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BK-SAGE-BENNETT_WAKSMAN-140471.indb 3 1/20/2015 9:37:55 PM 22 Popular Music, Race and Identity Jon Stratton INTRODUCTION and popular music is nothing if not modern. In this chapter I will discuss the history of the Race has been central to the discourse of idea of race, its connections with the state popular music: to its performance, reception and with popular music as a part of national and, indeed, to the ways that popular music cultures. For reasons of space I will mainly and its genres have been thought about. This focus on the Anglophone world. I will dis- is most obvious in the US where the distinc- cuss race and popular music in the US and in tion between ‘black’ and ‘white’ music is Britain, and I will also have something to say generally acknowledged. As we shall see, about the ways that American black music this distinction closely relates to the prob- has been utilised in countries with British lematic position of African Americans within colonial histories, such as South Africa and the American nation-state. The nation-state, Australia. as will be discussed, legitimated itself in In 2001, Ronald Radano and Philip terms of an homogeneous population. Bohlman published an edited collection titled Nation-states that had large populations of Music and the Racial Imagination. Radano people identified as different who it was and Bohlman began their Introduction by accepted were exceptions. This means that echoing Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s African Americans have always posed a very Communist Manifesto but also pointing out particular problem for the American nation- that it is no longer the spectre of commu- state. However, race has been a key element nism that haunts Europe. Rather, breaking in the formation of popular music every- new ground in musicology, they asserted where. This is because, as we shall see, race that: ‘A specter lurks in the house of music, has been a fundamental element in identity and it goes by the name of race’ (Radano construction throughout the modern world & Bohlman, 2000, p. 1). Writing from an BK-SAGE-BENNETT_WAKSMAN-140471.indb 381 1/20/2015 9:38:23 PM 382 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF POPULAR MUSIC American perspective, Radano and Bohlman argument holds much truth for popular music emphasise that this spectre is not simply too, as their calling to mind of music identi- ‘black music’, not a specific racialised musi- fied as African-American signals – though it cal form. They explain: is the case, as we shall see, that there has been an increasing awareness in popular music The specter of race is not the edifice of ‘black studies of the racialised aspects of diverse music’ to which the musical disciplines, when acknowledging the racial, reflexively turn. It is, popular musics. However, it is only since the rather, the ideological supposition that informs this 1990s that academics focusing on popular reflex. (p. 1) music have begun to engage critically with race as a formative category in the discursive As we shall see, because of the racialised articulation of popular music. As the quota- way in which African-American people have tion above from Goldberg indicates, race has been positioned in the US nation-state and become accepted and taken for granted as a therefore society, since its establishment in way of distinguishing groups of people across the American War of Independence, music the world of modernity: Europe and the (post) racially defined as African-American has colonial outposts of its nation-states, the always been identified exceptionally in racial US and, increasingly, all the parts of the terms. Radano and Bohlman are making a world impacted by Euro-American culture. more profound, and more general, point; that Indeed, race is a key element in the establish- music is always deeply imbricated with race. ment of the discourse of the nation-state. At As they go on to write: ‘Race lives on in the the same time, race, as a cultural construct house of music because music is saturated which can be traced back to the sixteenth with racial stuff’ (p. 3). Whether in its pro- century, has a deeply imbricated relationship duction or in its reception, and regardless of with popular music. the racial identification of the composers or performers of the music, music is always already permeated with the ideological assumptions that are associated with the WHAT INTRODUCTORY TEXTS SAY lived experience of race. This is not just true of the US. It is a characteristic of music in the ABOUT RACE AND POPULAR MUSIC modern world – that is, the world of moder- nity. David Theo Goldberg has argued that: In light of the ongoing importance of race in ‘If premodernity lacked any conceiving of everyday society, it is surprising that a criti- the differences between human beings as cal understanding of race has only relatively racial differences modernity comes increas- recently become more central in discussions ingly to be defined by and through race’ of popular music. Simon Frith’s foundational (1993, p. 24). Race, Goldberg is suggesting The Sociology of Rock, published in 1978, here, is such a pervasive topos in the modern revised for the US edition as Sound Effects: world that it may be taken as one of moder- Youth, Leisure and the Politics of Rock ‘n’ nity’s defining qualities. At the same time, as Roll, which was published in 1981, has no Radano and Bohlman suggest, continuing section on race and race is only mentioned in their critique of musicology, music identified a few places. Certainly it is true that this was as European – and they are thinking particu- a British book and that there have been larly of classical music – goes unmarked, American books that address music by while non-European music is racially African Americans, but it is still the case that marked. It becomes the provenance of ethno- there is a history of music by people in musicology (2000, p. 2). Britain identified as black, which Frith did While Radano and Bohlman were con- not acknowledge. In the American situation, cerned with musicology, nevertheless, their while it is always invidious to attempt to find BK-SAGE-BENNETT_WAKSMAN-140471.indb 382 1/20/2015 9:38:23 PM POPULAR MUSIC, RACE AND IDENTITY 383 first examples, LeRoi Jones, a poet and importance for the study of popular music. author of plays and non-fiction books later In his later book, Voicing the Popular: On known as Amiri Baraka, published in 1963 the Subjects of Popular Music, published Blues People: Negro Music in White America, in 2006, race has a much greater salience. a key text in the discussion of African Indeed, here Middleton describes race, along Americans and music. While this book, and with gender, as ‘specific social registers of Jones/Baraka’s equally important 1968 book, analysis’ (p. 35) and devotes a chapter to it, Black Music, do not question the idea of race ‘Through a Mask Darkly: Voices of Black itself, they are written from the point of view Folk’. This chapter is an acute deconstruc- of an African-American and assert the qual- tion of the blues as an historical genre. At one ity and worth of black American music while point, following a discussion of the white, providing contexts for its development. There Jimmie Rodgers whose recordings cross are earlier books that provide accounts of over between country and blues, Middleton musical forms identified as African- remarks that: ‘What is in any case clear is American, and make aesthetic judgements on that this network of blues voices constitutes that music, such as Nat Hentoff and Nat an intricately tied cultural knot in which Shapiro’s Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya: The Story racialised identity is continually at stake, of Jazz by the People Who Made It, published both for blacks and whites, the knot is always in 1955. However, Jones/Baraka’s books are at risk of unravelling’ (p. 62). For Middleton, the first to tie in the history of African race is confined to a distinction between Americans in the US, including the impact of African Americans and white Americans. slavery, with the music produced by African While, as I have noted, Middleton’s analy- Americans. At the same time, none of these sis is insightful there is, again, no critical books, nor many later discussions of African discussion of race itself. Nevertheless, the Americans and music engaged critically with inclusion of race signals a significant shift race as a discourse. from its absence in Studying Popular Music. As popular music studies started to In this acceptance of race as a given cat- become established as a discipline studied in egory, Middleton is aligned with many of the universities and other centres of higher edu- American discussions of black music. cation since the 1990s, so introductory books Between these two books, in 2003 of various kinds began to be published. In Middleton co-edited with Martin Clayton 1990, Richard Middleton published Studying and Trevor Herbert another introductory text, Popular Music. Divided into two main sec- this one more broadly addressed to music tions, this book provided an account of the- in general, The Cultural Study of Music: A ories of what popular music is and how it Critical Introduction. Here, Philip Bohlman, might be analysed. Race appears in passing whom we have met before as one of the edi- in Middleton’s discussion of Paul Oliver’s tors of the seminal Music and the Racial Songsters and Saints: Vocal Traditions on Imagination, has a chapter titled ‘Music and Race Records in relation to a debate over the Culture: Historiographies of Disjuncture’.

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