Afro-Punk: The Rock & Roll Nigger Experience

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Thread started 07/16/03 1:13pm

JANFAN4L

Afro-Punk: The Rock & Roll Nigger Experience

"Afro-Punk" Brings A Chord of Fresh Air

By James Hill, BET.com Staff Writer
Source: http://www.bet.com/articl...37,00.html

Posted July 16, 2003 -- Director James Spooner dedicates his insightful documentary "Afro Punk" to "every Black kid who has ever been called a nigger. And every White kid who thinks they know what that means."

So what is a Black punk rocker? You've seen 'em. Maybe you went to school with them. Maybe you are one. The Black kid who wore ripped clothes and combat boots instead of Girbaud and Hilfiger. His hair wasn't faded and his backpack was filled with stickers of skulls and anarchy signs. His friends were mostly White kids who dressed the same and they all listened to groups like Bad Brains and Fishbone instead of Kwame, Wu Tang or Mary J. Blige. Sound familiar? If not, the wonderfully open and efficient documentary "Afro-Punk" is a great introduction.

So where does the Black punk kid come from? Not surprisingly most of the folks interviewed here share the same background -- living in all-White neighborhoods, going to all-White schools and having all-White friends. All recount feeling alienated. Not that they were loners necessarily, but that when it came to being accepted by Black peers, they found they were ostracized for their spiked hair and pierced faces.

Ryan Bland, from Beaumont, Texas, whose brown forearms are tattooed to an even black, says, "I feel like a lot of Black folks have tunnel vision about what Black should be. And you can't stray outside of that. It's wrong. Taboo."

For those who know anything about the punk rock scene, it is specifically this type of alienation, this brand of singularity that feeds a culture built on teen-ageangst. And what better candidate than a Black kid who not only feels isolated from the larger White culture he lives in but from his own Black peers who labels him a "devil worshipper" and "fag?"

Spooner not only understands the natural one-to-one relationship between the American Black experience and the tragic-outsider pose of punk rock but how the historical appropriation of Black culture via music has largely affected not only White punks but Black punks.

In the film's opening moments, Spooner highlights the quote "outside of society, that is where I want to be" from the song "Rock N Roll Nigger," penned by a White poet who wanted to identify with the Black experience. Written in the late '70s, "Rock N Roll Nigga" only highlights this country's understanding of the Black race as contrary, opposite the norm. Consequently, it is these attributes that make Black culture so appetizing to White teen-agers looking to rebel. What we are seeing now with hip hop has been done before with jazz, blues and rock.

The most interesting thing about this movie is not it's look at a subculture or its historical perspective on music, but how these Black kids navigate race in a White scene of which they have elected to be a part. Many of them have never dated a Black person. Most admit to straightening their hair (although most are now rocking dreads, afros and baldies) and even thinking that being White was cooler than being Black. However, just because they realize that they don't fit in with the popular definition of "Black," doesn't mean that they settle for being White wannabes either. These punk rockers are the great-grandchildren of W.E. B. Dubois's double veil theory.

"I'm not like you," Mag Delena (who plays in a band named Yaphett Koto) announces to an anonymous White listener. "It's an insult to say that we're all the same. I am different."

Fed up with being deemed the "safe Negro" as well as the false sense of colorblindness in the punk scene, Nicole out of Chicago, comments, "[People say to me] 'There's no Black, there's no White, we're only human.' Yea that's you not acknowledging your f***ing White privilege."

Perhaps the best example of this racial/social dichotomy is the group Cipher, headed by Howard University graduate Moe. With his locked hair pulled up in a woven hat, he finds no problems identifying as Black and punk and uses his music to bridge the perceived gap. In the film's most humorous moment, we watch him scream a painful song about the middle passage as the White audience sings, thrashes and jumps to the beat. Afterwards the audience is interviewed and admits that while they really have no idea what Moe is singing about, they wish they "had a better understanding."

This doesn't really bother Moe. White ears are not his goal; it's the Black ones he's after, a formidable goal that he refuses to change his music for. "I could just be like, 'Let me drop a beat over it so you can understand it,' but I'm not going to do that." As San Antonio-born rocker Stacy Williams says, it's the "jiggy Negroes" she wants in her audience. "It's never hard to get a White audience. Ministering to our own community has always been the hard part. It's folks on my block that need to hear my music."

Amen.

Find out more information about screenings and go inside the documentary at www.afropunk.com

DigitalLisa	The irony of this whole thing is black people where the creators of rock n roll, so why shouldn't they have the right 2 make any contributes 4 2day Just so y'all know rock n roll is a black thing, always has been and always will be. [This message was edited Thu Jul 17 7:39:27 PDT 2003 by DigitalLisa]
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