BBC Radio 1 DJ MistaJam brought up the recurrent topic today on his blog. We’ve all been moaning about the word ‘urban’ being used as a sweeping term to cover pretty much every genre of ‘black music’ for years. Whether we’re appeased by the race-less term or incensed by its broad sweeping generalisation, we don’t seem able to conclude on a better alternative… MistaJam explores these aspects and more in his article.
WOT DO WE CALL IT?
I’ve been meaning to pose this question for a while. As we’re still near the start of a new year, I feel it’s a good time to nail this.
When it’s called ‘Black music’ some people get very touchy with the obvious racial connotations. While ‘Black music’ is culturally and historically correct, some people feel calling it ‘Black music’ is too alienating, claiming that the term can be taken as only black people can make or listen to it. If I had £1 for each time someone has text into a 1Xtra or Radio 1 radio show I’ve hosted, claiming that I’m being ‘racist’ when I’ve referred to the music I’m playing as ‘Black music’, I could buy a house in London. For cash.
‘Urban music’ as a term (according to Wikipedia which as we know never lies) was apparently coined by Legendary New York DJ Frankie Crocker in the mid 1970’s to explain the “eclectic blend” of music he played on his shows. The term was then adopted by major corporations (record labels, TV & radio stations etc…) in the late 90’s as the term for HipHop, R&B, Garage and Drum & Bass as it was easier for them to mass market. As such, ‘Urban music’ as a term these days conjurers up images of bling, artifice and commercialism and is used less as a term of endearment & a brand of quality and more as a disrespectful term for disposable music. Plus what about those suburban people who make, enjoy and support the music?
Yes, we could easily just use genre names to describe the music however if I were to say break down every genre, sub genre and sub sub genre I play on my radio shows, it could easily take me over 2 minutes just to list them. A good shorthand umbrella term such as ‘Pop’ or ‘Rock’ or ‘Dance’ is what’s needed (although you could argue there’s very little difference between ‘Urban’ and ‘Dance’ these days…)
So what do we call it in 2010? I’ve been thinking for a while and I keep drawing blanks but I definitely think we need a new term. An easy all encompassing short hand term to easily explain the mix of genres we like that doesn’t alienate anyone.
What do you think? Do we need a new term? Do people need to stop being touchy about ‘Black music’? Is ‘Urban music’ the best we can do?
Read the original blog post here at mistajam.com/2010/01/10/wot-do-we-call-it/
Follow @MistaJam on Twitter!
This is good for Birmingham UK, Pogus Caesar and Punch join forces!
Muzik Kinda Sweet is a special limited edition book by Pogus Caesar celebrating iconic black musicans. Specially commissioned by Punch, the remarkable photographs selected from OOM Gallery Archive feature largely unpublished images of musical legends including Stevie Wonder, Grace Jones and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.
* Having been at the opening night of Caesar’s exhibition at Fazeley Studios, I’m sure the book will be a slow burn winner.. look out for Dennis Brown at Alpha Tower and Lynden David Hall in Aston.
As a person of West African descent I quite happily object to the term ‘black’ music. I have issues with the broad political sweep of the term ‘black’ in general not least because of the fallacious assumption of a single ‘black’ identity/culture or that, like the term ‘white’, its physiologically inaccurate and has dubious historical origins. In a word – much like most labels it’s plain old lazy. A lot of it stems from the binary attitude towards racial politics across the pond. To use the age-old example does a foray into rock mean a brown artist has therefore crossed-over to making ‘white’ music, whatever that is? Does the label change with the ethnicity of its user?
With all of it’s shortcomings I have much less of a problem with the term ‘Urban music’ because its more neutral. I think at the turn of the decade the real question is less ‘what’ than why; why Western civilisation is so pre-occupied with labels in the first place? Of course, on occasion, they have their use but its all too often a ready recourse of the occidental world to pigeon-hole people, music, films, books and their authors etc. Its mainly for cynical, capitalist-driven marketing purposes or to perpetuate racial or cultural stereotypes. So perhaps instead we should re-evaluate, maybe not our need or use of labels entirely, but at least how frequently we use them. What about artists who straddle genres or just don’t fit neatly into any of the existing ones (Portico Quartet and Sade come to mind, Andre 3000 at his most experimental does as well)? A label-averse mindset would save us a lot of hassle and missed-opportunity. If we avoided compartamentalising people, the arts and literature unless absolutely necessary, I think we’d afford labels less importance and if pressed, we’d use more accurate terms. Perhaps going through the long-winded process of listing all musical genres played on this radio show is a good practice…At least that way the DJ would do it sparingly and allow the listener to make up their own mind if the shows content is for them or not or decide whether they even care what genre it’s called or not. People tend to make up their minds once they hear or see a label before they’ve even sampled whats being labelled. Maybe we’d keep a more open mind if it wasn’t made so easy for us to do otherwise by presumptuous branding.
Shalom x