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A New and Concise History of Rock and R&Amp

A New and Concise History of Rock and R&Amp

A New and Concise History of Rock and R&B through the Early 1990s

Eric Charry

Published by Wesleyan University Press

Charry, Eric. A New and Concise History of Rock and R&B through the Early 1990s. Wesleyan University Press, 2020. Project MUSE. muse.jhu.edu/book/74014. https://muse.jhu.edu/.

For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/74014

[ Access provided at 1 Jun 2021 19:46 GMT from Wesleyan University ] Cross-cultural encounters are at the heart of rock and R&B, and so identifying their varied dynamics is fundamental. Is cross-cultural understanding possible? Yes, of 10 course. Otherwise, artists have failed, for part of their work is to convey their expe- WHEN CULTURES CROSS riences, thoughts, and feelings. Or the fault may be ours, as listeners, not being able to hear and recognize this. People can appreciate the cultural expression of others on many levels, from amusement and entertainment to eye-opening understanding, empathy, and even life-changing integration into one’s own personal identity. Who are we, and how are we, as outside observers, to make judgments about how one person or group uses aspects of culture developed by another person or group? But what if we consider ourselves insiders and find outside understandings, interpretations, or usages objectionable? These are questions that demand much thought, especially with regard to the boundaries that distinguish insiders from outsiders, subtle degrees and shades of separation within these categories (e.g., what is our actual relationship to artistic production in our group), and whether economic gain or taking undue credit is involved.

MARIAN ANDERSON AND Marian Anderson (1897–1993) was a gifted African American singer who grew up in a working-class South Philadelphia neighborhood in the early twentieth-century singing in her local church. Her repertory consisted of African American spirituals and European classical vocal works (particularly Handel, Schubert, and Brahms). While she grew up immersed in the language and culture of the spirituals, she had little access to that associated with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European (specifically German and Austrian) aristocracy, courts, and churches. Anderson did not have a formal voice teacher until high school. When she went to a college to inquire about studying there, a white receptionist told her that they don’t take “colored people.” Reflecting back in her autobiography, she wrote, “True enough, my skin was different, but not my feelings” (1956: 38). Her United Baptist Church congregation raised funds to further her formal music education, including lessons with an Italian American voice teacher. Anderson was accepted to Yale University’s School of Music, but her outside funding did not materialize in time. In her late teens and early twenties, Anderson began touring colleges, churches, and concert halls, and she recorded on the Victor label. She studied French and Italian to help with her diction and found management, which eventually brought her $750 per concert (in the 1920s). In the early 1930s she went to study in and Berlin, returning to Europe in 1933 for two years, concertizing extensively. She signed on to the prestigious artist management of Sol Hurok, and after a concert in Salzburg (the birthplace of Mozart), renowned conductor Arturo Toscanini famously told her, “Yours is a voice such as one hears once in a hundred years” (Anderson 1956: 158). Anderson’s 1939 Easter Sunday concert in Washington, DC, was a major event in U.S. history. When Anderson was denied the use of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution (at the time an exclusionary lineage-based organization) on the basis of her race, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned her DAR membership, and the secretary of the interior offered Lincoln Memorial for a free outdoor concert. The event was radio broadcast to the nation, and seventy-five thousand people filled the space between the memorial and Washington Monument. She opened with “America” and sang Schubert’s “Ave Maria” and three African Amer- ican spirituals. Later that year Anderson sang at the White House for the Roosevelts and the king and queen of England. The previous year she earned $238,000, extraordinary for a concert singer at the time (Keiler 2000: 175). In 1955 she became the first African American to perform as a regular member of the Metropolitan Opera in . She sang at the inaugurations of presidents Eisenhower (1957) and Kennedy (1961) as well as at the 1963 March on Washington, receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom that year. In a 2017 televised Kennedy Center celebration of the new Na- tional Museum of African American History and Culture, Mary J. Blige paid tribute to Anderson, singing “America.” African American spirituals, a product of the religious experience of an enslaved people, were initially brought to the concert hall by the historically black Fisk Univer- sity choir and their white choir director in the 1870s. Their concert style of singing and harmonies drew from European models, reflected in some of their earliest recordings in 1909–11 (Fisk Jubilee Singers 1997-d). Much later recordings from isolated black communities on the Georgia and Carolina sea islands provide a window into how some of these spirituals may have been sung before their merging with European aesthetics (Carawan 1967-d). Given the range of African American experience, both styles of performing spirituals should be considered as authentic expressions of that experience. After a trip to Israel, Anderson described the significance of spirituals to her: “I could see in Israel the geographic places that represented the reality [of INTERPRETIVE FRAMEWORKS biblical references], and they stirred me deeply. I kept thinking that my people had 309 captured the essence of that reality and had gone beyond it to express in the spirituals the deepest necessities of their human predicament” (1956: 262). Anderson heard a range of singing styles in her early church experiences, but her focus was on that of the European classical tradition (or rather several national tradi- tions), with diction appropriate to the style, which she also applied to her interpreta- tion of spirituals. The term appropriation here does not really capture her relationship to a culture much different than the one she was born into, although Anderson did indeed reach out and make concerted efforts to use European culture to her advantage. (Note how the language of appropriation here has such a sinister aura.) The terms assimilation or acculturation are more typically used to describe how a marginalized minority culture uses the culture of a dominant majority population. The European classics were part of her U.S. cultural environment, dramatically opening up what can be considered as the scope of African American culture. Surely, Anderson was able to achieve cross-cultural understanding, not just in the way she was accepted as an artist, but in her authoritative grasp and expansion of a tradition whose ancestral heritage she was not born into. Bob Dylan, raised in a Jewish middle-class home in northern Minnesota, became enamored in his late teens with white Oklahoman Woody Guthrie, and he moved to to visit the terminally ill Guthrie and soak up all that early Greenwich Village could offer. There Dylan became obsessed with a new reissue of the 1930s recordings of black Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson (in his midtwenties when recorded), finding an intense connection and inspiration with Johnson’s “code of language” (Dylan 2004: 287–88). By the time of his sixth album (Highway 61 Revisited, 1965), Dylan was a star and a major voice for his generation, particularly (but not only) white middle-class college-aged youth. Given the differences in sound and sentiment between mid-1960s folk rock and , one might not expect a direct connection between his music and the growing black nationalist movement, which accelerated with the establishment of the Black Panther Party in 1966. In a passage titled “Huey Digs Bob Dylan,” party cofounder Bobby Seale (1970: 181–86) related a story about how in 1967 the other cofounder, Huey Newton, was constantly listening to Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man” (from Highway 61 Revisited) while they were putting together early issues of their party newspaper, providing an impassioned and inspiring interpretation of the rele-

