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

Re: LEXPLOSION

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

I think that the problem is that the shorter article in the main Graun, the one linked there, stops just too short*, the next line is the "They keep trying to tell me in the media what soul music is and I'm like, we KNOW what soul music is, stop fucking around with us!", which is more the point, yeah?, that it's not that anything Duffy is doing, but that the media is going "At last! White people have come to save soul!"

*though obviously I can understand the temptation to let "Fuck that!" be the last word.

Re: LEXPLOSION

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think Lex and Estelle are wrong about how Adele and Duffy have been portrayed, though! Certainly Duffy (cf Sarah and my conversation above) - I think generally there's a distinction that needs to be made between "soul" and "soulful" - D & A have been promoted as the latter but I think NOT the former so much precisely because they aren't black.

The real meat and story in the interview is how black British artists get treated by the industry/media/critics/us - the expectation of street-ness or sonic radicalism and the concurrent inability to handle the ambition of someone like Estelle when it's not in cartoon bling form.

Re: LEXPLOSION

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Or even when it is!

(I thought her rant near the end, about 'Black Boys', and how race gets swept under the carpet in the UK generally, was far more worthy of attention...)

Re: LEXPLOSION

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

(The other thing to remember here is that soul music is pretty tightly interwoven with white working class culture in the UK as well, possibly more so)

Re: LEXPLOSION

[sbp.livejournal.com]

And the classic Stax soul house band was 50% white, 50% black. (Booker T and the MGs)

Re: LEXPLOSION

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

I did not know that about 'Black Boys' so that was interesting yes.