I want to use this column to continue the discussion from my last column, which examined if music was indeed a colorized sphere.
I had the opportunity to attend The Weekend concert in Memphis last Thursday. For those who don’t know about the artist, Abel Tesfaye has been relatively anonymous until recently when popular emo-rapper Drake featured him on several songs of his Take Care album. Tesfaye has a mellow, and often dark, tone to his music, but people love it.
As the show opened, a spectrum of green, red, and blue lights bounced off the crowd, and each individuals’ declarations of love to The Weekend was drowned in high-pitched screams.
The sight was beautiful. I couldn’t differentiate the person standing next to me from the other. It was simply a group of people enjoying a mellow artist with a good show.
Today, music might be heading towards a realistic identity as a unifying medium between all people thanks to shift in priorities in society.
Historically, music was known to be a divider — a certain way to give minorities an identity and a way for them to express their woes about the troubles of society.
Hip-hop appeared in the 1970s among blacks and Latinos in New York, and has evolved into an entire culture beyond the music. Often, artists in this genre share stories of drug dealing and strife living in the inner city as an outlet from the hardships in society. Vh1 featured a documentary about the 1992 LA Riots and how hip-hop was influenced by the racial tensions between the Los Angeles Police Department and inner city blacks.
Until recently, most people have identified music with one race of people, particularly because that genre of music originated within that group, and therefore became an understood characteristic or stereotype. Music in the early 2000s was highly saturated with racially focused ideas of what music looked like. When rapper Eminem emerged to the mainstream public, it was not his music that people first identified with, but his color.
Now in 2012, color lines seem to be blurred in a midst of poppy, club music and more focus on building a celebrity instead of a decent song. Most albums are only attempting to serve the masses, while culture and true music can still be indentified in the underground mix tapes.
Recently, actress Gwyneth Paltrow and friend of the Carters tweeted “Ni**a” in paris for real” during a performance of Jay-Z and Kanye West’s song appropriately titled “Ni**as in Paris”. Though the incident sparked much outcry in the twitter-sphere, it’s a clear example of how culture in music is transforming and color lines are becoming less clear. Everyone in the crowd, despite their race, can dance and learn the lyrics to a song that uses a sensitive word multiple times. There’s no telling that such a controversial word will be completely acceptable to be used by non-blacks, but as the color lines become transparent, so do our attitudes.
I saw this again on a more local level when I attended trivia night at a restaurant with some of my co-workers. I suggested that it extremely important to participate in karaoke before the end of our internship. Everyone agreed. One of the interns was particularly eager as she wanted to debut her new ability to “dougie.”
She informed us that she taught herself from YouTube.
There were no scrunched faces and no probing questions. It was simply a young group of people sharing their interest in a genre of music that, not too long ago, would be almost taboo to discuss among everyone. It’s comforting, yet it makes me wonder: where is music heading now culturally? What issues will we tackle through lyrics if racial issues no longer seem to dominate the pop culture sphere?
For now, drinking and drug references seem to be the cultural crutch on most mainstream music, so it’s a strong possibility that this will become the great unifier in music. It may not be the most thought-provoking subject, but it has allowed people to join together, if only for short time, to enjoy the moment and forget their differences.
— Victoria Wright is a junior in journalism and electronic media. She can be reached at [email protected].
