Sasha on Shadow, Diplo, Eminem & Minstrelsy

the biggest internet dud of all time is "This shit has been covered." Maybe for you and your three friends, but not for a whole lot of intelligent people who are busy thinking about other things. And—please put this on your refrigerator if you give a shit about these things–I am not writing for your three interfriends, nor will I ever. These ideas want to circulate in the big, bad bloodstream and will, I think, read as news to many people.

He's wrong if he thinks he didn't write it for my three interfriends at least - they all went to EMP!

Shakey, I don't think it's irrelevant, not if the issue is really -- as I'm kind of banging on about -- this anxiety about having the background that your music "belongs" to. There's a big difference in character between a middle-class white person dealing in American black music and dealing in Brazilian lower-class/black music, but the dynamics of them do have something to do with one another.

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Haha, well, I was looking for the exact quote, and that came up. But it's also probably a by-product of fact-checking and copy-editing for a living.

Dude, Shakey, it doesn't have to be about stealing and ownership; it's a lot more interesting if you think about it from the perspective of where people artists feel comfortable. From that perspective the mythical inner city and the even-more-mythical Rio slum are equally outside the immediate circle, you know? Jordan's voice thing is dead-on -- they can do the brass, but they have some self-consciousness that if they bring in their own voices it might not sound right, won't have the same quality as what they're playing, might even (to put words in his mouth) have fake or awkward qualities. Similarly: how would people react if Diplo, instead of just making some baile-inspired beats, actually tried to rap like that?

I don't think so. One is a community that's in your own backyard and may actually come after you over perceived injustices/thievery - while the other is distant and (probably) completely oblivious. The difference in the power politics of either scenario is self-evident.

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the idea of doing indie rap instrumentals as a shit job to "pay the bills" is pretty funny!

I agree, it's different in character and more hotly and obviously contested with white and black Americans, but the personal dynamic inside it can stay similar across the board.

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Why is it that thirty years on, there's still such a sense of "the other" involved? Is it about authenticity? It's definitely not about quality, since there's a lot of crap that goes out on the radio and hits the top ten.

Over 30 years ago there was the Black-Rio movement in Rio de Janeiro in the era of soul, where we played James Brown, Parliament, the Blackbyrds. In that era there were two types of baile, where people went to halls and set up sound systems; there was the rock baile where they played Bachman Turner Overdrive and all that, which was white and there was the black baile where they played soul. They stayed separated for a time and the Big Boy arrived on the scene, you know Big Boy?

A: Err..No.

DJM : Well he's dead now, but he played this sound 30 odd years ago, he had the baile de Pesada (Heavy Dance) which he started where he played soul and rock, rock and soul. There wasn't a difference and people came from the suburbs and brought their own characteristics with them. Before, those who liked rock would go to the suburbs for their parties and there was a kind of rivalry between black and cocota (whites who play rock), just playful, no fighting or violence, just having fun. And then at this same moment, Brazilian soul was born, which gave us Tim Maia, Sandra de Sá, Cassiana, Gerson King Combo, Banda Black Rio etc.

Soon after this came the Disco craze which swept through the world and the white dances became discotheques quickly, but the soul dances continued playing soul. The rock bars virtually disappeared becoming disco-bars.

Stuff that was played in the soul dances, like Kool and the Gang, started to make music which was more disco, y'know "Ladies Night" etc... and Brazilians like Deodato were producing and creating a more commercial sound with brass and stuff and this moved closer to funk and the two different bailes came together as one, and the crowds mixed together.

(cue shitty Bulworth jokes)

Is it only a minstrel show when it crosses class AND race boundaries, or is race alone the defining factor?

Mike, I think everybody thinks that, because we probably should, but there's still this image-awareness about it, to do with race and class and a million other signifiers -- and the end fact is that certain white people rapping, no matter how skilled, would still provoke WTF reactions and mockery and derision. It's not just a race or class but really a whole pile of signifiers involved in, well, "passing" in different hip-hop fields.

It's worth noting that the same thing affects black people, too -- the myth-world of rap has developed itself to such an insane point that even successful artists seem to have to spend lots of time trying to play into it right.

those mixes are great though!

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can't it be as simple as white people catching on?

If it's appropriation you're worried about, it's not like Diplo is taking food -- purple food, mind you -- off Cam'ron's table. I mean, we're not talking about the marginilization of the kinds of artists that Diplo is accused of stealing from.

You might say that the Beastie Boys are a better example of making money while other, more "legitimate" practitioners were not, but the answer to that is that it doesn't happen anymore the way it did -- the channels are so far stuffed with better things -- call them more "real" if you want -- that the beastie boys are an afterthought at best. We don't exactly have to worry about Kanye opening up for Northern State.

Because Sasha seems to be more concerned about performers and their personae rather than misappropriation and (white) people generally making money off of a historically "black" form, the paper seemed to me to boil down to the suggestion that people are staying outside of or on the margins of the game because "blackface" carries a stigma because of blackness rather than a stigma because of inauthenticity.

In my opinion it's the latter that presents the stigma WAY more than the former. Somebody like eminem is able to transcend the inauthenticity question because, as most people seem to agree, he is (or used to be) really good. Diplo, not so much -- either because he just doesn't have it, or he's too self conscious (as someone suggested above). Note that Paul Anka and everybody else have all set their signs on doing super white-guy versions of INDIE ROCK, where even Pat Boone does not fear to tread, not hip-hop.

Anyway, my point is that this reluctance of "white" performers -- if you agree that it's based on authenticity self-consciousness rather than "blackness" stigma, articulates some degree of progress insofar as it suggests the absence of misappropriation from the "black" people that are generally making the music in question (setting aside the question of whether the industry makes white non-artist people rich and etc. etc.)

Anyway, just saying.

yeah but 130 posts in and i don't think anybody's managed to make a more convincing case for that than SFJ did for the "'blackness' stigma".

compare: the manix 12's on reinforced. the 4hero album

totally different case!! because diplo never made those manix 12's. the equivalent would be if 4hero got famous off djing hardcore records and made noodly techno in the studio right off the bat. for a while, at least, 4hero were making music that reflected the music they were playing in the clubs.

meanwhile, diplo's first outing as a producer features martina topley bird and vybz kartel! couldn't he have found someone a little more ... you know ... gully?

anyway i read SFJ's article the same was as shakey mo, except i don't think suge knight was acting out of cultural nationalism. and negative repercussions from the black community is a red herring, too, since they haven't been anywhere near majority consumers of hip-hop product for a really, really long time.

also i have my own problems with lots of the historic ideas about minstrelsy now prevelant in academia which i think are back-projecting more recent forms of cultural mishmashing back into a v. difft historic period and thus confuse matters quite a bit. but that's a whole nother axe to grind. however it does make sasha's point about trying to establish a continuum and then mark what and how things have changed a more interesting potential solution to this issue. but to talk about that, i think there needs to be more talk about the bigger issues of how things changed so we've got representation as indicating power (among many things) rather than the crude notion of representation AS power.

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**back-projecting more recent forms of cultural mishmashing back into a v. difft historic period and thus confuse matters**