pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

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

"completely"

Wow that Rhianna review thing oof if anyone needed proof stereotyping still exists try and make it through that first paragraph

Best New Music consistently devalues music made by PoC. Every year the % of PoC on the Top 50 Album list will be something like twice the % of PoC awarded Best New Music througout the year. And since BNM is the main editorial tool used to put value on new music, that speaks badly of the site.

Everything about that indie piece needed to be sharpened or focused, not least what the author means by indie but probably also what they mean by POC. As is, it's a really scattershot misfire akin to the S F-J essay.

ALL THIS

Molly Beauchemin:"Which brings me to the real point of this single: Rihanna is rapping! And it sounds good! Like she's stepping to the Game of all the boys in her league and stealing the show. "Your wife in the backseat of my foreign car"—hooooBOY, that is a fire lyric; that shit makes me wanna pull the fire alarm and whip my towel in the air like I just witnessed a filthy dunk during the NBA All Star Game. I would love to see her rap more often, and not just as a one-off like Beyonce on her "Flawless" remix with Nicki Minaj. "

AND

Meaghan Garvey: As anyone who has spent significant time freelancing is painfully aware, asking for money you are owed fucking suuuuuuucks. Typing my third, fourth, whatever follow-up email of “Hey there! Hope all is well! Just wanted to see if you’d ever looked into that check from four months ago. Thanks sooooo much! :)” A smiley face? A god damn smiley face! I got better at this stuff, as one does, but it’s still an act that requires a few minutes of pep talk, maybe involving a Nicki verse rapped quietly in the mirror or a GIF of Rihanna doing her little finger-shotgun dance. Look at these bad ass women: would Rihanna whimper like a fucking Teletubby when asking for money for which she worked her ass off? I'd already assumed the answer was an emphatic “fuck that,” but now it is official.

AND

Safy-Hallan Farah: On “Better Have My Money”, Rihanna’s voice is scratchy like she smokes Newports, not just blunts. Somehow Rihanna sounds like she simultaneously has run out of fucks to give and cares so much she’s coughing up blood. This is that song you listen to in the line at the financial aid office, or if you’re parked outside the house of a person who owes you at least a stack. Other optimum listening scenarios include while doing your invoices or protesting the government for your 40 acres and a Bugatti.

“Better Have My Money” is 37 exits south of Stay in Your Lane for Ri-Ri BUT I LOVE IT.

ALL ON THE SAME PAGE

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

That opening paragraph is just a perfect shitstorm.

There's a least a stack in there. A stack of shit.

I feel like there are way better examples in film than Wes Anderson.

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

lol that was my exact pitch to them when they asked for a submission

I can't help but feel some half-hearted positivity with Jessica and Pelly hired, Mohenu and Geffen getting work, and seeing photos from the P4K showcase which appeared to be entirely POC and women (and Win Butler, ha), but there is a nagging doubt that they're futilely working at undoing twelve years of damage... still so doubtful of the mechanics of "objective crit" and a culture of decimal-ratings and list-making, that it can be swung around to being a tool of good

lex otm upthread as always

you do realize that there have been more women and people of color writing for pitchfork, particularly in the past few years, than the five or six who are always mentioned

feel bad that i only end up reading the bloggy stuff on pitchfork that gets linked to on my facebook. there's probably good stuff on the site that i never see. but you know i'm a busy guy i follow the links...

this is not pitchfork but this is a really fun ilxor Q&A in case you missed it:

https://sports.vice.com/article/wrestling-as-a-way-to-survive-a-conversation-with-john-darnielle

Of course! I was sending worried emails to Amy Phillips reading "you know that this decimal system is going to fuck over non-males non-straights non-whites" as early as 2007

feel bad that i only end up reading the bloggy stuff on pitchfork that gets linked to on my facebook. there's probably good stuff on the site that i never see. but you know i'm a busy guy i follow the links...

