pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

does/should it matter that B&S are Scottish? I mean, when American artists depict an all/mostly white world I feel like they're maybe cherrypicking the American experience in a way that is open to these criticisms, but a place like Scotland, I dunno (although I know nothing about the B&S film beyond what's said in the article and don't know where it was filmed).

I googled her name after skimming the article and one of the first results was a reddit thread that I then clicked on

I never read reddit, I've maybe been on the site once or twice before

the forum name the thread was on was named punchablefaces

I found it pretty stomach turning that something so small and irrelevant as a pitchfork article in 2015, which, after skimming, I don't really care about or even agree with that much, generated this insane racist and misogynistic whirlwind

I suspect that was the intention, to some extent

prob was about baiting people, but I seriously doubt the intent was to get a "DEPORT ALL MUSLIMS AND SEND HER DEATH THREATS" kind of thing going

While Hanna has, historically, played with sarcasm and irony in her lyrics, her work has never been derided as a joke

I am deeply queasy about the personality cult that has sprung up around Kathleen Hanna over the past decade, but, holy shit, Kathleen and BK took so much shit in the 90s. They were pretty much constantly derided by a male-dominated punk scene. You can still meet male music fans/critics of a certain age who are quite vocal about what a joke they think "the whole riot grrrl thing" was.

assuming they've seen the internet before, idk what other reaction they would have realistically expected

xp

Kathleen and BK took so much shit in the 90s.

this is absolutely otm

worst

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/715-bitch-better-have-my-roundtable-rihannas-bbhmm/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=roundtable&utm_campaign=thepitch

should have swapped out Hanna for S-K and made the same point more strongly imo (but maybe S-K don't do as much sloganeering as Hanna and MIA are prone to? idk)

xp

stuart murdoch's response is definitely unedifying but yeah, glasgow + scotland more generally is preeetty white

You'd think Murdoch would've remembered that at one point Orange Juice had two black dudes.

Pretty rich coming a paragraph after making fun of Vampire Weekend, whose Rostam Batmanglij probably looks as much like her as Natasha Khan, and who has repeatedly taken umbrage at being categorized as "white."

the article did originally mention him in this sentence (i got confused when i read your post b/c when i read the article [the day it was published] he was indeed mentioned) but for some reason he was taken out?: https://web.archive.org/web/20150326011049/http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/710-the-unbearable-whiteness-of-indie/

i don't really think the article is bad or even controversial? and it's not like the entire premise falls apart after one points out one mistake or w/e

for those who don't wanna click that wayback link, that part of the article originally read as follows:

I can count on one hand the prominent performers in the independent scene that look like me: M.I.A., Rostam Batmanglij (Vampire Weekend), Himanshu Suri (Heems and Das Racist), Dapwell (Das Racist) and Natasha Khan (Bat For Lashes). Five people. Batmanglij and Khan are highly visible but have never courted controversy, and rarely acknowledge their ethnic heritages through their art. What we hear in their work is artistic assimilation, their careers evidence the easy acceptance that comes of that. However, both Heems and M.I.A. ...

and then continues as currently published

yeesh i always forget how this stuff brings the crepes out of the woodwork en masse /dude post

i think there's some begging the question going on as far as the definition of 'indie' where you're talking about not-very-integrated scenes producing artists who are then scalable to similarly non-integrated populations and lots of artists who could easily qualify as indie get left out but then 'indie' is a dumb idea/identity anyway

the article is getting at something important & i wouldn't want to pile on to discouraging some young writer from articulating their truth, but i am not sure that it was quite capturing the mechanics of a problem that is partly definitional & doesnt understand the way art is linked to communities or something idk

the responses to it are gonna be dumb & ugly, she's more right than wrong

The more I think about it, the more that Murdoch's "Sorry for being from Scotland in the 80s" is bullshit. Apart from Orange Juice, there was POC's in Simple Minds, Soup Dragons/BMX Bandits (same guy in both), Big Country, Win, Del Amitri, Gun (I think)...that's without me thinking too hard about it.

xp yeah, in a general sense it's a slightly obtuse attempt at making a fair and important point

re soup dragons / bmx bandits, is that sushil k dade? iirc murdoch's actually worked with him

Indeed, and his sister.

the article had some faults but overall I thought it was right on and as a brown person it resonated heavily with me tbh, big reason why I never really felt like a part of indie (and punk for that matter) scenes despite being into the music at various points on my life

couldn't help but notice there's no link to that article (posted only 2 days ago) on pitchfork's homepage.

it was on the pitch which is their blog thing and it wasn't a main feature, same goes for the Philip sherburne piece on edm and women which was a very good but short piece

the article had some faults but overall I thought it was right on and as a brown person it resonated heavily with me tbh, big reason why I never really felt like a part of indie (and punk for that matter) scenes despite being into the music at various points on my life

as a brown gay person it underscored the problem with their own coverage and point system.

wait, what's the problem with a scale of 1 to 10? ableist towards people who don't have 10 fingers?

The recipients about Best New Music are not likely to be women or non-whites.

*about = of

xp yeah, in a general sense it's a slightly obtuse attempt at making a fair and important point

― cis-het shitlord (Merdeyeux),

This is the response that most resonated. It's weird how these kinds of articles make my blood boil even when it looks like I agree w/the intention.

i wouldn't want to pile on to discouraging some young writer from articulating their truth

this is like the backbone of what ilm does

lmao yeah tell that to ethan

The recipients about Best New Music are not likely to be women or non-whites.

