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April 2010

African American Music


Led Zeppelin and Eminem

In order to analyse a potential association between African-American music and music artists such as Led Zeppelin or Eminem, one must first discern the meaning of the term AfricanAmerican music. Such a Wittgensteinian term can be problematic, as it cannot be said that all African-American music has something in common. This is because on one hand the term contains the more self-explanatory meaning: music of African-Americans, and on the other hand, it relates to particular psychological, socio-political, cultural and auditory attributes of the music. The two aspects generally coincide as it relates to the history of African Americans. However, these aspects sometimes conflict, as some artists, who would claim to be African American as by their racial identity, could for instance, potentially bare no cultural resemblance to their people and could compose and perform music reminiscent of the European classical tradition. This music would not necessarily be categorised African American, despite it being music of (composed and performed by) a self-claimed African American. Theoretically, the musician may believe to have musically expressed deep feelings about his/her African American identity, yet that would bring no change to the musics name. The other issue for understanding the term African American music is that the meaning of the words coming from the experiences they relate to is often second-hand. It is for the perceivers to imagine the experiences they have never had on the model of experiences they have had, such as trying to 1

April 2010 imagine being a victim of racial ridicule by comparing to first-hand personal experiences of another form of ridicule.

For instance, one may come to realise that a recorded African-American song, such as a bluesspiritual in likeness of Dark Was The Night Cold Was The Ground by Blind Willie Johnson, may have been expressing an inner sorrow about the trivialisation and mocking of black people by the whites performing blackface minstrel shows. However, as this is from a second-person perspective, one might miss a complex mix of emotions the artist feels in the music which makes part of what the music truly is potentially a slight feeling of relief as the consequence of those shows bring an odd few whites to embrace black people as equals through a fascination of their culture. For example, the images of minstrels were buffoonish and insulting. But the music they sang, while most often written by whites, drew directly on melodies African Americans sang. In this way, African American music first entered into popular culture [Thomas 2009]. Such are the problems of attempting to define music as African American; we don't notice the enormous variety of all the everyday language-games, because the clothing of our language makes them all alike [Wittgenstein 2009: 236]. However, there are certain affinities in African American musics, and in the contexts of which they are made.

The blues has possibly carried the most evident affinities to African music, tonally and 2

April 2010 melodically, also developed with European harmonic structures and instrumentation. White blues musicians perceived African-American music as the most authentic, genuine expression of emotion, of which authentic qualities were considered through closeness to the blues. Led Zeppelin is a prime example of how appropriation of Chicago blues allowed a new territory for African-American music to encompass. The band members were also seemingly imitating the performance styles of black artists they admired. Contrastingly, the music created by the band Led Zeppelin was arguably a bricoleur that amalgamated rockabilly, reggae, soul, funk, classical, Celtic, Indian, Arabic, pop, Latin, and country music, in addition to the blues. [Umland 2010] This shows how the definition of African-American music is temporally dynamic, constantly reshaped through inspiration and expansion of ideas. On the other hand, it also shows that the description of a music as African-American may be misleading because the initial musical traditions that were associated with this term become diluted with interweaving cultural influences. This argument could still be countered by claiming that being an African American is a different identity for the younger generations of today, of which attributes are defined through these cultural integrations; music being described as AfricanAmerican may still be accurate.

A confusion that remains strongly rooted is formed through the issue of race. The blues cannot be entirely separated from its 1700s folk spiritual connections of West European and West African musical styles. African American music has continually been driven by characteristics that are identifiably Black, such as call-and-response techniques, syncopated rhythms, 3

April 2010 polyrhythms, blues notes, and African-derived approaches to music making. By the 1920s, the gospel music pioneer Thomas Dorsey gave emphasis to the beat, added blues riffs, and opened up a considerable freedom of expression for the soloist and accompanists through improvisation. [Campbell 1995: 44] These features are fundamental in the music of Led Zeppelin whose members are white American therefore the concept of identifiably Black characteristics should be perceived as disconnected from the direct association to race. Instead, such a concept should be interpreted as particular musical characteristics of which origins are predominantly of African influence. This is not to say that the music that led to Led Zeppelin, such as the blues, did not have a direct link with race. Only that the consequent wide variety of musical styles that some would name African-American are racially irrelevant.

