So while I was out mixing with the creative underclass at CMJ, some of you were very concerned with
this New Yorker article where the world's wealthiest rock critic, Sasha Frere-Jones, claims that indie rock ain't "miscegenated" enough for his liking, i.e. it ain't got enough African-American in it. You were so worried, in fact, that you actually took the time to write and ask what Idolator's "response" would be. And the response is that though I am sympathetic to the argument on a surface level, the piece is typical jury-rigged SFJ rhetoric that ignores pertinent facts—i.e. there's still (indie) rock that draws from African-American sources, among others too numerous to mention—to keep a shaky argument afloat until he's used up his word count. But in the interest of mad science, I've also decided to put Frere-Jones' theory to the test. I've come up with a handy metric that will allow me to determine, over the course of CMJ, just how "black" any band happens to be.
More »
If you read just one response to Sasha Frere-Jones' attempt to ramp up his Google Blog Search hits, make it Carl Wilson's argument in Slate that the problem facing indie—aside from the fact that it's a "genre" with boundaries that are seemingly defined by the biases and record collections of whoever's doing the defining at the time, ahem—isn't rooted in race as much as it is in class. A sample: "With its true spiritual center in Richard Florida-lauded 'creative' college towns such as Portland, Ore., this is the music of young 'knowledge workers' in training, and that has sonic consequences: Rather than body-centered, it is bookish and nerdy; rather than being instrumentally or vocally virtuosic, it shows off its chops via its range of allusions and high concepts with the kind of fluency both postmodern pop culture and higher education teach its listeners to admire." [Slate]
Well, after three days at CMJ it's official: Judged on the guidelines laid down by New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, our worst fears are confirmed and indie rock has actually failed at being convincingly "black." It is now the Jamie Kennedy of musical genres.
More »
.jpg "This Year, \"American Idol\" Will Be Won By A Dude Named David (But You Knew That Already)")
Idolator