Elvis has Finally Left the building? Boundary work, whiteness and the reception of rock music in comparative perspective ~ Heeft Elvis het gebouw echt verlaten? Scheidslijnen, witheid en de receptie van rockmuziek in vergelijkend perspectief Thesis to obtain the degree of Doctor from the Erasmus University Rotterdam by command of the rector magnificus Prof.dr. R.C.M.E. Engels and in accordance with the decision of the Doctorate Board. The public defence shall be held on 11 October 2019 at 11:30 hrs by Julian Cornelis Fokko Schaap born in Rotterdam Doctoral Committee: Promotor: Prof.dr. C.J.M. van Eijck Other members: Prof.dr. P. Essed Dr. H.J.C.J. Hitters Prof.dr. G.M.M. Kuipers Copromotor: Dr. P.P.L. Berkers Elvis has finally left the building? Boundary work, whiteness and the reception of rock music in comparative perspective Cover design and illustrations: Josh LaFayette (www.joshlafayette.com) Copyright © Julian Schaap 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrievable system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author. ISBN: 978-94-028-1693-8 Dedicated to Cornelis de Valois & Fokko Schaap Page unintentionally left white? Table of contents Chapter 1 3 “Music brings people together,” right? General introduction Chapter 2 45 “If we get that played, they might run us out of town” A history of rock music and whiteness Chapter 3 95 “Just like Hendrix:” Whiteness and the online critical and consumer reception of rock music Chapter 4 121 “Maybe it’s… skin color?” The classification of race-ethnicity and gender in rock music consumption Chapter 5 153 “You’re not supposed to be in to rock music” Authenticity maneuvering in a white configuration Chapter 6 179 “I never really thought about it” Excavating rock music’s whiteness as nondeclarative personal culture Chapter 7 211 “Go Johnny, go!” Discussion and conclusion List of references 228 Appendices 258 Summaries 291 Acknowledgments 309 About the author 315 “I like to think that music is something that can bring two opposite sides of the spectrum into the same arena” Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters) “Music seems to be the common denomination that brings us all together. Music cuts through all boundaries and goes right to the soul” Willie Nelson (country musician) “It brings the races together, it brings religions together” Billy Higgins (jazz drummer) “Music is the universal language… It brings people closer together” Ella Fitzgerald (jazz singer) “No matter what language we speak, what color we are, the form of our politics or the expression of our love and our faith. Music proves: We are the same” John Denver (singer-songwriter) 1 “Music brings people together,” right? General introduction Introduction Music has phenomenal unifying powers. Over the ages, music has been attributed with almost supernatural properties by com- mentators ranging from ancient Greek philosophers (Stamou, 2002) to the musicians cited on the previous page. Even in our mediatized era in which most recorded music is consumed in earbud-induced solitude – actually shielding off potential social interaction in public spaces – music continues to be perceived as a great unifier. There seems to be much truth to such claims. People travel to concert venues, festivals and sites of musical memory to join in celebration, often leading to a deeply felt sense of collective effervescence. At the same time, individuals from across the globe interact online through social media to discuss and share their favorite artists, songs and music styles. Music has fostered the rise of persistent subcultures that have a local and global presence – even before the internet removed physical boundaries of interaction. More than ever, it seems, does music now have the potential to cut across boundaries thrown up by divisive forces such as economic inequality, na- 4 Chapter 1 tional borders, and language barriers. Yet, notwithstanding music’s ability to unite people, it seems to do so while following the contours that we find in the social fabric of society (Lewis, 1992). From the perspective of music production, musicians in specific genres tend to resemble each other not only in terms of style and appearance, but also in terms of social background characteristics such as class, gender and race-ethnicity (Roy & Dowd, 2010). For example, while rap music is dominated by African-Americans (in the United States) and artists with a non-Western migrant background (in many European countries) (Androutsopoulos & Scholz, 2003; Ben- nett, 1999a; 1999b; Clay, 2003), music genres such as country, rock music and heavy metal are principally enjoyed by white men (Bannister, 2006; Hamilton, 2016). Flipping the perspective to the reception