Just to make the same link come up 3 times a row on my friendslist

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Lex interviews Estelle - and the 'racist music industry' argument gets into the main news section too. IN YR BROADSHEETS SETTING YR AGENDA.

The opening bit of the interview reads - probably unintentionally - like classic Morleyan entrapment though: get Estelle to rant about how Adele ain't soul and she can't tell me what soul is, then ask Estelle what soul is and get staggeringly vague answer.

Comments

[infov0re.livejournal.com]

"the elephant in that particular corner of the room - which I didn't have the time or space to go into in this interview - is of course that soul is traditionally black music and an integral part of the black experience; which isn't to say that white people can't do it (we talked about Amy W a lot, whom Estelle loves and totally accepted as a soul singer) but when only white people are promoted, and they're singing a v much 'whitified' version of it, then there is an issue there"

I think that sounds fair, and that it's reasonable to say that there's an issue there. However, it's a shame that there wasn't more space for the Winehouse discussion, because this sentence:

"As a black person, I’m like: you’re telling me this is my music?"

is the prime candidate for interpreting as "white people cannot do soul". I think the distinction between white and whitified is perhaps one that could have more time spent on it (in the world at large). Is it really that more often than not, the "whitified" versions are promoted over as-authentic-but-as-such-not-as-mainstream "white" performers? (Amy being an obvious exception here) I'm not sure, but I think that thinking in those terms makes for more interesting discussion than simply white/non-white.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I toyed with putting the Amy thing in but thought, you know, fuck it: Estelle doesn't need her words qualified by stuff like that, and it wasn't so much a discussion as just Estelle going, oh I think Amy's amazing.

The trouble is once you start ACTUALLY USING words like 'black' and 'white' you end up having to qualify and double-qualify everything you say; it'd be a good candidate for a stand-alone column but in a piece with the focus on a specific person, there just wasn't room.

[infov0re.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, I understand wrt space/focus - it's an interview, not a column. I was more thinking about jumping off points that weren't what the majority of blog/forum traffic is going to pick up on. It's still a good article either way.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Also I don't get the feeling that if I had included the one line "I think Amy W's amazing though", it would have stopped any of the complainants from misreading or just not reading or whatever they're doing.