INTERPRETIVE FRAMEWORKS vance and insights of Dylan’s lyrics to their own situations. Many in their circle were 310 captivated by the song: “This song Bobby Dylan was singing became a very big part of the whole publishing operations of the Black Panther paper. . . . This record became so related to us, even to the brothers who had held down most of the security” (Seale 1970: 186). A photo of Newton in 1970 shows him holding up Dylan’s album for the camera (Shames and Seale 2016: 187). What can one make of this connection? Dylan’s first album Bob( Dylan, 1962) contained four cover versions of songs by African American bluesmen. How can one understand the admiration of Newton, Seale, and their circle for Dylan’s work? Did they hear and appreciate a familiar vision mirrored and reinterpreted for contemporary times in Dylan’s songwriting? Why didn’t they lay claims that Dylan was appropriating and profiting from their culture? (Two years earlier Dylan had seven songs in the pop Top 40, all originals, and two albums in the Top 10.) Clearly, it was not the mere act of reaching out to African American culture but rather what he did with it that mattered. Dylan, whose most direct early experience with was presumably through recordings, absorbed aspects of their cultural expression from those recordings. In that particular time and place, some young African American political and cultural leaders, including , who was as drenched in the blues traditions of his African American roots as any electric guitarist of his generation, felt a great attraction to Dylan’s artistic expression. But they were a minority among a minority, for, unlike , none of Dylan’s recordings showed up on the charts. Elvis’s music in the , on the other hand, had significant appeal for young African Americans, judging from his presence on R&B charts at the time. There was an undercurrent, however, which gained steam after the 1950s, that Elvis was profiting off of R&B in ways unavailable to pioneering black artists. Nowadays many observers routinely call this cultural ap- propriation. But how to explain that mid-1950s African American youth were playing his music in their neighborhood jukeboxes, requesting that his songs be played on R&B radio stations, and buying his records in their neighborhood shops? The point here is to understand what people were thinking at the time rather than impose our contemporary, and possibly irrelevant or misguided, interpretations. Our ears, six decades later, may not be sensitized to what listeners heard when Elvis’s music first came out. Just think of your own listening experiences: you may be able to recognize hundreds of songs released in the past five years and be able to very explicitly trace subtleties in the development of individual artists and creative streams and responses feeding one another’s work. This provides you with a degree of INTERPRETIVE FRAMEWORKS expertise and consequently authority with certain genres of music of your own time. 311 In this text we try to gain access to what kinds of expertise and authority listeners had with the music of their own times.

