard was applied. Black music is that tree that is always

growing. Africa is the root, the blues is the trunk and the other styles from jazz to gospel, rock n’

roll and hip-hop are the branches. This is what white people who are always asking, ‘why don’t

Black people play the blues anymore’ simply don’t understand. Many white blues fanatics and

players not only adopt the music, they adopt ‘blues’ ways of dressing and speech in a way that

can seem like a trip down a memory lane that they never really knew or understood. Though

Black culture is fresh and innovative, what white culture is presenting as blues is often no more

than nostalgia for a time they never knew. As one white interviewer once told me, “you recreate

the old blues so well. Don’t you wish you lived in nineteen thirties Mississippi?” My answer: HELL

NO!!! There is a tendency among white blues fans to forget that blues was a reaction to the

brutality Black people experienced daily at the hands of the white power structure. People lived

and died the blues. Though there were good times, the music was a tool to overcome oppression

and depression.

The ‘blues’ was originally an English term for a kind of Black music that included

particular song forms, scales and ways of singing that were alive before the advent of sound

recording. To put it simply, the music existed in Africa and in America long before the white man

called it the blues. They just didn’t know what else to call it. In the early days, white colonials and

their descendants in the United States wrote of the ‘strange’, ‘eerie’, or ‘wild’ sounds the Africans

sung during work, recreation or praise. It frightened them, but they were attracted to it, tantalized

by it. Even the most virulently racist slave-owner or overseer were regular visitors to the Africans’

quarters, to listen to the music and have a ‘good time’. Africans who could play the fiddle well

were favored and hired out by their masters to play for whites. These white people could still

comfortably despise Black people and be mesmerized by their music, all at the same time. This

saga of attraction and repulsion, love and hate, desire and disgust, characterizes white

mainstream America’s perception of Black people, from colonial times to the present day. By

indulging in Black music, by playing it, white people could enjoy all that they love and are

4

attracted to in Black music and at the same time ignore whatever distaste they may have for

Black people. They can adopt the style of Blackness with none of the pain. They can cross the

color line and slip back to comfort and safety before nightfall.

Of course, we are all free to play whatever styles we enjoy playing. Music is truly

universal in the sense that all human beings respond to its language. But saying music is

universal does not mean that all people feel the same piece of music in the same way. It doesn’t

mean that all music is the same. Neither does it mean that anyone can play it in the same way as

those who have a blood connection to the culture. Just as a Chinese man may love to play

mariachi music does not mean that it has the same meaning to him as to a Mexican. Newsflash:

playing and singing the blues are two vastly different things. This is why many very technically

proficient white blues players do not attract large numbers of Black blues fans. Singing, with

Black inflections has traditionally been the primary standard in blues. Early ads promoted singers

who accompanied themselves on the guitar, in the days before the guitar-hero pyrotechnics that

now pass for the blues. There was no such thing as a bluesman who did not sing the blues. Yet

today there are scores of white musicians who have become famous only of for their playing.

They do not sing. But for Back people, the blues is traditionally a vocal craft first and an

instrumental craft second.

The way that Black people sing blues lyrics has been imitated since the first white man

dared to play the music. Many blues fans, Black and white, cringe when they behold some white

blues guitar slinger who twists his face up in his best Black blues voice impression as he plays a

carbon copy performance of “Hoochie-Coochie Man.” There are many players who can play very

well in the style but find it difficult to sing. Many white singers have embarrassed themselves by

serving up cheap imitations of what they think Black vocals should sound like. They seem to

ignore that they also have a voice that can sing. The fingers can imitate riffs on a guitar, but the

voice is much harder to imitate. But isn’t it the voice that makes the blues what it is? Instrumental

blues is entertaining, but the heart of the art form is the singing and the storytelling. The greatest

blues performers were great singers, without exception. Legends like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey,

Louise Johnson, Texas Alexander and literally hundreds of other Black men and women wrote

the rule book on how to sing the blues. While they often did play an instrument, if they did not

sing they could not move a Black audience. The concept of the ‘guitar hero’ is a purely white

introduction into the music, a product of an individualistic culture which is the opposite of the

communal nature of Black music. This is the ‘rock star’ approach where all the credit is given to

the ‘front man.’ This is totally alien to traditional blues where lengthy solos were not common and

the interplay between the players was more important than highlighting one individual.

