Our Black Rock Roots and Wings

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By Eisa Nefertari Ulen, published in The Defenders Online, November 18th, 2009

Rock and Roll is falsely thought of as white music—and not just by white people. Black folk have tended to identify Rock and Roll with the other side of the color line, leaving Black Rock in a ridiculously marginal place. Instead of occupying the center of the Rock and Roll scene, black rock artists are too likely to be considered too alternative, too different, too weird to achieve the kind of mass market success of white bands.

But Rock and Roll music is black music, comes from black blues, and belongs on the continuum stretching back to Africa and forward to hip-hop. Indeed, to “rock and roll” is the early 20th century equivalent of “getting’ busy,” or “knockin’ boots—an African-American colloquial euphemism for sex.

Black Rock is alive and growing today, in books as well as music, and in the blogosphere.

In Alice Walker’s novel, Nineteen Fifty-Five, the protagonist, Gracie Mae “Little Mamma” Still, is a sister who gets beat out of her last chance to win in the music game by an emotionally needy white male singer, Traynor, and his crafty, nameless handler.

With his “real dark white skin,” and appearance on TV later in the short story “looking half asleep from the neck up, but kind of awake in a nasty way from the waist down,” the thinly-disguised Traynor is obviously based on Elvis “The King” Presley. But fewer readers can name and claim the chunky, black, broke female narrator, whose first person voice, and the soul force it comes from, are two of only a few really powerful things she’s got.

In real life, Little Mamma Still is Big Mamma Thornton, the sister who actually gifted the world one of the most ubiquitous Rock and Roll songs, one wrongly thought to have originated in the bosom of whiteness and accredited to the King’s creativity since the 1950s: The Man Most Imitated in Vegas’ signature ditty was not his own tune. It was a re-recording of Big Mamma Thornton’s lament on male underachievement, Hound Dog. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XUAg1_A7IE

In Walker’s narrative, the Elvis character visits “Mamma” regularly, each time in a fancier car, but with a heavier heart. Guilt and soullessness compel him to take what become pilgrimages, a real search for meaning and absolution. Traynor seeks to purge his soul as he revisits this ordinary woman with an extraordinary voice. She emerges from her own life disappointments with soul intact, goddess-like in her ability to forgive, fertile, and sexy. The Cadillac, farm, and house he buys her are alms, zakat, offerings to the Church of Black Sound.

Read on one level, Walker’s Nineteen Fifty-Five is a story about the theft of black culture. But it’s also a powerful example of the oft-forgotten depth, breadth and diversity of black musical and creative expressions and appetites.

Rob Fields, Black Rock blogger and former Public Relations Director for the Black Rock Coalition, says that, “I always found it odd that I’d get to know some phenomenal musicians and always wonder why they weren’t getting more support from black folks. Because the obvious audience for these black musicians—given that rock is black music— is black people.” Fields says he realized the key wasn’t to market to consumers, but rather to provide context and content so people unfamiliar with Black Rock “can orient themselves and begin to discover the things that they like.”

He created an online community, www.BoldAsLove.com to connect with folk who, like him, “always had a broad range of music interests.” One fan is journalist, author and novelist, Farai Chideya http://www.faraichideya.com/projects/books/. A self-confessed club kid in her 20s, Chideya says she believes that “some of the best creativity of my life was spurred by observing, say, how the drag queens of the early 90s reinvented themselves and dealt with being part of different communities (including black and Latino), or how Grace Jones blended West Indian culture with art and New Wave.”

“At the same time, I was also part of the hip-hop circle, interviewing The Fugees when they released their first album (talked to them in Lauryn Hill’s dorm room at Columbia!).” Chideya thinks that “being a part of those overlapping circles in the 90s and early 00s shaped who I am, heightened my appreciation of music, and also my understanding of human nature.”

Chideya’s recently-published debut novel, Kiss the Sky, is about pop-alt-rock singer Sophie “Sky” Lee, a character Chideya says “is what you might call an ‘eclectic Negro.’” A Baltimore-bred, Harvard-educated sister who started an indie rock band with her former husband and is caught in a love triangle with him and her new manager, Sky fits perfectly into the Black Rock scene.