A SPECTRUM: FOUR EXAMPLES Many African American artists have held generous assessments of select white artists who trafficked in African American styles or who drew from the well of African American culture. We read about examples regarding Elvis, producer- Leiber and Stoller, and and read statements from Muddy Waters, , , Hank Shocklee (of Public Enemy), and others. The positive reception of the by-many-accounts obnoxious New York City white rap trio Beastie Boys by some of their peers in the rap industry presents a difficult problem to think through.1 Their debut album Licensed to Ill (1986) surpassed their Def Jam label-mates Run-D.M.C., whose third album (Raising Hell, 1986) earlier in the year became the first rap album to break into the pop Top 10, reaching #3; Licensed to Ill hit #1. One might think that whites encroaching on a black genre, and gaining greater commercial success, would not sit well with many. of Public Enemy (also on Def Jam) suggested, “You really couldn’t doubt their legitimacy ’cause they were down with Def Jam and Run-D.M.C., and the beats were right. And as long as they talked about white boys and beer and stuff like that, who could knock their topics?” Journalist Frere-Jones noted that “The Beasties were able to be down because they had an obvious affinity for black music, but pre- sented themselves honestly as these middle-class Jewish kids. They weren’t trying to be something they weren’t” (qtd. in Light 1998: 149, 153). Drummer Questlove (of the Roots, who moved to Def Jam in 2006) claimed them to be “one of the biggest influences on The Roots. . . . We thought it [the acapella version of ‘Hold It Now, Hit It’] was the most revolutionary thing ever. It was like, yo, these guys are so bad they don’t need a drum machine! They just rhyme by themselves. And, that tore our world around” (2012-v). They crossed a line, however, opening for Run-D.M.C. at ’s

1 Piccarella (1986: 103) titled his review of the Beastie Boys’ debut album “White Trash on Dope” and noted, “Not since have white boys so forcefully co-opted a black mu- sic”; Christgau (1986) referred to the album’s “wisecracking arrogance” and noted, “three white INTERPRETIVE FRAMEWORKS jerkoffs and their crazed producer are set to go platinum-plus with ‘black’ music that’s radically 312 original, childishly simple.” in 1986. In the words of their deejay, future cohost of Yo! MTV Raps, André “Doctor Dré” Brown: “Everybody was like, ‘Look, whatever you do, don’t say “n-gger.”’ . . . Ad-Rock says, ‘All you n-ggers, wave your hands in the air!’ I’ve never seen so many blank stares! . . . And Ad-Rock’s going, ‘Come on y’all, come on y’all,’ and nobody’s waving back. They finished the song, dropped the mics, and ran off the stage” (qtd. in Light 1998: 153). Still, they returned a year or two later to cohost . Daryl “D.M.C.” McDaniels recalled during their 1986 tour together, in the “black South”: “We expected to hear boos. . . . From the dressing room, we’d hear ‘Yeaaaaaah! Yeaaahhh!’ It was the black audience, praising these dudes. The reason they were so good: It wasn’t white punk rockers trying to be black emcees. They wasn’t talking about gold chains or Cadillacs. They were white rappers about what they did. Real recognize real” (qtd. in Barshad 2011: 58). Their sort of parody may have been possible only at that particular moment in commercial ’s early years. George Gershwin (composer), Ira Gershwin (lyricist), and DuBose Heyward (libretto) drew on, or appropriated, African American dialect and subject matter in their 1935 folk opera Porgy and Bess (based on Heyward’s novel Porgy), which, unusual for its time, used a virtually all-black cast. African American writer Langston Hughes called it “the single biggest bread basket for the Negro in the history of the American stage. . . . It has fed, over long periods of time in many cities and many countries, a great many Negro performers” (1966: 447). Porgy and Bess has received its share of both criticism (overuse of dialect, stereotyped characters) and acceptance from African Americans. The original novel received praise from Hughes: the author Heyward “did see, with his white eyes, wonderful, hectic human qualities in the inhabitants of Catfish Row that made them come alive in his book” (1960: 382). Whatever shortcomings one might expect and perceive in such an undertaking by two children of Jewish immigrants and a child of southern white aristocracy, songs from Porgy and Bess were deliberately chosen by African Americans as vehicles for what have become some of the most inspired performances in American music history: ’s “Porgy” (1948), ’s “I Loves You Porgy” (1958), ’s album-length Porgy and Bess (1959), and John Coltrane’s “Summertime” (1961). As with the actors in the stage and film presentations, these musical artists inhabited the songs created by the Gershwins, humanized their subjects, and gave them compelling meaning.