The blues impulse being repossessed, transferred and masked musical ideas, as well as performative approaches, was an aesthetic continued throughout African American acts, centered around the act of listening [Bartlett 1994: 640]. Reinforcing this idea, Led Zeppelin's vocal style uses the vibrato technique as heard in traditional blues music. Also, Zeppelin's voice-and-guitar call-and-response can be directly traced back to the earliest blues forms, that itself a development from West African musical traditions and European harmony, thus African American. There is little in common with Led Zeppelin and blackface minstrelsy, although it is doubtful that Zeppelin would have been able to create their music without it. The band showed no sentiments of white superiority or degrading satirical takes on African American culture. The only parallel that could be drawn is that they created and performed music with intricate 4

April 2010 and passionate appropriation of various musics, but significantly with dominant influence from the blues.

The African American aesthetic of possession through listening can also be found in hip-hop, whereby taking numerous segments from eclectic collections of music and appropriating them in a new form, has a central role in this style. The prominent influential hip-hop artist Eminem is no exception to this. For example, in his popular track My Name Is the music is sampled, beginning at 2 minutes, 10 seconds of the track I Got The by Labi Siffre [WhoSampled 2010]. The artist has also been said to be as good as any African-American practitioner of the hip-hop art, and that hes a white kid paying legitimate tribute to the harder edge and way cooler-style of African-American music [Hoskyns 2010]. However, some may interpret his music in parallels with blackface minstrelsy. Instead of attempting to understand the associated cultural differences, he may simply be engaging in minstrel parody without the makeup. In the same way as in the late 19th century, the largest audience for hiphop today is white, and, with few exceptions, whites control the associated record companies, venues and distributors. Additionally, it has been claimed that the way black artists play out roles in conformity to white stereotypes, specifically in gangsta rap, shows direct similarities to minstrel shows of the 1890s. [Thomas 2009] Some would also claim that Eminems music is drawn more from Caribbean musical elements than blues or other African-American traditions, because hip-hop began with appropriation of toasting a Jamaican tradition of talk and exclamations with music as well as looping the breaks of tracks, which began in the 5

April 2010 United States by the Jamaican DJ Kool Herc. Additionally, early hip-hop appropriated percussive elements and bass lines from latino musics, funk and disco. However, the hybridity that is formally intrinsic to hip hop has not been able to prevent that style from being used as an especially potent sign and symbol of racial authenticity [Gilroy 1991: 131]. Nevertheless, if we take the aforementioned concept of African American musical authenticity, the music of Eminem is non-authentic because its relation to the blues is fairly distant and unapparent. Call-and-response is seldom heard with few exceptions such as the vocal parts in the track Guilty Conscience and improvisation is no longer an integral part of the music.

Ultimately, the influence of African American music on white youth has facilitated more human interaction with blacks, where artists such as Led Zeppelin and Eminem appropriating and transforming these musics results in a shared cultural space. That said, blackface perpetuated an American tradition of cross-cultural immersion that still exists today [Monson 1995], although now the satirical elements are generally made indiscriminately and the balance between negative and positive reactions towards appropriation is weighing more in favour of counteracting racial segregation. Because of this, it may be more suitable to name music by its characteristics instead of its origins or locations of current popularity.

Bibliography

April 2010 Bartlett, Andrew, 1994: Airshafts, Loudspeakers, and the Hip Hop Sample: Contexts and African American Musical Aesthetics, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3042229, African American Review, Vol. 28, No. 4, (Winter), pp.639-652

Campbell, Patricia, 1995: Mellonee Burnim on African American Music, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3398885, Music Educators Journal, Vol. 82, No. 1, (July), pp.41-48

Gilroy, Paul, 1991: Sounds Authentic: Black Music, Ethnicity, and the Challenge of a "Changing" Same, http://www.jstor.org/stable/779262, Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 11, No. 2, (Autumn), pp.111-136

Hoskyns, Barney: Eminem, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/eminemraps-trailerpark-atildefrac14berkid-629068.html, 05/04/10

Monson, Ingrid, 1995: The Problem with White Hipness: Race, Gender, and Cultural Conceptions in Jazz Historical Discourse, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3519833, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 48, No. 3, (Autumn), pp.396-422

Thomas, Scott, 2009: Popular Music and Race, 7

April 2010 http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/omalley/120/empire/rap/music.html, 05/04/10

Umland, Sam, 2010: Led Zeppelin: Popular Music As Pastiche, http://60x50.blogspot.com/2010/01/pastiche.html, 05/04/10

WhoSampled, 2010: Who Sampled: Eminem, http://www.whosampled.com/sample/view/31/Eminem-My%20Name%20Is_Labi%20Siffre-I %20Got%20The/, 05/04/10

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 2009: Philosophical Investigations (Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.)

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