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[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

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I should maybe have made the poll viewable to none - don't fill out any questions that you're not comfortable answering, obviously.

And the two scale questions are 'approximate' - deal with mixed-race/gender bands in whatever way you see fit.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I was obliged to abstain there because I can't actually remember what the last ten records I bought are.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

seing as i made a BIG PITCH for myself in the mid-80s as "world music critic" at nme, i obviously also made an effort LISTENING to music from lotsa difft places

(in my defence: it wasn't CALLED "world music" when i started)

i STRONGLY ENCOURAGE ONE AND ALL to make an effort to listen to more IRANIAN music as it = bettah than all the rest of music PUT TOGETHER even inc.craig david

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Craig David = TERRIBLE Beard but not beard music per se ;-)

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

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

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

i can barely remember the last ten records i bought, it's probably about two years worth...

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

haha yes does "bought" include STOLE VIA THE INTERWEB?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I'm having trouble thinking of the last 10 records I bought! Downloading might count but then all 10 would be BANGING GERMANS because of Saturday's electro spree.

My nuanced response to No 2 is - people should listen to whatever they feel, but if their taste skews heavily away from black people, or women, or whatever, they should maybe think about why this is the case beyond "I just don't like it", and maybe be aware of the social and cultural factors which have constructed their taste, and not dismiss certain 'aspects' of the music out of hand (eg people waving the entirety of hip hop away because it's all about guns'n'hos or whatevs). And if there is underlying snobbery or god forbid genuine racism underlying their tastes then I dunno, have the decency to admit it or something.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Actually the 10 rekkids thing is easy - about 3 in 10 (all banging German dudes) of the stuff I listen to is male and about 0 in 10 is quarter-English quarter-Scottish half-Chinese.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Aye. Plus moving outside yr musical comfort zones is usually a good thing, and this is a likely side-effect of trying to broaden yr listening demographically.

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

about 0 in 10 is quarter-English quarter-Scottish half-Chinese.

Yes, I wondered about how ethnicity was being defined here.

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

In the poll I mean. Ethnicity is a loaded term, surely.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I guess it is, more so than "race"? I wanted to get an idea of how closely people's record buying fits with this aspect of their own identity.

[nicolars.livejournal.com]

The only problem I had with this poll is that I had a hard time remembering the last 10 records I bought! So my answers were just (at best) a guess.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The interesting option for me is the one I ticked - I don't think listening to music from a wide demographic spread correlates against racism, but at the same time I do think at some level it's 'good for one' to listen to lots of different stuff*. But then at the same time this feels like a slightly obnoxious opinion - should music even be 'good for you'?

*in the same way that reading novels, which I hardly ever do, is 'good for you'.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Eh, fwiw I translated 'good for you' as 'likely to lead to more aesthetic enjoyment in the long term'.

[zenith.livejournal.com]

I think my answer to the second question is sort of bound up in theories about culture and politics - i.e., my ideal is that everyone listens to whatever* they want, across a level playing field. However, we don't have that level playing field. We have a field in which hierarchies exist but they're often invisible-ised, for want of a better term. So one sometimes has to make a conscious effort to extend the range of the types of people who make the music you listen to, in order to achieve an actual normality, rather than the illusory normality which is in fact heavily influenced by (often quite subtle) social/cultural/political inequalities and 'isms'.

*Except the Kilroy Chiefs, obviously.

[juror8.livejournal.com]

Why do I keep thinking Lex is Vietnamese?

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

A good example of what I mean by moving out of your comfort zone is your 'getting into Zep' project. This is most definitely NOT a move up the ladder of 'difficulty' musically, but it is something that is outside your normal range of listening.

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

The last eleven CDs I bought, hmm, this could be wrong, all this year...

Sarah Shannon - S/T
Tortoise and Bonnie Prince Billy - The Brave and the Bold
Sir Lancelot - Trinidad is Changing
Sprinkler - More Boy, Less Friend
Mastodon - Leviathan
Bleeding Through - The Truth
Dragonforce - Inhuman Rampage
Trivium - Ascendancy
Within Temptation - The Silent Force
Dragonforce - Valley of the Damned.
Various - Caribbean Disco Party

So, this list reflects need for PWC, and new year resolution of metal buying.

I do, however, have some Swedish lo-finess, ans some female fronted goth metal on order still.

I never notice the gender/race thing on lists. I'm planning to get some more calypso music, as the Sir Lancelot album is great

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

oh damn, forgot: By Coastal Cafe - Old Cartoons

(Swedish lo-finess) (I also bought the last couple of issues of Robots and Electronic Brains, they came with free CD's)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

someone who hates homophobia may well boycott records by an act they see as homophobic

I remember someone telling me off for listening to Shabba Ranks once (wz it you, graciousviv?) and I had no idea he was encouraging poor little me to shoot gay people. I liked the song. Obv if you are 1xbig racialist and exclusively listen to Oi records it is more reflective of you as a person. I like Eminem but I don't want to er, drown my wife. I like MES & His teh Falls, and he hates EVERYTHING (esp the countryside) and I LIKE everything. p.s. I am ambivolent about the countryside.

I can't remember the last couple of rekkids I bought but whether they be girls or boys matters WAY less than when I was 14 innit (hence my inordinate amount of Elastica love). I like Girls Alound, MIA and Lady Sov AND System of a Down AND eurobosh and Teh Falls and this Kompakt cd what I am listening to right now. I DEFY GENRE!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I always feel guilty about the way I don't feel guilty about loving really homophobic dancehall.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

what about reckids as gifts - i got kraftwerk and will young for xmas = i am a gay n@zi

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

yes but we KNEW THAT BEFORE

[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.

[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]

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?

[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?

[(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.

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

Cash alright? Do have change of $20?