Echoes of the Past, Part 2
I have a constitutional resistance to saying things that other people have already said. Which is really the only reason why I haven’t posted yet about how great Mark Anthony Neal is. So I was gratified to see that he referenced this blog in a recent post of his (June 8, if you're reading this after he's updated):
Now understand, I have a personal stake in this. As I suggested in my review of Common’s BE—my relationship with hip-hop is no longer about how much I enjoy the beats and the rhymes—I’m having real issues about the legacy of this culture. For the record, I can appreciate my man Joe Schloss’s reminder that hip-hop is comprised of five elements and that much of the commentary about hip-hop, like my other man Marc Lamont Hill’s lament that hip-hop sucks, is too focused on the music. But we also have to acknowledge that no matter how vibrant the DJ, break-dance, and graffiti scenes might be, they remain insular sub-cultures that will never have the impact that the music has—the lindy-hop might have been the thing that broke down race relations in the 1940s, but it was the music—Be-Bop—that brought folks together in the first place. The most visible and lasting legacy of hip-hop will be maintained via the music, in part because music has been the primary conduit for black expressivity, often taking on, as Tate suggests, extra-musical attributes rendering the music as a form of literature, cinema, etc. Say what you want about hip-hop culture in 2005, but there’s little doubt that rap music is still primarly informed by black musical sensibilities (though I’m willing to be challenged by O-Dub’s insights on Cali’s Filipino DJs.).
I don’t actually disagree with any of this. Moreover, upon reflection, I will admit that, to some degree at least, my focus on the subcultural elements of hip-hop is an attempt to redeem my dissatisfaction with the state of rap music. Also, with regard to that last sentence of Neal's: I like Imani Perry’s argument that hip-hop is Black music because it is considered Black music by most Americans. I find that elegant, true and not in conflict with any number of specific arguments we could make about the origins of various elements of hip-hop’s sensibility in non-or-partially-non-African-American cultures.
He continues:
I thought hard about the current state of hip-hop as I re-read this passage in Tate’s book. Specifically I wondered where were the oppositional figures in hip-hop?—those "marginal" figures who are endowed with the responsibility of telling our truths, especially when we don’t want to hear them…. What I want to know, is where is hip-hop’s theory of intersectionality? Where is hip-hop’s Bayard Rustin? Where is hip-hop’s George S. Schuyler? Where is hip-hop’s Audre Lorde? In other words where are those folk in hip-hop that we will banish the far recesses of our consciousness because they made us uncomfortable and forced us to think and respond to the things we never want to talk about.
Well, as Bob Dylan once said, "We always did see things the same, we just saw’em from a different point of view." In 1987, when I became really interested in it, hip-hop was Black alternative music. What I mean by this is that - in my memory at least - Black people who were involved in hip-hop were considered a little weird by other Black people. I think in certain ways this allowed those of us white folks who were around at the time to make an end-run around some of the more obvious Black/white issues. Being into hip-hop didn’t necessarily mean that you were trying to be Black, because hip-hop didn’t represent what it meant to be Black in the first place (at least, in the opinion of most Black people that I encountered at the time). It was more like being into other aspects of Black culture that most white folks didn’t know about; it just meant that you were strange. Just like you wouldn’t say: "Oh, there goes another one of those white kids that’s into bid whist", or "I’m sick of all these white dudes joining the Moorish Science Temple", you wouldn’t make assumptions about a white kid into hip-hop, because there weren’t really any obvious ones to make. OK, maybe I’m overstating the case a little, but that was basically the vibe that I remember.
Similarly, it also meant that hip-hoppers (and MCs in particular) came "pre-marginalized". That is, the issue of whether they would represent a mainstream point of view within the Black community was moot, because they never really had that option to begin with. In a weird way, I think that is what many of us of a certain age miss. Things that would never happen today - a hardcore street group like EPMD shouting out their alma mater (Southern Connecticut State University), for example – happened all the time. People represented the reality of their point of view because there really wasn’t any other viable option. So I guess what I’m saying is that maybe it is the mainstream success of hip-hop itself that renders that dynamic inoperable. If the things we all want are going to happen, they will necessarily have to happen in a different way...
Or like the M.A.N. says:
Perhaps this is just the final realization, that instead of hoping that hip-hop will save the world, perhaps this nearly 40-something hip-hop head needs to start doing the work of Bayard Rustin, Kimberle Crenshaw and Audre Lorde and leave it to the younger cats to hold hip-hop accountable.