― scott seward, Saturday, March 28, 2015 12:04 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this being the way the world works is the saddest of all

hahaha scott wants critics to really take their time and delve into an album before reviewing it so that he doesn't read it because it doesn't show up on his news feed

well, people don't usually post links to REVIEWS on my facebook. mostly bloggy/essay type things. hardly anyone on my facebook - which is lousy with rock critics - posts links to great reviews they have read. unless they wrote them. i do find stuff on my own. and i read a lot of the kendrick reviews. those showed up. liked the greg tate, spin, and carl wilson ones. and a couple of others. i read a lot of them.

"you know that this decimal system is going to fuck over non-males non-straights non-whites" as early as 2007

― got a long list of ilxors (fgti), Saturday, March 28, 2015 1:26 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i really liked this thing drew wrote about music and rankings awhile back, even though i'm generally suspicious of that line of argument. reeks too much of "you can't put quantify my genius!" artist egoism (http://thequietus.com/articles/16052-drew-daniel-matmos-soft-pink-truth-anti-favourite-albums-essay) (also, lol: i actually downloaded every album drew casually namedrops in the piece so it actually pulled off being both an album list and a critique of it)

from my limited pov i think "indie" is less "unbearably white" than, say, ten years ago. also less straight, less male. the way indie media treats artists of color feels less gimmicky or awkward. not saying it's perfect, but it feels like things are improving, from like, observing the local scene & my carefully cultivated media garden. feel like the decline of vice's editorial voice as it became an ad agency run on outsourced clickbait hipster slavelabor is a significant part of this. you can still sniff out the latent effects of their "fun" social conservatism, which at the time went p much unchallenged, pitchfork voice being just banal authoritative aesthete. now both push social justice clickbait because it sells, and you can kind of feel the effects of that, talking to people at shows, the landscape of opinions in these scenes changing

i see a lot of sloppy stuff. sloppy thinking. sloppy writing. stuff obviously written quickly. the good stuff definitely stands out. more the exception than the rule. but maybe that was always the case. the good music writing threads on ilx are filled with cobwebs. people just want to bitch. including me, apparently! i do still appreciate good writing though.

now both push social justice clickbait because it sells, and you can kind of feel the effects of that, talking to people at shows, the landscape of opinions in these scenes changing

Curious to see what happens when the market shifts.

is it changing in a concrete way or is everyone just playing "the game" (copyright nabsico) at an even higher level

belle and sebastian and wes anderson -- love them as i do -- are sort of out of date references, no? it's weird to use them as an occasion for a sweeping damnation of "indie," which doesn't seem to exist as a discernible, guitar-rock based form anymore but rather an amorphous "upscale" marketing niche

also i am super uncomfortable with this kind of shit:

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.

it would be cool if they "acknowledged their ethnic heritage through their art" i guess, but why should they have to? why shouldn't they just allow themselves to be influenced by whomever happens to influence them? white artists do this. why should POC be pigeonholed, and asked to perform their identity in a way that pleases this critic?

n.b. pitchfork has totally played a huge role in establishing a largely white, largely male "indie canon" and deserve criticism for this. but this article is taking aim at specific artists, not content curators. and artists are who they are. their visibility is determined by other forces -- marketing budgets and the editorial decisions of content curators like pitchfork

i hate belle and sebastian, they're awful. but i dunno, go to glasgow before you bemoan their whiteness. glasgow is white as fuck.

12% of Glasgow is not white, which is lower than London, Manchester, etc but higher than a lot of other places in the UK. Getting mad about Belle & Sebastian is a bit like getting mad about Midsomer Murders, though. They are both part of the same fantasy heritage industry. I think the article was less about them than the way that fantasy is taken as the default by critics.

Xp, that paragraph was cut but doesn't read to me as a slight on the artists. There is no assumption that they should reflect their heritage in their art, it's pointing out that artists who don't often fare better.