An anecdote from an original 1935 cast member, Helen Dowdy, reported in a book INTERPRETIVE FRAMEWORKS exploring the origins of soul music by journalist Phyl Garland, further complicates 313 the picture (they are both African Americans). Garland noted that “Gershwin, who had soaked up black soul at its source by spending some time in South Carolina’s Charleston area, where the work was set, had heard these penetrating and haunting cries there and had written them into his opus. However, on returning to New York, he found it next to impossible to locate a black singer who could duplicate them, because all the black singers he auditioned were professionals who had been trained in the European classical tradition of singing and had come to look down on black music.” Dowdy was in line for the part of Strawberry Woman, and while she was practicing at home, her mother (from the South) told her it was all wrong and cor- rected her, teaching her the vernacular phrasing. When Dowdy sang for Gershwin the following day, “Gershwin flipped, shouted, ‘That’s it!’” and, in her [Dowdy’s] words, “just about fell out of his chair” (Garland 1969: 55). One could read this as yet another white savior story—Gershwin teaching African Americans to be their true selves. Or as Gershwin essentializing African Americans, insisting that they sing in their own southern vernacular. But, then again, Dowdy’s mother taught her to do just that. (On the other hand, imagine the critiques if Gershwin instead insisted on an operatic interpretation of the song of Charleston street sellers.) Of course, it does make a difference who is doing the essentializing and that Gershwin auditioned classically trained black singers, perhaps not understanding their conflicted relation- ships with southern black vernacular styles. And how would one explain the context in which Garland, a writer and editor for Ebony magazine, writing about soul in the late 1960s when black power was a rallying cry, would paint such a sympathetic picture of Gershwin? These questions demandmultidimensional perspectives that yield a rich tapestry of the possibilities, motivations, and impacts of cross-cultural traffic. Reorienting a genre (like the Beastie Boys), overt parody (like what Weird Al Yan- kovic does), or attempts to portray a culture (as in Porgy and Bess), all by outsiders, are different than imitation with little self-consciousness or irony. An online video of eighteen-year-old Justin Bieber performing “Show You Off ” at the 2012 counts his crotch grabs, totaling twenty-four in a four-minute perfor- mance. brought this move into mainstream choreography in 1983, initially with a subtle touch at the end of his “Beat It” music video and during his

