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Not Dead Yet
Jul. 15th, 2008 10:18 pmIt was all over the news, these last few weeks: Jay-Z was at Glastonbury Festival. I first heard of it in a little radio story where Jay-Z denounced some racist comments made by some fans and apparently other artists, as well. Which is all well and good. Fair enough to puzzle over the inclusion of a very popular but mediocre hip-hop star in the year's biggest intentional-hippie-vibe festival, but don't be a goddamn racist about it.
Then I learned, from this week's New Statesman, that he was brought in for racist reasons in the first place. "I don't understand the music," said Michael Eavis, the Festival's founder and director, but "I was very keen on the Obama thing . . . With [Barack] Obama coming through in America it seemed very appropriate to have a black fella headline Glastonbury." In other words, 'that Obama's so hot right now, and he's black. Black music = hip-hop, so let's get in some hip-hop fella to show how down with the kids we are. Who? Well, I don't know that much about it, but how about that Jay-Z? I've heard of him, so we know he's popular -- they'll love him!'
It is deeply, disturbingly, and, worst, seemingly unconsciously racist. It is much more disturbing, to me, than the (apparently) racist comments of Oasis member Noel Gallagher, that "Glastonbury has a tradition of guitar music . . . I'm not having hip-hop at Glastonbury. It's wrong" -- which the article describes as "denouncing the lack of Anglo-Saxon rock in the top slot".
Now, admittedly, I didn't see the interview the NS is pulling that quote from, and maybe he did bemoan the lack of 'Anglo-Saxon' rock elsewhere therein. But I am still concerned by the characterisation of rock as 'white' and hip-hop as 'black'. Even acknowledging the tendencies of genres to split up along racial lines, to characterise an entire genre as belonging to a particular race seems like a throwback to the bad old days when WASPish suburban parents would fearfully warn their pleat-skirted teenage daughters of the dangers of 'black music' (a scene played out, again and again, in the subtext of almost every new parental advisory warning controversy).
But simply to acknowledge that the festival has a history of playing a certain type of music, and to denounce the inclusion of a completely different sort of artist as a headliner, is not in itself racist. Certainly not as racist as giving Jay-Z the slot solely on the basis of his skin colour in the first place. And to choose Jay-Z of all people. It's sickeningly ignorant. If he wanted someone black, why not Ben Harper? He's totally got the hippie vibe. Or if he wanted a rapper, why not one of the many, y'know, talented, political types, who rap about stuff that people who go to Glastonbury Festival might care about, instead of some pop-chart blingman who just happens to be popular enough that even middle-aged former hippies have heard of him?
And then there's the Obama thing. What the hell? I mean, seriously, what the hell? Eavis wanted a hip-hopping black 'fella' for a headliner because of Obama? Obama, who has no connection whatsoever to hip-hop, rap, or anything like it -- his out-of-touch placement in relation to that culture evidenced, first, by the fact that he appeared on Ellen in the first place, but even more by entrance thereon, doing the white-boy shuffle. Obama, who has been multiply accused of being 'not black enough'. That Obama? Get real, Eavis. Get a fucking clue, and get with the times.
. . .
Such as they are. Yesterday, The Guardian ran a story about how ethereal identity politics are clouding over the real issues in this eleciton. The article talks about how press focus on race and gender and the courting of ever more specific groups within the electorate are distracting us from more immediate issues, like the war[s] and the [flagging] economy, which are so much more distressing, calling our collective refocusing a 'pleasant sabbatical from reality'.
The criticism has some merit, but although news coverage has focused quite a lot on the race-and-gender thing, especially during the primaries, that doesn't mean that the press is entirely ignoring the real issues. According to my just-now search of The Guardian's website, they have run 29 stories mentioning Obama in the last two days, of which only about a third seem to be about his image -- which may be more than average anyway, given the recent controversy over the cover of the New Yorker, a cartoon satirising the popular right-wing perception of Obama.
The fact is, Mr Hope and Change has done an about-face on all these nitty-gritty 'reality' issues, zipping so far and so fast to the right that our collective heads are spinning. It's breaking my heart, and even more completely, it's breaking what little hope I had left for a political solution to, well, just about anything. There's nothing left for me in politics. Nothing. The ironic thing is that all last year I defended Obama over Hillary Clinton on the basis that she was a turncoat, having been so liberal in the early nineties before slipping further and further towards the centre-right, the political hyperbola of the highest power and the lowest convictions. Now I'll eat my words, and my spleen, and work for real change in the real world -- outside of the nether-world of politics.