White people already play blues and many play well in the style. While there are many

singers who have found their voice in the blues style, it will always be an imitation of the real

thing. It is true that because of their love for the music (and the profits that they have made),

5

many white players throughout the years have demonstrated their love of the music with gestures

of acknowledgement of even financial support. When Stevie Ray Vaughn looked at Albert King

during an interview and said he had taught him “everything I know.” Albert King laughed and said

“I taught you everything YOU know. I didn’t teach you everything I know!” Stevie Ray Vaughn

could play some guitar, but he was no Albert King. No one is losing sleep over white people

wanting to play the blues. Playing music is a good thing. The real problem is the claim that culture

and history don’t matter. That the sounds of 400 years of tragedy and triumph make no

difference in the music. Everyone may feel sad in life, but not everyone gets the blues in the

same way as Black folk. This does not mean that white people can’t play the blues. It simply

means that it is not at all the same thing when they sing it. White blues lovers who want to sing

and play in the style should stop trying to sound Black. Keep it real and sing like who you are! Be

true to yourself! Express yourself, not your imitation of someone from another culture. This is

what true artists do. We all have a message, according to who we are. No, we are not all the

same, and that is a very good thing. A white singer can never sing the same songs as a Black

singer and have the songs keep the same meaning. The reverse is also true! Why? Culture.

Black people come in all complexions, so it is not even a question of skin color. Black people in

America have inherited a long history of cultural progress in reaction to real life shit. That shit still

matters. Culture and heritage is the dirt that the blues grows out of. That culture and heritage is

Black. The blues is Black music!

“Can White People Play the Blues?”

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Assignment #5: Comparative Rhetorical Analysis—Essay #1

For the past few weeks, we’ve been learning how strong readers examine the choices authors make and the rhetorical techniques they use so they can better understand various texts. Your last two assignments have asked you to analyze the rhetorical moves authors Ainsley and Harris make in regards to the ideas of artistic appropriation and race, specifically in terms of Black American music and the White artists who perform it. Our class discussions have added to our understanding of these articles as well.

For this assignment, I’d like you to use what you’ve learned about these texts and the rhetorical moves they make to
compare them. You’ll need to use your rhetorical analyses of the articles to make judgments about the relationship between them and of their rhetorical similarities and differences. You may discover that the articles complement one another, are in dialogue with one another or contradict one another. Ultimately, you’ll want to decide which article is more effective rhetorically.

You need to develop a strong
thesis statement for this essay that makes an argument and is not merely an observation. Your comparative thesis statement will present an argument about the articles based on your analysis of their rhetorical strategies. For example: While Article X and Article Y both reach the conclusion that A has a positive impact on B, Article X’s analysis is far deeper and less biased than Article Y which relies more on personal conjecture rather than factual evidence.

When you are comparing two texts, keep in mind that you will be looking at similarities and differences. Language that makes comparison as well as draws out contrast is important to use. Here are some phrases that you may find helpful:

Comparison

along the same lines

in the same way

likewise

similarly

Contrast

although but

by contrast

conversely

even though

however

in contrast

nevertheless

nonetheless

on the contrary

on the other hand

regardless

whereas

while

yet

Your essay should be about four (4) pages in length and should be organized in the following way.

Introduction: You will need to introduce each reading (title, author, genre) and provide a brief

summary of the author’s main point/s. This is also the place to make some general statements about the fundamental differences between the texts. Your introduction should end with your thesis (an argument about the rhetorical effectiveness of the articles based on your analysis of their rhetorical strategies).

Body: Write as many paragraphs as needed to make your argument. You should think of a paragraph as a unit of meaning in that it usually conveys a single idea or concept. Each paragraph should contain a topic sentence that makes an assertion (point) in relation to your thesis statement. Textual evidence in the form of quotes
(this essay should use a minimum of three (3) quotes) needs to be used to justify your claims. Make sure to include your analysis of the quotes in relation to the point you’re trying to make. Use transitional language and phrases to shift from paragraph to paragraph (or point to point).

Conclusion: While the conclusion paragraph/s is usually where you reiterate your thesis and summarize your main points, it can also be a space to reflect on what you’ve learned by writing the essay. You should reflect on the process of writing the essay and how your analysis allowed you to gain a new understanding in addition to restating your thesis and summarizing your main points.

A rough draft of this essay is due February 21st

A final draft of this essay is due on March 2nd