INTERPRETIVE FRAMEWORKS televised 25 “Billie Jean” performance. It became his signature move with 314 his “Bad” (1987) video. Madonna appropriated it in “Express Yourself ” (1989). The previous decade had recorded a comedy routine about the practice.2 It became a defining move in a highly visible strain of commercial hip hop. In 2011, for instance, Jay-Z and totaled over fifteen crotch grabs in a two-and-a- half-minute segment in their video for “Otis.” Bieber was roasted several months after his AMA performance when he hosted during Black History Month (February 9, 2013). His opening monologue self-satirized his lack of consciousness of black history, and a skit about a new security team of body doubles had a punch line that pointedly addressed his imitations of blackness. Bieber’s presence (as of early 2019) on the various R&B, rap, and hip hop Billboard singles charts are almost all collaborations (Billboard 2019b). He is not present on any of those album charts, which can provide some indication of the extent of engagement with these styles. His business relationship with mentor Usher and producer L. A. Reid may have contributed to whatever viability he might have among African Americans. , on the other hand, presents the go-to case of a white artist thoroughly integrating a black style and being widely embraced. His final rap battle inEight Mile, the film that loosely resembles his life, provides part of the explanation: he raps his African American opponent (who, in contrast to Eminem’s character, has parents in a stable marriage and attended a private school) into silent submission by an original take on rap’s primary tenet (represent yourself ), drawing on some of its primary codes of authenticity (street cred, battle skills, surviving in the face of adversity), which combine to erase his racial inauthenticity and outsider status. The other part of the explanation is his business arrangement: he signed with Aftermath, the founded by former N.W.A. member Andre “Dr. Dre” Young, who produced Eminem’s albums. All nine of those albums (between 1999 and 2018) hit #1 on the R&B/hip hop album chart (a tenth Hits album reached #2). They did the same on the unmarked (pop) album chart, with the exception of his Aftermath debut, which reached #2 (Billboard 2019a). A sharp critique (in this case of Madonna) by author and academic bell hooks makes the key point about the nature, or depth, of drawing from the well: “White folks who do not see black pain never really understand the complexity of black pleasure. And it is no wonder then that when they attempt to imitate the joy in living which INTERPRETIVE FRAMEWORKS 2 “White and Black People,” on Wanted (1978). 315 they see as the ‘essence’ of soul and blackness, their cultural productions may have an air of sham and falseness that may titillate and even move white audiences yet leave many black folks cold” (1992b: 158). Bieber’s caricature body moves are ripe for this kind of critique. The provocative title of culture critic Greg Tate’s 2003 edited collec- tion says it all: Everything but the Burden: What White People Are Taking from Black Culture.

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

In a recent New York Times article looking at appropriation in pop culture, Parul Seh- gal wonders if “we might, someday, learn to keep our hands to ourselves where other people’s cultures are concerned,” a very bleak view of the way the world actually works. “But then that might do another kind of harm,” she continues, “Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie called for more, not less, imaginative engagement with her country: ‘The moment you say a male American writer can’t write about a female Pakistani, you are saying, Don’t tell those stories. Worse, you’re saying: As an American male you can’t understand a Pakistani woman. She is enigmatic, inscrutable, unknowable. She’s other. Leave her and her nation to its Otherness. Write them out of your history.’ Can some kinds of appropriation shatter stereotypes? This has been literature’s implicit promise: that entering into another’s consciousness enlarges our own” (2015: 15). Brubaker (2017) lays out some of the other related issues, referring to “epistemo- logical insiderism,” which is

the belief that identity qualifies or disqualifies one from writing with legiti- macy and authority about a particular topic. Few would argue directly that who we are should govern what we study. But subtler forms of epistemolog- ical insiderism are at work in the practice of assessing scholarly arguments with central reference to the identity of the author. . . . Epistemological insiderism not only stakes out certain domains as belonging to persons with certain identities; it also risks boxing persons with those identities into specific domains. It risks conveying the patronizing and offensive expectation that members of racial and ethnic minorities will focus their scholarship on race and ethnicity.