Latest BNM albums:

Courtney Barnett
Kendrick Lamar
Tobias Jesso Jr
Levon Vincent
Drake
Father John Misty
Aphex Twin
Bjork
Natalie Prass
Viet Cong
Sleater-Kinney
Panda Bear
D'Angelo
Andy Stott
Ariel Pink
Clark
Arca
Run The Jewels (counts for 1/2 I guess)
Grouper
Pharmakon

Doesn't look that bad.

@anandwilder

@sahizzurp hey my mom wants to know why your article doesn't mention me

Hashtag Indian problems

The article could definitely have done with a good editor. The response has been telling though.

People had adverse responses to the article because it was lazy and glib. The writer says that African music has "effectively disappeared" because Vampire Weekend brought elements of it into the mainstream. Really?! How so? I think there's an interesting essay to be done on why POC don't engage with indie music but this certainly isn't it.

Pretty sure people were not sending death threats because the article was lazy and glib. The point about African music is about the critical erasure of acknowledged influences within indie rather than erasure of the music / musicians from existence within a wider landscape.

OK, I didn't know there were death threats. Jeez.

The fourth Google result for her name is something called r/punchablefaces on Reddit too. The non-violent defensiveness about indie - ranging from Murdoch's tweets to 'aren't people allowed to be white any more?', is also telling.

It's worth restating a million times over that POC do engage with indie but that isn't reflected demographically in the genre from a critical or musical perspective. Again there are complex reasons for that but the barriers thrown up by the genre's current assumption of whiteness are one factor.

It's very reminiscent of the articles you get about why there are no high profile Asian footballers and questioning whether racism is a factor. It's definitely not the only factor but the inevitable landslide of racist responses that follow suggest it still exists.

wow i wasn't following the reaction to this, thought it wasn't an especially controversial article but if the backlash has been this strong it sort of proves her point right?

her citing heems and m.i.a. just made me think about indie as a marketing demographic more than anything else, like why else would you not call them rappers other than that their careers have existed within the boutique indie industry rather than hip-hop, and the fact that the boutique indie industry has plucked those particular non-white artists, whose music doesn't especially code as indie-the-genre, to market to its demographic

indie the genre being whiter than white is not really news though; idk whether POC who make it are actively being erased/overlooked though? seems like a fundamental question is the perennial "why does indie position itself as the generalist default - aided by token inclusions of POC like heems and m.i.a. - rather than just another niche"

lots of self-shade publishing this on p4k which is very responsible for this state of affairs!

I think there's an interesting essay to be done on why POC don't engage with indie music but this certainly isn't it.

― tayto fan (Michael B), Saturday, March 28, 2015 11:16 AM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no it's the other way round, this is not a "why does black ppl never want to rock" situation, this is "why doesn't indie engage with POC"

http://www.rawkblog.net/2015/03/on-pitchfork-race-indie-rock/

^^ worth a read

it seems like its a "damned if you do damned if you dont" scenario though. indie is too white, musically conservative but once it incorporates other elements, its accused of cultural appropriation. so that makes it hard to determine how indie can engage with POC.

is there POC in indie who are being ignored by critics though?

That article I posted isn't questioning the music -- it's questioning the assumptions of gatekeeper sites like Pitchfork.

To me, a lot of the problem rest with sites not having editors anymore. It's not that before the internet editors didn't have their own biases and assumptions; it's that just when sites need sharp, discerning editors most there's no money to hire them.

also editors are too aware of SEO now

i'm not particularly asking indie to engage with POC - as a POC i have no desire for it to engage with me thanks - but it does need to engage with the conservatism and whiteness that is fundamental to it rather than positioning itself as the centre of the counterculture and alternative to the mainstream (not to mention in critical outlets the centre of contemporary music full stop).

her citing heems and m.i.a. just made me think about indie as a marketing demographic more than anything else, like why else would you not call them rappers other than that their careers have existed within the boutique indie industry rather than hip-hop, and the fact that the boutique indie industry has plucked those particular non-white artists, whose music doesn't especially code as indie-the-genre, to market to its demographic

yeah there's something very awkward about talking about 'indie' in this way without addressing the way indie has come to informally encompass the most indie audience-friendly fringe of every other genre. you can't even say it's just generally people on independent labels with no mainstream profile if we're lumping M.I.A. in there.

white people have written about white people a lot. that's for sure. people tend to gravitate toward people in their own ethnic group. but i'm hopeful for the future! asian and southeast asian people one of the fastest growing groups in the u.s. and maybe someday in the future there will be more asian belle & sebastian-worshipping bands in the u.s. there are a lot of them in japan, that much i know. but you never know. the growing population here might just get more and more into asian pop music which is way more popular than indie rock. or rap. we might get more asian rap. i'm all for that. indie/indie rock isn't written in stone. the sound isn't ancient. it's a sound beloved in lots of non-white parts of the world. to me the dumbness of american music mags and sites - especially rock-based ones - is the lack of interest in so many international bands/scenes. because it's work to find them. sooooo many cool south american indie/etc bands that will never get written about here in a million years. and they are right down the road. sorta.

article would've landed more for me if it was a direct callout of p4k, although p4k posting an article about how p4k is racist would've smacked of some benevolent dictator bs

The recipients about Best New Music are not likely to be women or non-whites.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, March 27, 2015 11:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As Dinsdale pointed out upthread, this is completely untrue