Together we learn to read and write

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Sparked by a familiar controversy rearing its head on The Lex's LJ, I thought maybe a poll would help us get further into this question. (Let's not go all ILM here, please.)

[Poll #663010]

The underlying question maybe:"Is it important for your consumption of music to reflect your social and political beliefs?" (another old ILM favourite). When the choice to be made is a negative one, a lot of people say "yes" - someone who hates homophobia may well boycott records by an act they see as homophobic. But my guess is people who believe in racial equality don't make 'positive' choices to support that in their music consumption (for instance). And why should they, if they don't like the music? But I think it's an interesting area.

Comments

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

If it was called "world music" by the end, surely that would be your fault!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

yes but we KNEW THAT BEFORE

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes I had real actual broccoli last night, it was much more like a charming bit of 70s radio pop than a rock behemoth (TM)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

eminem just REMARRIED kim so she is presumably botherd re record content

STAN is the greatest record ever made

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I am a slurring Sri Lankan guerrilla who has excellent dance routines and speaks several European languages.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Broccoli is clearly a novelty pop record! It is WEIRD-SHAPED and GREEN and looks like a SMALL TREE and is slightly sweeter than you think!

[sbp.livejournal.com]

"Is it important for your consumption of music to reflect your social and political beliefs?"

Not really, it's more about reflecting my musical taste. Which includes black persons and white persons, doing the jazz, the blues, the pop and the rock. But not Yoko Ono and the screeching. And I'll enjoy Yo Yo Ma playing the 'cello, and the cuban music and the other Latin American music styles. And Ali Farka Toure playing the african geetar. So I think I've got most continents and pigments and genders covered.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i did not at that point rule the world

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Eg forcing oneself to listen to an artist's "rubbish" albums just to see if anything has changed since you last listened to them x million years ago. See the Stranglers.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

MES & His the Falls = parsnip. Looks horrible and wizened on the outside but shove it in the oven for an hour and 1x taste sensation results.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Spinach = IRON maiden innit, oho B-vitamin-tastic

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Get one new thread tomorrow!

[plumsbitch.livejournal.com]

(I had on idea, being only an occasional ILM lurker, that this was the 'standard qu'. I may to have investigate ILM more thoroughly)

Roughly what Alex/Zenith said.

Aesthetic taste doesn't exist in a vacuum from society and therefore I think it's useful to critique one's own aesthetic choices and keep an eye out for inadvertent/unthinking bigotry/assumption being playedo ut in that field.

Also I am aware that I don't buy/download that many records made by people who share my 'ethinicity'/ethnic identity. That's partly because my music taste has generally been more inclined to popular Anglo/Americaon rooted stuff, and there's not much British Asian presence there.

(Different case with the 'classical' stuff I listen to, there's a pretty much 50/50 split there bewteen Western and Non-western, for want of a less crude division)

I also know that I got wildly excited during the two short periods in my music fan lifetime when British Asian visibility in some music scenes briefly happenened : the bleed from riot grrrl/queercore with people like the Voodoo Queens/Cornershp, and the (spit)New Asian Kool thing, with Nitin et al.

Which is a neat eg of where aesthetic taste isn't distinct from the society in which it grows up, as for me music is an environment, like a fair few others, where I don't expect to see my ethnicity to be reflected unless I go looking for it, where I'm generally the only BA in the village.

The gender this is connected but different. Will have a think about that.

[plumsbitch.livejournal.com]

But how one relates to one's race or ethnicity or any other identifier *is* partly choice, the extent to which that aspect of one's identity is central, a driving force etc.

[plumsbitch.livejournal.com]

there is also the complicated question of subcultural relationships/the 'crabs in the barrel' situ.

Like, I used to go to a small queer dancehall night in London called Batty Boy. Which always struck me as a weird/great/fascinating reclaming thing. (Fucking great night as well!) But was I/were the people involved just extending stereotypes rather than undermining them?

[dorsalstop.livejournal.com]

I had to guess too. Should I count Ladytron and Broadcast as female because of the voices or as 50/50 male/female because, well, they are? And what about Johnny Boy and Morningwood?

I mostly buy music by white women. Am I now a racist sexist?

[dorsalstop.livejournal.com]

And how do I count the Girl Groups Box Set? And what ethnicity are all these girls???

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Haha at the N@ZI answers: "I don't care whether people listen to diverse music" = 8 white males, "I never notice diversity of artists" (except isn't that the anti-Nazi position?) = 4 white males and katstevens

Also there is no option for "I think people definitely shouldn't listen to diverse music but I do not have a nuanced view on this" - call this science?

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Can we take it as read that I posted a version of your response with all the terms reversed so it's about you vs. white male guitar bands? Coz I don't want to have to type it up, I'm a bit tired.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

dearie me, it's almost as if you people don't even have databases for your music.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

ah, I stuck with actually paid real actual money for actually ones. If it was 'acquired by any means nudge nudge guvnor' the albums I've acquired in the last three days, i.e. 500+, are around 98% black and easily 90% male.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

You are plainly ashamed of your heritage, and you should listen to loads of Chinese-Scottish-English-Chinese stuff immediately.

[(Anonymous)]

I would like to report that of the eight performers I actually paid money or traded CDs for in the last year (all in the last two months, as it happened), five are sexy white woman under the age of 25 or so (the Voice reimbursed me for one of these hot babes; we classified it as "client entertainment"), one is a sexy white woman in her forties, one is a sexy young black dude, one is a whole crew of somewhat sexy white guys in their twenties, and one is a white guy even older than I am.

If you add in the additional eight performers I had burned for me over this two-months span, a total of three of them are short (including one who is lil and one whose breasts are small and humble and whose ethnicity is all mixed up) and yet another is "Young" (according to his moniker) and black.

[(Anonymous)]

Er, I keep forgetting to say who I am. I am me and I won't change for anyone like you, unless you give me an incentive.

[(Anonymous)]

Ha, I read that as a dig at KT Tunstall the first time. Although that would be slightly off.