Struggle For The Right To "Rock": Racism, Corporate Liberalism, Cultural Hegemony & Black Music

A.S. Van Dorston

May 1990

Cold war America can be characterized as the time when the center turned on the extremes. Liberals and conservatives made common cause against leftists and rightists. It was the liberals who compromised most in becoming natural allies with the giant corporations on Wall Street. They were the corporate liberals, as characterized by Peter Biskind in Seeing Is Believing.

The fifties were an exceptionally good time for corporate liberals. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal saved capitalism, labor, "with an assist from the witch-hunt, had traded in its vision of a socialist future for a car, a television, and a house in Levittown," and rock and roll was already being tamed (Biskind, 15).

A corporate liberal believes a stable society is based on inclusion, not exclusion. They were happy to include rock and roll into the canon of popular culture. As long as anything with competing ideologies subscribed to the ground rules of the center and, as Biskind said, " submitted to the discipline of compromise," they would be included into stable society. The first step of compromise for rock and roll was to call it "rock and roll" instead of rhythm and blues, to camouflage the music's black roots (Biskind, 1.

The corporate liberals responsible for such compromise, according to Nelson George, in his book ”The Death of Rhythm & Blues•, were mostly white music industry people. For George, the businesspeople and record companies are where the story lies; the story of an illness in black music; the story of the systematic, sometimes unintentional strangulation of black music by cultural hegemony (George, xv).

Although there is rarely any sort of masterplan, the effect of a hegemonic culture is ultimately the ensemble of material and cultural practices that reinforce the belief systems embraced by the power elite, as to so firmly entrench it that it is seen as the all-encompassing truth, instead of merely one version of the truth. Cultural hegemony is a belief system that is largely an unrecognized, covert form of power. By absorbing and co-opting competing ideas, it ingratiates the powerless, suggesting that their beliefs will be realized. Yet despite its concessions, responses, porous, cooptive, dialectical and dynamic properties, there are always groups on the margins who recognize it as such, so there is always some repression of dissent among marginalized classes and races. Political and social dissent in cultural expression has frequently been expressed with music. As a result it is music that has often been subverted or suppressed, which can be documented in a sort of unholy trinity of racism, corporate liberalism and cultural hegemony within the music industry. It has been a difficult struggle for those with counter hegemonic agendas, because no one group is fully responsible. The captains of industry do not have total hegemonic control over black culture. As the "road to Hell was paved with good intentions," many corporate liberals in the business sincerely meant no harm to blacks and their music. Nelson George recognizes this at the same time finding it problematic to solidly identify the other factors in the seemingly losing battle of saving black culture and rhythm & blues from "death."

An early form of subversion that carries on through today is the practice of "borrowing," or anglicizing black music. Ever since whites first recognized African-American folk music, it has been borrowed in order to facilitate the success of white performers like the Christy Minstrels with black skin makeup, or "refined" by European-trained black composers like Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Edmond Dad to fit the narrow spectrum of white music.

From Duke Ellington's and Count Basie's swing to the black pioneers of ragtime, blues and jazz, the record businesses owned by white men stifled their deserved financial success while whites made more money from manufactured Tin Pan Alley tunes. Even by the late 1930s, brilliant artists like Besse Smith, Robert Johnson, Big Joe Turner, John Lee Hooker and Tampa Red were unknown to everyone who did not have access to the handful of "race" record stores in segregated neighborhoods, and the few radio stations that played any sort of "race" music.

Black music of any form might not have gotten any acceptance in the industry at all if it wasn't for the postwar dance craze, a time when the "misery of war increased America's desire to be entertained" (George, 23). Louis Jordan, trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong, saxophonist Charlie Parker and pianist Thelonious Monk, all big-band refugees, took advantage of the prosperity with bebop, a musician's music of "daredevil improvisations" that earned respect for jazz. Bebop and jazz vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan earned nearly as much respect, which was inversely proportional to their income.