Now understand, I have a personal stake in this. As I suggested in my review of Common’s BE—my relationship with hip-hop is no longer about how much I enjoy the beats and the rhymes—I’m having real issues about the legacy of this culture. For the record, I can appreciate my man Joe Schloss’s reminder that hip-hop is comprised of five elements and that much of the commentary about hip-hop, like my other man Marc Lamont Hill’s lament that hip-hop sucks, is too focused on the music. But we also have to acknowledge that no matter how vibrant the DJ, break-dance, and graffiti scenes might be, they remain insular sub-cultures that will never have the impact that the music has—the lindy-hop might have been the thing that broke down race relations in the 1940s, but it was the music—Be-Bop—that brought folks together in the first place. The most visible and lasting legacy of hip-hop will be maintained via the music, in part because music has been the primary conduit for black expressivity, often taking on, as Tate suggests, extra-musical attributes rendering the music as a form of literature, cinema, etc. Say what you want about hip-hop culture in 2005, but there’s little doubt that rap music is still primarly informed by black musical sensibilities (though I’m willing to be challenged by O-Dub’s insights on Cali’s Filipino DJs.).
I don’t actually disagree with any of this. Moreover, upon reflection, I will admit that, to some degree at least, my focus on the subcultural elements of hip-hop is an attempt to redeem my dissatisfaction with the state of rap music. Also, with regard to that last sentence of Neal's: I like Imani Perry’s argument that hip-hop is Black music because it is considered Black music by most Americans. I find that elegant, true and not in conflict with any number of specific arguments we could make about the origins of various elements of hip-hop’s sensibility in non-or-partially-non-African-American cultures.
He continues:
I thought hard about the current state of hip-hop as I re-read this passage in Tate’s book. Specifically I wondered where were the oppositional figures in hip-hop?—those "marginal" figures who are endowed with the responsibility of telling our truths, especially when we don’t want to hear them…. What I want to know, is where is hip-hop’s theory of intersectionality? Where is hip-hop’s Bayard Rustin? Where is hip-hop’s George S. Schuyler? Where is hip-hop’s Audre Lorde? In other words where are those folk in hip-hop that we will banish the far recesses of our consciousness because they made us uncomfortable and forced us to think and respond to the things we never want to talk about.
Well, as Bob Dylan once said, "We always did see things the same, we just saw’em from a different point of view." In 1987, when I became really interested in it, hip-hop was Black alternative music. What I mean by this is that - in my memory at least - Black people who were involved in hip-hop were considered a little weird by other Black people. I think in certain ways this allowed those of us white folks who were around at the time to make an end-run around some of the more obvious Black/white issues. Being into hip-hop didn’t necessarily mean that you were trying to be Black, because hip-hop didn’t represent what it meant to be Black in the first place (at least, in the opinion of most Black people that I encountered at the time). It was more like being into other aspects of Black culture that most white folks didn’t know about; it just meant that you were strange. Just like you wouldn’t say: "Oh, there goes another one of those white kids that’s into bid whist", or "I’m sick of all these white dudes joining the Moorish Science Temple", you wouldn’t make assumptions about a white kid into hip-hop, because there weren’t really any obvious ones to make. OK, maybe I’m overstating the case a little, but that was basically the vibe that I remember.
Similarly, it also meant that hip-hoppers (and MCs in particular) came "pre-marginalized". That is, the issue of whether they would represent a mainstream point of view within the Black community was moot, because they never really had that option to begin with. In a weird way, I think that is what many of us of a certain age miss. Things that would never happen today - a hardcore street group like EPMD shouting out their alma mater (Southern Connecticut State University), for example – happened all the time. People represented the reality of their point of view because there really wasn’t any other viable option. So I guess what I’m saying is that maybe it is the mainstream success of hip-hop itself that renders that dynamic inoperable. If the things we all want are going to happen, they will necessarily have to happen in a different way...
Or like the M.A.N. says:
Perhaps this is just the final realization, that instead of hoping that hip-hop will save the world, perhaps this nearly 40-something hip-hop head needs to start doing the work of Bayard Rustin, Kimberle Crenshaw and Audre Lorde and leave it to the younger cats to hold hip-hop accountable.
posted by Joe Twist at 2:59 PM
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