Are Blackness and Whiteness Useful Concepts in the Study of Popular Music?

It’s my view that the ‘black music’ and ‘white music’ are useful for talking about the origins of genres of music or for looking at how different cultures combined in the evolution of popular music. However these terms become defunct, or at least highly questionable, when talking of the history of popular music very quickly. There have been many examples not only of sounds, genres and styles combining to make new sounds such Rock ‘n’ Roll. But also artist’s taking other cultures sounds and sometimes doing it better, Eminem for example or Jimmy Hendrix. The former emerged as a dominant and controversial white artist in a predominantly black genre and the latter for the same reasons. Also in the past and even the present there are numerous times when white artists have covered songs originally performed by black musicians making it more popular and vice versa. ‘Blackness’ and ‘whiteness’ are useful terms for looking at the history and genealogy of music or even analysing aspects of contemporary music, but cannot simply be used as terms on their own.

Can Popular Music Really Achieve Genuine Political Change?

Popular music has long been used as a vehicle to express political opinions, to promote policies and ideas. This is not just phenomenon that appeared during the sixties, one example is the anti-English folk songs of the Irish that spoke of freedom and the atrocities of the English. Popular music has long been seen as a threat by establishments. Whether Capitalist, Communist or Dictatorship, the awareness of music’s power to captivate and galvanise its audience into actions has often been cause for both concern and policy change or making. Examples of this include the Criminal Justice Act, the BBC’s refusal to play Paul McCartney songs about Ireland and Bob Doles campaign against Time-Warner’s promotion of Snoop Dogg. However not only does popular music cause its own censorship but can contribute to important political and social change. Billy Holidays song ‘Strange Fruit’ and the pictures that provided the inspiration for the song can be seen as playing an important, if minor role, in changing the attitude towards and social standing black Americans. In my view popular music cannot achieve political change on its own, but it can certainly start and aid the process.