The fact that they had any income at all was due to the new proliferation of independent labels. Since Large, nationally distributed companies such as Decca, Victor and Capitol dropped support for former big band members, twenty-eight independent labels appeared between 1942 and 1952 to pick up the slack. While the majors were wondering what the hell the new music was (MGM called it "ebony," Decca and Capitol called it "sepia"), the independents were promoting smoking rhythm and blues singles like "Good Rockin' Tonight" and "All She Wants to Do Is Rock" by Wynonie Harris in 1948 to 1949.

From The Ravens' "Bye Bye Baby Blues," John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillen" and "Crawling Kingsnake," to Amos Milbrun's "Chicken Shack Boogie," there were no equivalents on the major labels, and no airplay on major radio stations.

The reluctance of stations to play rhythm and blues, and the failure of the majors to sign the black musicians is rooted not only in the industry's conservative treatment of new music, but also its cultural hegemony. Much of the words in rhythm and blues, in the tradition of the blues, eloquently express black peoples' discontent with economic injustices pressed upon them. Perhaps white industry leaders saw that there is often a sense of righteous anger that would serve as a powerful unifying force for oppressed minorities if it were to be disseminated throughout the airwaves of America.

By the time artists like Sonny Boy Williamson, Fats Domino, B.B. King, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry grew roots from the R & B seeds with help from the independents, the baby-boom generation began to grow into a highly influential group of consumers, giving the major industry incentive to capitalize on a junk teenage culture and abandon any elitist ideals of sophistication in music. White America was beginning to recognize the marketability of R & B. In fact, most of the indies were owned by whites, many of them Jewish. "Blacks weren't the only people kept out of the American business mainstream by discrimination," wrote George. Unwelcome on Wall Street, many Jewish businessmen turned to black music, where there were fewer barriers to entrepreneurship. With only a couple exceptions, the overwhelming majority of black-oriented stations were also white-owned (George, 2.

The steps toward commodifying R&B for mass consumption would also be the beginning of the end for black music, a blow against that intangible "something" that Nelson George claims eventually died in black culture. Yet most white label and radio station owners were not out to kill black music. In the corporate liberal tradition, they aimed to help R&B and black culture the only way they knew how; commercial success. But in the process of striving for such success, even the independent industry lost its innocence. Corruption was the result of underpaid R & B labels trying to get airplay for underpaid black artists by paying underpaid black deejays to play their records. "In the rhythm & blues world," said George, "payola was a common as tacking posters to telephone poles to announce upcoming shows" (George, 29).

While payola would eventually become a tool major labels use to control the playlist of pop radio, spending small labels off the air, in the fifties it helped keep the black deejays out of poverty, having no contracts, no health insurance, and little opportunity for promotion into management. It was a benevolent hustle that would eventually hurt the participants in the R&B world, like Alan Freed. The successful business based on payola enabled him to flaunt his power and rebellious rock attitude, making him a target of a reactionary backlash among white authorities. A white district attorney used the payola to convict him one two counts of commercial bribery and blackball him from radio. The IRS finished off the financially and spiritually broken man by claiming he owned $37,920 on unreported income of $56,652, and he died of uremia the next year (George, 91).

Freed's black slang and flamboyant delivery was soon cleaned up, with white jocks perfecting the pronunciation and selling Coke and Clearasil to white teens. But the honest, down-to-earth sounds of R&B did not produce a good format for advertisements aimed toward the new, large generation of white suburban baby-boomer teenyboppers, especially when racist, white, middle class parents did not approve of their children listening to black R&B. So they called it rock & roll and white men like Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Louis got to become rich and famous. Many songs written and performed by blacks were covered by faceless whites that put them on the charts.

In the fifties, major label corporations knew that white culture would reign supreme, because teenland codified heroes who more closely resembled them, or what they wanted to be, as the only fitting rock & rollers. For the baby-boomers, rock and roll would eventually become, by 1965, "white music made by white people with the occasional black old-timer thrown in" (George, 93). Steeped in R & B roots, white musicians like Buddy Holly, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the Kinks, the Who and Led Zeppelin became the true celebrities of rock & roll.

