Last Monday, I had the good fortune to see Mobley’s concert in Hardie Auditorium. Besides having a wonderful time basking the jubilant euphoria of music, I encountered his own view of the current social-political environment in the United States and how he personally approaches music to voice his controversial political beliefs.
Mobley comes at his art in a truly distinct fashion. He is, as he said, his own artist. He does not have any backup musicians or dancers or anyone else there that could take credit away from his act. Part of this, he jokingly stated was, “it is easier to pay myself than someone else,” but he did also note that there is a political message behind it. For much of American cultural history, black music, art, and literature has been coopted by the mainstream American culture and filtered through a racial filter, so that the art is more palatable to mainstream audiences. We see in the famous story of figure Elvis Presley, who used some of the dance and lyrical stylings of black culture to further his career. Likewise, we see cooptation in present day popular culture. There is the omnipresent image of Miley Cyrus twerking, the Iggy Azealia rapping and dawning the airs of southern Africa American dialect.
Mobley defines himself as a post-genre rather than just a follower of any one particular genre. One part of this, he wants to be seen as a unique artist, but there is also a definitive political movement to prevent labeling. When Mobley described his post-genre position, the person hosting the debate brought up the example of Prince and his great exclamation to his record executives that he does not want to be seen as just an African American musician. During this discussion, they explained the racial profiling that is present in how we visualize genres. Artist who make hip hop music can be thrown in the R&B section as well as the reverse because these are examples of “black music” despite whether or not these artists actually make this type of music. Likewise, genre-bending musicians like Living Color or Bad Brains get tossed aside to the genre bins of black music despite the fact they would fit better with metal and punk music, respectively. Thus, there is unwarranted generalization of race in music genres that serves to stratify and enforce a stereotype.
Lastly, Mobley explained how is music conveys his complicated relationship with the state and American culture. While he likes being American, he is critical of what he sees is a “cult of whiteness,” which he defines as a “gleefulness in the face of imminent tragedy.” That is to say, whites are unwilling to see the ugliness of American history or the fact they are, maybe unknowingly, contributing to the problem. Likewise, they fail to notice the troubling reality of poverty, police brutality, and the marginalization of African Americans.
While Michael makes a good point about this genre-blending that so often happens in black music, specifically with R&B/Hip Hop, not all of it is so racially structured. More often, artists who create an R&B style of music also deeply delve into Hip Hop/rap in some of their songs on the same album. Many artists, especially now, for example Kendrick Lamar, are bringing different genres of music into their own like Lamar did on his most recent album with Jazz. Similarly, Beyonce has begun to do this as well and even stretch into the genre of country in her song "Daddy Lessons" from her most recent album. There are certainly stereotypes when it comes to these genres, but I argue that country music is also deeply stereotyped as white.
ReplyDeleteMusic is one of those pieces of pop culture where it becomes difficult to say who is inspired by what or if someone is stealing a sound or not. One could argue that Adele steals her sound from STAX musicians but we certainly cannot blame her if she is inspired by them. As Michael says, there is a very complex relationship between "whiteness" and American culture- most often how American culture white-washes so much. This "gleefulness" certainly is present in those who consume culture without knowing where it came from. It is difficult to say, however, that most people listening to R&B or Hip Hop have missed the messages so blatantly presented in them. Perhaps they regains the "troubling reality" of the problems of marginalized Americans but choose to ignore them.