America has a large picture of its History, not only
because of its broad and wide area, but because of all the important events
which took place during the Independence, slavery, segregation, etc. Music has
an important place in the racial history of the United States of America, and
we could recognize several genres which has different kinds of African American
roots, such as soul, blues and jazz. American society has evolved, and they are
aware of all the racism which took place there in the past, so they are
conscious about how delicate is this fact in their history, and I have no doubt
about their absolute respect regarding this situation. However, the importance
of African American music doesn’t have all the recognition it deserves, because
several contemporary musicians are not aware about their influence, either
direct or indirect, never less important.
African American history has a lot of awkward phases,
which have determined the way people see life, and that was perfectly expressed
through music. The way people use art to express their feelings is a very
common one, and probably writing music and making it is a good way to capture
in words a situation, in this way, sorrow, suffering, and maybe joy or hope.
African American people have expressed their history composing songs which
belong to genres (now commonly recognized) such as blues or jazz, but they have
influenced different kind of artists like Elvis and The Rolling Stones, who we
could easily label as rock artists. Music has evolved, and African American
music has its own place in our History, even if we don’t have any clue about
this kind of roots. We’re involved into something bigger than us, and this
entry's objective is to illustrate a little bit how African American music has
its own influence on almost everything we listen to, no matter if the artist is
black or white.
I will take as a reference the Top 10 Billboard chart,
regarding the pop genre, which could be commonly considered as white
music. The top songs on the Billboard charts are a clear reference about what
is America listening to, so this information is a good way to make the analysis
about the real roots.
At first, we could take a look at May 17th week’s top pop
songs chart, as I still keep in my mind a white man commentary about pop music:
“white music is anything on a top 40 radio station that suburban teenagers
listen to” on a iamOTHER video from
his channel on Youtube, called Stereotypes
– what color is your music?. Is that commentary the common notion about pop
music? Is this guy just being ignorant? I don’t care, because even though white
people know or not the roots of the music they listen to, I will confirm that
African American music has more influence that we can see with a naked eye.
This is important, so you can check the 4:50 minute:
This guy's opinion is extremely wrong, because we are going to see that African American music means a lot to the Pop genre.
The most important pop song on the chart is Just give me a reason, performed by
Pink, featuring Nate Ruess. Pink considers that her most representative
influence lays on Madonna and Janis Joplin: both white. However, there is a
remarkable and doubtless African American indirect root: Janis Joplin’s musical
influences,
who are all black ladies (Aretha Franklin, Bessie Smith, Big Mama Thornton and
Billie Holiday). As we can see, with a naked eye it would be impossible to
spot, but the most important pop song wouldn’t probably rise to the top without
the power of African American music on Janis Joplin’s work. It would be tedious if I analyze song by song,
so I will just highlight important cases, such as Rihanna (second place with Stay), who is an African American artist
(only white music on the top 40? Really?), and there’s nothing more to explain:
she has risen to the top pop charts, with direct African American roots.
 |
| Rihanna, white music performer, according to this guy |
Maybe we wouldn’t ever know about this female artist
if she wouldn’t listen to Aaliyah, Janet Jackson, or Toni Braxton, all African
American ladies, and all R&B or Soul artists. These songs are followed by
other hits performed by Bruno Mars (R&B by Keith Sweat and Jodeci),
Macklemore (white American rapper, directly influenced by Nas, or Freestyle
Fellowship, both hip hop artists) and Maroon 5 (Direct influences with Prince,
Stevie Wonder or Al Green). As we can see, excluding some exceptions (Icona Pop
and Krewella gained force because EDM has got an ascendant acceptance in American
society nowadays), African American music presence on the top charts of pop
music is remarkable and inevitable, because even if these artists are not aware
about this kind of roots, they exist. Maybe this white guy from the video needs
to take a look on this charts, and he will absolutely change his mind about his
“white music” idea, because the trends of pop show that black people have
helped almost every artist to get there in an inspirational way, and part of
the pop success needs to be conceded to African American music. In addition,
the King of pop himself was African American, so half of the throne is occupied by a black guy, nothing more to explain there.
No comments:
Post a Comment