In the meantime, R&B became "soul," "a word which would in its day rival `rock & roll' for social currency and commercial exploitation" (George, 93). A couple savvy independents would, however, make a significant jump in popularizing (real) black music. Stax and Motown took nearly opposite approaches toward making soul music a success. Stax in Memphis took the traditional independent approach of aiming at R&B fans more than the pop market, putting out records with "some of the most unencumbered soul-shouting ever recorded," such as Rufus Thomas and Otis Redding. Motown in Detroit was "secretive, rigidly hierarchical, totally committed to reaching white audiences" (George, 86).

While Motown was black-owned, it was a perfect example of corporate liberalism, committed to assimilation to the white market with a Wall St. mentality of measuring its meaning of existence through profit. It is in the same corporate liberal spirit of compromise that James Brown performed on television to keep angry blacks off the streets after Martin Luther King was murdered. He never happened to mention in whose interests it was to keep angry blacks off the streets.

It was a constant struggle in the soul movement in determining the pros and cons of integration. It was Motown that began to chip away at the racial segregation in record stores and radio, hitting the top ten singles success with the Supremes in 1964. The Temptations and the Four Tops were soon to follow, prompting Motown to adopt the nickname "Hitsville, U.S.A."

Stax took pride in the fact that it did not compromise its production values while still becoming moderately successful. But what appeared to be a renaissance in soul and R&B lasted only a short time, to be smothered under the rolls of fat protruding from the majors. Like Atlantic, Stax became a part of corporate America. "Few observers at the time foresaw the negative impact these distribution shifts would have on the music and the institutions that made up the R&B world," as Stax fell into a black hole of corporate entanglements with CBS (George, 142). With CBS giving Stax $.80 less per record than they were supposed to get, it made it harder for Stax to repay loans to the Memphis bank. By 1973, Stax was involved in lawsuits by CBS and the Union Planters National Bank, as well as an IRS investigation and "all manner of character assassination" (George, 142).

Harassment of people by departments of the federal government such as the IRS was a common practice of institutional racism; one of the more overt forms of keeping the cultural hegemony in big business. The IRS investigation and harassment must not have been too overt, however. If Stax executive Al Bell felt his political stance played any role in his, and Stax's demise, he never said so directly. An experiment in sponsorship of social action and grass-roots activity, to be politically progressive as it was profitable, was a failure. By 1976, Stax closed its doors. Meanwhile, Philadelphia International Records, a new power in R&B, "was working with CBS with frightening efficiency" (George, 142).

Like good cold war corporate liberals, Philly International learned how to work within a corporate system. As chief commodity of CBS's black music department, it profited handsomely. The message in the music seemed to be that assimilation worked, "especially for a nationalistic capitalist who could write hit songs" (George, 146).

The failure of blacks to mix political organizing with business became evident with the history of the National Association for Radio Announcers (NARA) and its members weren't oblivious of the civil-rights movement and the changes it brought to the fabric of black life. They gave money; they have lip service. But their internal will for collective effort was weak. Business as usual was good for many; others feared reprisals from white bosses if they got too political.

(George, 113)

It became evident that they had more than white bosses to fear. After adding television to its name (NATRA), the group tried to make a failing college in Delaware a site for its own school of broadcast science. The violence that followed its announcement made NATRA leader Del Shields think "certain people in the broadcast and TV industry" did not want to see black deejays gain the kind of responsibility and power they were talking about.

It sounded like Shields thought some kind of Big Brother was watching -- "and he may not have been wrong" (George, 114). In addition to anonymous attacks throughout the fundraising efforts, months before the 1968 NATRA convention, three men beat Shields to the ground, and were never caught. Soon after, more NATRA people were beaten in Miami. Many members pulled out and the potential school evaporated, leaving behind a group of unorganized and unfocused black deejays. With the eventual commercialization of the rest of the black radio stations came the demise of deejay personalities. In its place was standardization; a format "that refined pop radio into a synthetic consistency that station owners loved and old-line deejays hated" (George, 115).