INTERPRETIVE FRAMEWORKS Arguments about appropriation do not rest wholly on what outsiders should or 316 should not do. Also important are the opportunities available for marginalized groups to represent themselves. The stakes are high here, not only in reaping the economic benefit of one’s intellectual property, but also in how a group is represented. Among all the various impacts of outsiders drawing on the culture of others, is the (sometimes inadvertent) opening up of new and expanded markets for voices that have previously been excluded. We have seen just such cases where bland cover versions of R&B artists in the mid-1950s led white youth to seek out the original sources. In early 1956, for example, ’s diluted cover of ’s “Tutti Frutti” quickly surpassed the original in popularity. But just a few months later Little Richard’s “” made Boone’s weak cover attempt look downright embarrassing, both from an aesthetic and commercial point of view. It was an ear-opening year for . Cultural appropriation is one of the most misunderstood concepts in contem- porary pop culture. There is no generally agreed-on definition. It is not usually used literally, at face value, meaning that anyone can engage in it, but rather to refer to a dominant majority culture’s use of a marginalized minority’s culture. When it is the other way around, it is called assimilation, as in the majority culture is pervasive and readily available to assimilate. There is good reason for this distinction. A majority culture could create or perpetuate pernicious stereotypes, misrepresent aesthetic values, violate sacred or private expression, or curtail economic opportunities (Young 2010: 107). While some of this could be offensive (we all should have that right), some of this might cross the border into actual harm. All these offenses could be done by a minority culture, but with significantly less (if any) harmful impact because of power differentials: the majority culture in the United States holds most of the cards (economic, social, political). A minority culture appropriating from another minority culture, less frequently discussed, can indeed also have an impact. However, and here is the key point, the potential to cause harm is not the same as actually causing harm. People and cultures learn and grow from contact with one another. Policing who may or may not engage in such contact or prescribing how it should be done not only can be counterproductive, narrow minded, and patronizing but also does not recognize how the world moves. Outsider perspectives, including collaborations, have the potential for great insights—we can learn much from how others see us, for better or worse. Langston Hughes recognized this, giving advice to African American writers, that “to write well about Negroes, it might be wise, occa- sionally at least, to look at them with white eyes—then the better will you see how distinctive we are” (1960: 380). INTERPRETIVE FRAMEWORKS Replacing appropriation with disrespect in many cases would encourage more honest 317 conversations. Accusations of appropriation can have a chilling effect, as in “You are not allowed to touch my culture.” Accusations of disrespect, however, may be more to the point and speak to specific grievances in the nature of the contact. Objections to cultural appropriation (or disrespecting a culture) fall into three main areas: aes- thetic shortcomings because of lack of experience (e.g., one has to live the life); not having the proper individual or group identity (which some believe is necessary for the proper experience) and therefore lacking authenticity (e.g., not being true to oneself ); and unfair economic gain (further limiting the economic opportunities of a minority culture), including getting undeserved credit. An assessment of the work of white songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller by Carl Gardner, member of the African American vocal group , with reference to their 1957 #1 R&B hits “Young Blood” and “Searchin’,” both of which crossed over to the pop Top 10, can address all three objections: “Leiber and Stoller were writing black music. Here were two Jewish kids, knew my culture better than I knew my culture. And I said, ‘How did they do that? . . . How did they know what we do?’ Cause every song they wrote was in our culture.” On the other hand, recalling something they wrote for the Coasters called “Colored Folks,” Leiber acknowledged, “If they thought we were going too far, they would stop us” (Espar and Thomson 1995-v, episode 2). That review process, involving give-and-take, can be crucial. Another example comes from Eric Burdon, vocalist with the 1960s British group the Animals: “I heard [bluesman] John Lee Hooker singing things like ‘I been working in a steel mill trucking steel like a slave all day,’ you know, and, ‘I woke up this morn- ing and my baby’s gone away,’ you know, and I, I related to that directly because that was happening to people, to grown men, on my block” (Espar and Thomson 1995-v, episode 5). This might read like personal delusion or fantasy, but see what Otis Red- ding, one of the most important soul singers ever, had to say in a 1967 interview when asked, “What do you think of Eric Burdon?”: “Now, Eric is one of the best friends I have. He’s a great guy. . . . I’ve seen him work in a club in England. This boy came on stage with a blues song and he tore the house up. They called me up on stage after he finished and I wouldn’t go up. I knew I couldn’t do anything to top it. Eric can really sing blues” (qtd. in Delehant 1967: 57).3 The task of evaluating the difference between superficial and offensive imitation on

INTERPRETIVE FRAMEWORKS 3 Compare Burdon’s relationship to the blues (and Redding’s assessment) with ’s realiza- 318 tion (noted earlier) that it just wasn’t his calling in life. the one hand and deeper assimilation and even integration of another’s cultural ex- pression into one’s own persona on the other demands an open, informed, and critical mind. Knee-jerk reactions, often leveled with the blunt weapon “cultural appropria- tion,” often ignore the perspectives of those directly involved. The generosity of artists who are most directly impacted, those in the daily game of the music business, can be one instructive and inspiring model. And, surely, it is our responsibility to understand the origins of a style and give proper credit, including all the just financial rewards. The question that opened this chapter—Is cross-cultural understanding possi- ble?—permeates this book. It can be posed more broadly: can we, as members of a singular human race, transcend our various frameworks of identification (how we see ourselves and how others see us), no matter how oppressive or privileged they may be, and appreciate, understand, empathize with, and even in some cases integrate in our personas and beings the cultural expression of others? This should not be misun- derstood as a colorblind approach, but, to the contrary, one that takes in and values our varied life experiences, both as members of groups and as unique individuals. The music history presented here offers obvious and resounding positive responses. INTERPRETIVE FRAMEWORKS 319

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