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.