Commercial radio and labels went on to market new forms of candy-coated pop soul and disco in the seventies. The reason why black audiences consumed such crap and rejected its R&B roots was partially the revival of 1950s electric blues among the white rock audience and baby-boomers in college. The blues had been a part of the R&B world, but which like rock & roll and straight doo wop, had been forsaken for soul. The revival of B.B. King, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf did not reach the older black fans because they were not comfortable with middle class white teens and college students and was not exposed to advertising in underground press and progressive radio. "To blacks who still valued the blues, it seemed these cultural heroes had been kidnapped by the younger brothers and sisters of the folks who'd led Chuck Berry astray" (George, 107). Nelson George suggested that young blacks at the time abandoned the blues because none of the new blues was worthwhile. With the exception of Eric Clapton and maybe Johnny Winter, no white blues guitarist has produced a body of work in any way comparable to that of the black giants. Blacks create and then move on. Whites document and then recycle. In the history of popular music, these truths are self-evident.

(George, 108)

Strong words as they are, they can be documented further with the genius creativeness of Jimi Hendrix, in reclaiming rock & roll as his own. Yet such words do not explain why blacks put Hendrix in the same category of white blues revivalists. Only the trend in crossover music in major labels would reveal what was missing in the R&B world. The outside force that helped destroy R&B, "pulling the music from its roots and eroding the connections made with White America in the 1960s was disco" -- the early harbingers of which were Kool and the Gang, Ohio Players and KC & the Sunshine Band -- "a sound of mindless repetition and lyrical idiocy that, with few exceptions, overwhelmed R&B" (George, 153).

The commercially successful Philadelphia International Records eventually drowned in cliché‚as with help from a series of incredibly insipid records by The Ritchie Family and the Salsoul Orchestra. At the same time, a blacker music truer to its James Brown roots was enjoying great popularity in the South and the Midwest in the form of funk bands. Yet they rarely got on radio playlists. It was "too raw and unsophisticated, and one thing dear to the hearts of disco fans, was a feeling of pseudosophistication" (George, 154).

By then a few black musicians were again fueled by frustration and disgust at racism and chose to take the unsophisticated path. They let their hair grow into "afros" to accentuate their pride in their blackness, and revealed a political thrust within their communities in the struggle for integration. Some even preferred to do without integration as long as they could have justice. As a younger, more radical generation became involved in black pride and black power, the sentiment was hinted that mainstream white culture was not worth integrating into. White culture included rock & roll, which was stolen from them in the first place. While blacks largely would not claim it their own, there was a small minority who appreciated Jimi Hendrix's, and even more so, George Clinton's projects.

Forming the independent Westbound label in the late sixties in Detroit, by then the home of the Black Panther Party, Clinton began releasing Funkadelic and Parliament records. Funkadelic synthesized a brilliant hybrid of blues, R&B, soul, funk, and rock & roll ranging from psychedelic Jimi Hendrix licks to Led Zeppelin's heavy metal, complete with cocky, humorous lyrics sometimes inspired by the radicalism of black politics in Detroit. Parliament took a slightly more traditional approach by using a horn section. Their success lead to a whole aggregation of bands like Bootsy's Rubber Band, The Horny Horns, Brides of Funkenstein and Parlet, all under the chaotically creative leadership of George (Dr. Funkenstein) Clinton. The whole P-Funk concept, with its brilliant musicianship, radical politics, humor, parody and use of slang, was a musically amusing way of thumbing one's nose at what Clinton dubbed "The Placebo Syndrome," aka funkless black music (George, 156). While Warner Brothers signed Funkadelic in August 1975, the band's popularity was unable to swallow up the "Placebo Syndrome" of disco.

Disco, combined with the crossover consciousness of the majors, created music for the new breed of mainstream black radio. Black stations across the country turned into disco radio with black artists playing beige music. Downplaying their blackness in order to compete for the advertising dollars, they dropped the word black, and when even beige wasn't good enough, the stations used "urban contemporary." George Clinton's bands were not marketed and allowed to succeed because they were too black. " . . . too black. The phrase echoed with the sound of self-hate. Too black. A retreat from the beauty of blackness. Too black. The sound of the death of R&B" (George, 160).