Chideya’s book has a 90 song playlist, and, like Fields’ work with the Black Rock Coalition and BoldAsLove.com, brings alternative culture to the center. Fields and Chideya aim to celebrate and create art. While neither of them focus their talents on attempting to right historic wrongs regarding black music and culture, both end up helping to do just that with their work.

Certainly both know the struggle of black rockers. “Institutional racism played a big part” in that struggle, Fields says. “The whitewashing of black music. Take Hound Dog http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5JALwwaASg for example. Big Mamma Thornton recorded that in 1952. The song topped the R&B charts for 7 weeks. Elvis re-recorded it in 1955, performed it on the Milton Berle show, and the rest is history.”

Chideya acknowledges this whitewashing but adds that “it was partly a robbery and partly black Americans moving on to the next thing. We are addicted to ‘next,’ in art because of musical innovation… and partly because if you are part of a specific culture with specific boundaries (like race) pushing you together, you want to be able to self-identify culturally, and music is a great way to do that.” Chideya says there is always a moment when “‘in’ music becomes ‘all’ music,” citing DJ Rekha, for example, who “was spinning Bhangra for over a decade before Hip Hop discovered how hot South Asian beats were.”

Fields acknowledges this cultural blending. Certain rock bands, like Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones, have been so inspired by black music and, as British bands, have given “the black bluesman props,” Fields says, so that musician and historian Mark Levine has argued that Led Zep is, “at its core, a black band.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-levine/led-zeppelin-need-to-come_b_158061.html

Fields adds that “their global success far overshadowed the longevity and careers of the black musicians who inspired them, so it’s easy for successive generations to forget the originators. [However], it was an entire system that devalued black creativity and expression. Many black folks remember hearing that Elvis said something to the effect that the only thing a black man was good for was shining his shoes. So, yes, in the words of Chuck D, he was ‘racist and plain.’”

The mothers and fathers of Rock and Roll, are Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, Big Mamma Thornton, Etta James, LaVern Baker, and Ruth Brown, says Fields.

While Fields knows his history, he is, like Chideya, focused on now and next. “It’s an exciting time for the music I call Black Rock,” Fields says. “Socially, Hip Hop has lost its way. Its limited subject matter came to define a generation and, as Brown professor Tricia Rose notes, the limits of a generation’s creativity. The limited subject matter and limited modes of expression were really oppressing people. So much so, that there’s a growing group of people who aren’t even listening to the radio. They’re searching for music that provides more musical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual sustenance. In many cases they’ve found it in Black Rock.”

Fields is excited about the many scenes for people to get into, including Afro-punk, Ghetto Metal, URB Alt, and the scene around the Black Rock Coalition. http://www.boldaslove.us/2009/04/247-spyz-earl-greyhound-others-headline-brc-residency-in-nyc-starting-53.html

Perhaps this resurgence in Black Rock is in some part a consequence of the recession. After all, Hip Hop was born out of the disenfranchisement of the 1970s and early 1980s, the first Golden Age of Hip Hop, and the power and creativity of P-Funk came out of that same socio-economic condition. Similarly, both Hip Hop and P-Funk, with all their bold audaciousness, emerged from the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, and other movements for significant shifts in social power. Likewise, this current resurgence in Black Rock might be fueled in some measure by not only the world economic downturn but also the fresh optimism of the Obama campaign and presidency. Perhaps people are realigning their own personal sense of who they are and what they can do.

This is the experience of Sky, Chideya’ s protagonist. It is also the hope that Fields expresses: “This generation of 20-somethings, with their attitudes about races, gender, and sexuality being different from the Boomers, I’m hoping that there’s room for change. I think you’re certainly seeing it in what looks like a growing number of multi-racial bands.” Fields notes that Brooklyn band TV on the Radio’s Dear Science was voted album of the year by both Rolling Stone and Spin.

“It’s an exciting time for Black Rock,” Fields says. “Hundreds of bands are out there and in all different flavors, so there’s something for everyone. From the hardcore punk, screaming metal thrash sounds, to sweet and melodic, to experimental and electronic. As friend and NYU anthropologist Maureen Mahon says, Black Rock continues to show the diversity of black interests and preoccupations.”