Then I learned, from this week's New Statesman, that he was brought in for racist reasons in the first place. "I don't understand the music," said Michael Eavis, the Festival's founder and director, but "I was very keen on the Obama thing . . . With [Barack] Obama coming through in America it seemed very appropriate to have a black fella headline Glastonbury." In other words, 'that Obama's so hot right now, and he's black. Black music = hip-hop, so let's get in some hip-hop fella to show how down with the kids we are. Who? Well, I don't know that much about it, but how about that Jay-Z? I've heard of him, so we know he's popular -- they'll love him!'
It is deeply, disturbingly, and, worst, seemingly unconsciously racist. It is much more disturbing, to me, than the (apparently) racist comments of Oasis member Noel Gallagher, that "Glastonbury has a tradition of guitar music . . . I'm not having hip-hop at Glastonbury. It's wrong" -- which the article describes as "denouncing the lack of Anglo-Saxon rock in the top slot".
Now, admittedly, I didn't see the interview the NS is pulling that quote from, and maybe he did bemoan the lack of 'Anglo-Saxon' rock elsewhere therein. But I am still concerned by the characterisation of rock as 'white' and hip-hop as 'black'. Even acknowledging the tendencies of genres to split up along racial lines, to characterise an entire genre as belonging to a particular race seems like a throwback to the bad old days when WASPish suburban parents would fearfully warn their pleat-skirted teenage daughters of the dangers of 'black music' (a scene played out, again and again, in the subtext of almost every new parental advisory warning controversy).
But simply to acknowledge that the festival has a history of playing a certain type of music, and to denounce the inclusion of a completely different sort of artist as a headliner, is not in itself racist. Certainly not as racist as giving Jay-Z the slot solely on the basis of his skin colour in the first place. And to choose Jay-Z of all people. It's sickeningly ignorant. If he wanted someone black, why not Ben Harper? He's totally got the hippie vibe. Or if he wanted a rapper, why not one of the many, y'know, talented, political types, who rap about stuff that people who go to Glastonbury Festival might care about, instead of some pop-chart blingman who just happens to be popular enough that even middle-aged former hippies have heard of him?
And then there's the Obama thing. What the hell? I mean, seriously, what the hell? Eavis wanted a hip-hopping black 'fella' for a headliner because of Obama? Obama, who has no connection whatsoever to hip-hop, rap, or anything like it -- his out-of-touch placement in relation to that culture evidenced, first, by the fact that he appeared on Ellen in the first place, but even more by entrance thereon, doing the white-boy shuffle. Obama, who has been multiply accused of being 'not black enough'. That Obama? Get real, Eavis. Get a fucking clue, and get with the times.
. . .
Such as they are. Yesterday, The Guardian ran a story about how ethereal identity politics are clouding over the real issues in this eleciton. The article talks about how press focus on race and gender and the courting of ever more specific groups within the electorate are distracting us from more immediate issues, like the war[s] and the [flagging] economy, which are so much more distressing, calling our collective refocusing a 'pleasant sabbatical from reality'.
The criticism has some merit, but although news coverage has focused quite a lot on the race-and-gender thing, especially during the primaries, that doesn't mean that the press is entirely ignoring the real issues. According to my just-now search of The Guardian's website, they have run 29 stories mentioning Obama in the last two days, of which only about a third seem to be about his image -- which may be more than average anyway, given the recent controversy over the cover of the New Yorker, a cartoon satirising the popular right-wing perception of Obama.
The fact is, Mr Hope and Change has done an about-face on all these nitty-gritty 'reality' issues, zipping so far and so fast to the right that our collective heads are spinning. It's breaking my heart, and even more completely, it's breaking what little hope I had left for a political solution to, well, just about anything. There's nothing left for me in politics. Nothing. The ironic thing is that all last year I defended Obama over Hillary Clinton on the basis that she was a turncoat, having been so liberal in the early nineties before slipping further and further towards the centre-right, the political hyperbola of the highest power and the lowest convictions. Now I'll eat my words, and my spleen, and work for real change in the real world -- outside of the nether-world of politics.