With black music turning beige, white artists tapping into black rhythms in disco and corporations using black radio as a launching pad, another attempt toward organizing was born in September 1978 in La Costa, California. The Black Music Association was formed "to preserve, protect, and perpetuate" black music. But in the face of big-time corporate payola, the BMA was impotent.

In the meantime, commercial assimilation was making black music downright anemic. Blacks were increasingly putting their black pride out to pasture and denouncing their ethnicity. Bryant Gumbel, host of the Today Show said, "I have become colorless. I have clear speech and non-ethnic characteristics" (George, 173). One of the first entertainers to achieve mass popularity using this mindset was Michael Jackson who said he had denounced the unnecessary "ethnic stuff" in order to get on the top 40. Like Gumbel, Jackson used cosmetic surgery to turn himself into a commercial, anglicized product for mass consumption. Despite his cosmetic surgery and tiresome claims to "universality," ”Off the Wall• sold 9 million copies. As MTV's visual format grew popular as fast as nose jobs, more entertainers followed suit, with Lionel Richie acting whiter than ever, and Prince lying about having a white mother and surrounding himself with white and mulatto leading women in his shows and movies. To these people, beige wasn't even white enough.

In the early 80s, with "apartheid oriented radio" (AOR to some) and the equally segregated MTV, it looked like the forces of racism (or white supremacy), corporate liberalism and cultural hegemony had come to a successful conclusion. But then there was rap. When the Sugar Hill Gang came from a black owned New Jersey label with "Rapper's Delight," industry pros, including blacks, ignored it. "It just goes to show you that by 1980, being black didn't necessarily mean you know a damn thing about what was happening in black neighborhoods" (George, 169).

While Motown, the last original black indie was giving in to MCA, kids in Harlem, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens were learning the innovative rhythms and verbal dexterity of D.J. Hollywood, Kurtis Blow, Eddie Cheeba, D.J. Lovebug Star-ski, Junebug Star-ski, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, and Whodini. While rap scared the hell out of the major label reps (Mercury released Kurtis Blow's safe novelty record "Christmas Rappin'"), more independent labels like Tommy Boy, Profile, Def Jam and Sleeping Bag appeared to pick up the slack. Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five finally graduated from the Sugar Hill label in 1984, signing to Elektra. Some of the best rap companies kept afloat by signing distribution deals; Def Jam with Columbia, First Priority with Atlantic, Tommy Boy with WB, and Jive with RCA.

But this time the majors didn't seem to have anglicization on their agendas. Producers Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin, Run-DMC, L.L. Cool J., Public Enemy, the Fat Boys and Whodini all seemed happy with their labels, "showing no signs of the dreaded crossover fixation" (George, 194). Predictably, the white Beastie Boys were the ones to popularize rap in a mainstream breakthrough. Yet Hall & Oats of rap they are not. Unlike the Bee Gees, the Beastie Boys grew up in black culture in New York, have a black manager, and started on an indie label. They were blacker than Michael Jackson never wanted to be. Beastie MCA said "Rock & roll was started by Chuck Berry, but it's Elvis who is called the King. So it's not so surprising that it took the Beastie Boys to popularize rap. That's typical of America" (George, 194).

Not so typical is the fact that rap and hip-hop artists are still relatively at peace with corporate America. Rather than becoming diluted, the messages of Public Enemy, KRS-One and Boogie Down Productions and Eric B. & Rakim are becoming even more overtly radical. The closest dangers right now to losing their voices is the commodification of their postmodernist special effects, decontextualizing their raps, reducing them to surface sounds featured in hip dance clubs. Another is the rising assault of censorship, epitomized by the current record bans of 2 Live Crew. The racism of the classic American double standard can best be illustrated by the recent controversies surrounding the white heavy metal band Guns N' Roses and Public Enemy. While racist and sexist sentiments revealed by Axl Rose in a ”Rolling Stone• interview prompted their label to defend the band's right to free speech, the anti-semitic comments from a member of Public Enemy prompted Columbia to drop them like a hot potato.