Like Walker, Fields and Chideya celebrate the creativity of black culture with words and sound. They teamed to “cross-pollinate,” as Fields calls it, “mixing music and books: Expose the book people to some cool music and expose the music folks to a cool book.” At a recent BoldAsLove.com event where Chideya read from Kiss the Sky, musicians California King, Shelley Nicole’s blakbushe, The Smyrk, and Pollen performed.

Next year will mark the 25th anniversary of The Black Rock Coalition. Prepare to hear more about the state of Black Rock by joining Fields’ online community and reading Chideya’s book. In the meantime, spend your stimulus check on the artists Chideya and Fields list as some of the best in Black Sound:

Side: The Black Rock Movement

Fields says, “Everything’s a continuum. But bassist Melvin Gibbs has suggested at least four “eras” of Black rock.

Era 1 would be originators Chuck Berry, Ike Turner, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Muddy Waters, some Howlin’ Wolf.

Era 2 Hendrix & the Psychedelic Funk Explosion, Funkadelic, Mandrill, Edwin Birdsong, Bar-Kays, etc.

Era 3 Black rock Coalition Era, roughly 85-95: Living Colour, Nona Hendryx, Tina Turner, 24-7 Spyz, Lenny Kravitz, Prince, Fishbone, Body Count, The Family Stand, Me’Shell N’Degeocello, etc.

Era 4 Afropunk/ATL rockers: Bands in the Afropunk movie, cody ChestnuTT, David Ryan Harris, Skunk Anansie/Skin

Era 5: Today: TV On The Radio, Gnarls Barkley, Santogold, Janelle Monae, Earl Greyhound, Lightspeed Champion, etc.”

Side: Personal Playlist

(If you were stranded on a desert island…)

Chideya’s Picks:

“I am in the process of uploading a full, 90 song playlist from Kiss the Sky to iTunes, but here are a few of the songs from that playlist that qualify for desert island status. In no particular order…”

  • Nine Inch Nails, Closer, dirty, but/and heartfelt
  • Glenn Gould, Variation 1 and The Negro National Anthem
  • Soundgarden, Black Hole Sun, “Also a favorite of Michael Eric Dyson”
  • Peter Gabriel, Don’t Give Up
  • Oliver Mtukudzi, Mutserendende

Fields’ Picks:

  • The Family Stand, The Education of Jamie
  • Living Colour, Cult of Personality
  • Jimi Hendrix, Machine Gun
  • Joe Henderson, Idle Moments
  • Muthawit, It’ll Make You Feel Better
  • TV On The Radio, Love Dog
  • Van Hunt, Suspicion (She Knows Me Too Well)

Side: Next in Black Rock

Fields’ Picks:

  • TV On The Radio. Brooklyn indie rock darlings
  • BLK JKS: Rock thru a South African prism
  • Janelle Monae: Cybergirl gives a great performance every time she hits the stage.
  • Game Rebellion: Gets my vote for the best hip hop/rock combo out there. A tight band fronted by a dope MC.
  • Earl Greyhound: Southern Rock power trio
  • The Smyrk: If John Legend ever made a rock record, he might sound as good as this band’s lead singer, Doron Flake.
  • Honeychild Coleman: The Diana Ross of shoegaze
  • Shelley Nicole’s blaKbüshe. Funk rock
  • California KingP Indie soul crooners.
  • The Family Stand: Still in the game and their upcoming album, Definition, is off the hook!
  • Tamar-kali: There is such power and beauty in her voice. She was featured in James Spooner’s film Afro-punk and calls her music Geechee Goddess Hardcore Warrior Soul.
  • Muthawit. The Fielder family is like the Marsalises of the black alt set: AJ’ s a noted cinematographer, Tim’s an illustrator, Jim’s a videographer. But it’s Boston who’s got this voice dripping with Mississippi richness. With this band Muthawit, he moves through funk, soul, jazz and rock with ease.
  • V.V. Brown: Indie doo-wop from the UK
  • Martin Luther: Rebel soul rocker.

Eisa Nefertari Ulen is the author of Crystelle Mourning and a founding member of RingShout: A Place for Black Literature. She lives with her husband and son in Brooklyn. www.EisaUlen.com