Idk, it's far from perfect so I'd only go so far in defending it but it's definitely taking aim at the critical canon, not the musicians. The article Alfred posted fleshed that out better.

sufjan, belle & sebastien (fucking right about an outdated reference), wes andersen, et al aren't the bad guys here, it's the mindless imitators. arcade fire and bon iver bred vest rock and a lot of people have been talking about how there's a thinly veined white supremacy in generic indie rock and the 'upscale' artisan aesthetic lifestyle, embraced by fucks and naive, simple people moving to brooklyn with stars in their eyes. Nirvana lead to Nickelback, but they weren't the problem. ♫ it'ssss the money ! ♫

sorry *led

it would be cool if they "acknowledged their ethnic heritage through their art" i guess, but why should they have to? why shouldn't they just allow themselves to be influenced by whomever happens to influence them? white artists do this. why should POC be pigeonholed, and asked to perform their identity in a way that pleases this critic?

yeah...this is what irks me about the regular thinkpieces about The Mindy Project, the idea that Mindy Kaling can't just have a funny show that is rarely explicitly about her race the same way there are funny shows that ARE largely about race like Black-ish or Fresh Off The Boat. we can always wish someone executes their project differently, but when you make it sound like a duty...

reminds me of this Roger Ebert moment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSzP9YV3jbc

So Jamie XX has 2 Pitchfork Best New Tracks in just the last week and will have dancehaller Popcaan guesting on his new album, but I haven't seen a single Jamaican dancehall song on the Best New Tracks tab going back to September 2014 (and maybe farther back as I stopped looking. Best New Albums may be similar I bet). The Best New Tracks has some rap, a little r'n'b, & rock and electronic stuff from various parts of the world btw.

oh Jamaican artists always get treated like that, guesting on projects (Kanye and Kendrick's last albums, Major Lazer) that attract huge acclaim that rarely spills over to their solo work very significantly, to say nothing of the long history of US/UK reggae and ska acts that have dwarfed the sales of any Jamaican artist not named Bob Marley.

Popcaan's album got reviewed on Pitchfork last year (an 8) but since Pitchfork dropped those columns they once had that covered music that Pitchfork gave less coverage to elsewhere, and with Jess H and Joe Tangari writing less for them, there's not much review coverage.

Afropop from Nigeria and elsewhere doesn't make best tracks or albums either. Deej wrote that December 2014 Pitchfork Pitch piece on best Nigerian Afropop tracks of 2014, and I haven't seen much coverage since then.

I really don't want Pitchfork to start covering more ''world music'', I don't think I would trust the idea generally.

Nor that I want south asian influences on a B&S record, that's a terrible idea.

the only site i can think of that comes close to being globally proportional in its coverage is rbma

It could work. The Avalanches remix of "I'm A Cuckoo" mixed in East African sounds pretty well.

xpost

Dude should just post a whole bunch of interesting south asian artists he knows about, instead of waiting for some validation by a bunch twee glaswegians.

and when Arcade Fire discuss their creoles influences people speak of cultural appropriation like it's a huge sin. I don't want to defend those artists and I'm all for better coverage of minority cultures in mainstream media. I just think there are better way of opening dialogue than again discussing pitchfork and white indie artists.

Hey guys, maybe off topic, but just while we're on the subject of "erasing the voices of women and POC", Regine is a Creole-speaking female POC

So what are the better ways you hint at Van Horn Street? You're fine with lots of Diplo but not dancehall? Indie(multiple forms of rock including experimental & metal & electronic programmed sounds) plus rap and a couple of r'n'b performers as the only Best Albums and Best Tracks is ok? Btw, Some of those "world music" artists you don't want are considered pop or dance to those familiar with their music.

Dude should just post a whole bunch of interesting south asian artists he knows about, instead of waiting for some validation by a bunch twee glaswegians.

― Van Horn Street,

The "dude" who wrote the Pitchfork article is named Sarah Sahim. Sarah said she liked B & S's music, but took them to task for how they were casting a movie.