In the September issue of ”Spin• magazine guest-edited by Spike Lee, Chuck D. of Public Enemy best predicts the possible future for himself and other like-minded rappers. expects: Continued attempts to label Public Enemy as "racist," "anti-Semitic," "misogynist," "homophobic," etc., thus confusing and diluting its message . . . continued and increased attacks from certain police, business, and other groups. This will make it more difficult for the band to tour or travel, as it did for Paul Robeson in the 50s, thus limiting their influence, exposure, marketability, and ability to earn a living . . . continued support from CBS and Def Jam Records, with an eventual sharp fall-off, as well as attempts by certain people in the business of selling records to make PE's music and videos more palatable to white compact-disc buyers . . . expect more writers attempting to make the point that PE is "full of contradictions." Also, that "they are destroying themselves," and that Chuck D is "not that smart," "not that tough," "not that sure of himself," "not that etc." . . . increased public criticism as the message becomes more difficult for some to swallow; i.e., Afrocentric . . . more fan mail, especially from the Eastern bloc and U.S. prisons. Thanks . . . increased law enforcement agency assisted monitoring, harassment, incarceration, and murder of black people who talk about black people uniting under Blackness.

(”Spin•, 6

With corporate liberalism's slippery tradition of disguising, denying, or attacking the idea of naked, unconcealed power, it would be difficult to completely outguess them. Since "the Reds" and Nazis are no longer useful bad guys, the drug war hysteria has now chosen poor blacks as the target. Chuck D. is acutely aware of their slipperiness; "stuff like that makes me think of what they mean when they say that a black person is better off dealing with a Klansman than a liberal."

Another potential, albeit less radical, savior of black music is the Black Rock Coalition, a New York organization devoted to combating racial stereotypes in the music business. It was formed in Fall, 1985 by Living Colour musician Vernon Reid, ”Village Voice• writer and ”Black Culture• editor Greg Tate, and a couple dozen bands and musicians who were told they weren't "black enough" to fit the industry's established black-music molds -- glitzy synthetic sex kittens peddling sweet nothings over vanilla funk and bedroom-bounce arrangements (Luther Vandross, Gregory Abbott, Whitey Houston, Milli Vanilla), inoffensive gushy love balladeers and copycat rappers. They wanted to reclaim "the right to rock." The Black Rock Coalition finally picked up where Jimi Hendrix and George Clinton & friends left off. They proved that "black experience" is not a uniform genetic code; that black Americans don't fit into neat racial packages; that their music doesn't have to just make other blacks vegetate and forget their problems.

Soul-funk-punk Fishbone, rasta-hardcore Bad Brains and surf-metal 24-7 Spyz have become wellªknown for their genre-breaking, without the use of uniformly nude women wiggling their hips in the background. But it is Reid's own Living Colour, in it's shamelessly unimaginative, nearly note-for-note plagiarism of white hard rockers Van Halen, who present the most problematic aspect of the BRC. In their relentless drive towards platinum sales, white marketing (including the Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tour), many wonder if they haven't forgotten to pull along other BRC members without losing their innovative, artistic credentials. The BRC is in danger of creating a category as rigid as the ones they wanted to break out of.

It is not enough that the BRC hold regular meetings discussing racism and economic inequalities that structure debate on music, and infiltrate arenas with the oh-so-subversive Living Colour. After five years the BRC has little to show in alternative methods to recording and promoting black musicians who don't keep within the accepted formats, or ways to combat white dominance of high-priced, high-powered, high-profile synthesizer technology the way rap has. Even after beating out thousands of groups from around the world, Minneapolis rock-reggae band Ipso Facto has no label to show for its supposed success. Perhaps more racially integrated bands would confound enough categories to be successful, like the briefly successful 2-Tone movement in Britain which was based on early skinhead support of soul, ska, reggae, oi! and punk.

Although the future of black music is uncertain, it has nevertheless continued to survive the corporate liberal alliance of black culture and big business. Racism is as strong as ever in the music industry, the religious right and censorship interest groups, but is being identified and discussed in brutally honest terms under the leadership of politicized rappers like Chuck D. The "common sense" held by the cultural hegemony of white corporate America is becoming a little less common, providing some hope
for the future of black culture and rock & roll.