of music, audiences tend to mirror the domi- nant background characteristics of artists on stage and vice versa. Rather than conjuring musical melting pots, we see that con- sumers of specific music genres tend to significantly resemble each other. So while music brings large societal groups togeth- er, there seem to be underlying governing principles at work that prevent the radical mixing of people across class, gender and race-ethnicity, as optimistically supposed by the artists cit- ed at the opening of this chapter. Indeed, music “marks out important differences in how we stake a claim for ourselves as belonging to particular social groups and taste cultures, even in high-tech, information-rich, globalized societies” (Prior, 2013, p. 191). The paradox posed by this – music unites, yet music divides – is a central sociological puzzle in this dissertation. A second paradox is provided by turning to the specific groups which are bounded within certain musical genres. Pre- vious research has convincingly demonstrated that the forma- tion of musical taste has social consequences, as “in adopting a preference for a particular kind of music, individuals both articulate their own political values and assert themselves in op- position to other musical taste groups” (Bennett, 2008, p. 428). Examples abound: Ascription to a ‘black’ identity is fostered by maintaining a preference for soul (Johnson, 2003; Robinson, “Music brings people together,” right? 5 2014) or rap music (e.g. Clay, 2003; Harrison, 2008; Rose, 1994). Salsa music is used to connect with an overall ‘Latin-American’ identity (e.g. Radcliffe & Westwood, 2005), particularly beyond South-America itself (e.g. Román-Velázquez, 2017). Similarly, klezmer is attributed substantial powers in its ability to unite people ascribing to a Jewish ethnicity (e.g. Slobin, 2003; Freed- man, 2009). However, while the linkages between these music genres and ethno-racial groups are clear to everyone involved, many music genres such as country, EDM or rock music do not seem to carry an explicit ethno-racial connotation. As such, they are ‘unmarked’ from an ethno-racial viewpoint (Brekhus, 1998). Does this mean that they are also disconnected from particular ethno-racial groups? The short answer to this question is ‘no’. What we see is that these genres are predominantly populated by whites, but that this connection is rarely made explicit as it remains ‘invisible’ to most involved (Twine & Gallagher, 2008). As dominant mem- bers of most Western societies, whites are often left ‘unmarked’ as opposed to non-whites (Brekhus, 1998). This effectively makes whiteness a symbolically dominant but ‘hidden’ ethnic- ity, as members are often unaware of the implications of not being marked (Doane, 1997), where whites are “unified through relations to social structures and not through the active, mutual identification” (Lewis, 2004: 627). Whiteness can therefore be conceived of as a set of (classed and gendered) cultural practic- es that – as a result of being socially dominant – are less visible in everyday interaction than those of ethno-racial others (Frank- enberg, 1993), making it “the unspoken elephant in the room of a racialized society” (Brekhus, Brunsma, Platts & Dua, 2010, p. 71). Whites hence often believe that a racial or ethnic identity is “something that other people have, [which is] not salient for them” (Tatum, 1999, p. 94). Only during direct encounters with a non-white other – in music for instance – “a process of ra- cial identity development for whites begins to unfold” (ibid). As such, a genre dominated by whites – such as rock music – can carry connotations of whiteness, which implicitly help ascribe to such an identity. In other words, whiteness is rarely actively con- 6 Chapter 1 structed or maintained intentionally. Hence, the second puzzle in this dissertation is to disentangle the (re)production of an ethno-racial identity which is paradoxically, to an extent, verbally unacknowledged by its principal conveyors, and to ascertain its consequences for ethno-racial inequality. While it is evident that whiteness is (re)produced within rock music production (e.g., Bannister, 2006; Mahon, 2004), it remains unclear how these boundaries are – both explicitly and implicitly – constructed, maintained and deconstructed in the reception of rock music. That is the overarching objective of this dissertation. The main research question therefore reads: To what extent and how do non-whites and whites navigate (con- struct, maintain and/or deconstruct) ethno-racial boundaries in the reception of rock music in the United States and the Netherlands? By focusing on one music genre (rock music) and its prima- ry audience (white