0092 | October 07, 2019
1619:
Music as Cultural Appropriation
The legacy of slavery is long, but should the criticism of it extend to musical appropriation? What exactly is musical appropriation, and what can Warren G’s Regulate teach us about it?
| C.T. WEBB: 00:19 | [music] Good afternoon, good morning, or good evening [laughter] and welcome to the American Age Podcast. This is C. Travis Webb, editor of the American Age. And I am speaking to you from sunny, although kind of humid, Southern California. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 00:33 | Hi, this is Stephen G. Fullwood. I’m the co-founder of the Nomadic Archivist Project. I am in Harlem. It is a nice sunny day. It’s 75 degrees, and there’s a nice breeze going on. |
| S. RODNEY: 00:46 | That sounds good. I am Seph Rodney. I am a senior editor at the Hyperallergic Blog and recent author of The Personalization of the Museum Visit. I am in the South Bronx. |
| S. BOND: 01:00 | Hi, this is Sarah Bond. I’m an associate professor of history at the University of Iowa. And I’m coming to you from lovely Iowa City, Iowa where it’s finally autumn, even if it isn’t in the rest of the country [laughter]. |
| C.T. WEBB: 01:17 | Yeah, that’s true [laughter]. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 01:17 | Nice. Very nice. |
| C.T. WEBB: 01:20 | This is to remind our listeners that we practice a form of what we like to call intellectual intimacy, which is giving people the space and time to figure out things out loud and together. And this week, we are continuing our conversation, roughly organized by the 1619 Project, The New York Times 1619 Project. In our inaugural podcast, Sarah suggested the schema of kind of grouping things together based on how things were organized in the actual New York Times project, and we went with that. And we had a bit of a discussion before this episode. And we decided we were going to talk about cultural appropriation in music in this episode, and then kind of naturally extend that conversation to the next episode. So anyone want to– Stephen, Seph, Sarah, you guys have something you want to jump in with on the topic of cultural appropriation or do you want to start with music or where do you guys want to go? |
| S. FULLWOOD: 02:14 | So tasty and so delicious. So much [laughter] to dig into. I’d like to start out with a quote from Wesley Morse. And so it focuses on music, but there’s some cultural appropriation quality in it as well in the essay. And so from the 1619 magazine, he says, “Blackness was on the move before my ancestors were legally free to be.” And the reason why I start there is because– and I listened to one of the conversations he’s had with some of the other contributors about this, and what he said was that he felt that black music actually started with the appropriation of the music. And I’m using my words for “appropriation,” because he says it started out with TD Rice who was a man who– and he tells this story, and this is sort of mythic by now– that TD Rice sees a black man who is working on the Crow Plantation, a man whose name is Crow, cleaning a horse and singing and doing somethings that I guess appear to be odd and interesting to him. And so I guess TD Rice was maybe an actor in this day, and he emulates what he thinks he’s seeing, but then sort of, I guess, blows it up; very big gestures and so forth. He melts a cork, blackens his face. And so there’s both an embodiment physically, but also, he’s jumping around, jumping around– jump, jump, jump just so “Every time I turn around, I jump Jim Crow.” And this was also in a film by Marlon Riggs called Ethnic Notions, which is a really great film– late ’80s, I believe– where they sort of talk about that moment. And I thought that was an interesting way for him to say it, but I don’t know if it’s cultural appropriation if [laughter]– I really want to dig into this idea of what cultural appropriation is through this particular example of Wesley Morse. So I wanted to know what you guys thought about it because I have some thoughts. |
| C.T. WEBB: 04:15 | That’s a wonderful place to start, actually. I appreciate that. |
| S. RODNEY: 04:18 | Agreed. Agreed. |
| C.T. WEBB: 04:19 | So, I mean, the first thing I thought of– not the first thing I thought of, but one of the things I thought of when he was doing this sort of copy of a copy is Baudrillard; the whole idea of the simulacrum, and the idea of there kind of being an authentic zero point is, itself, a part of the illusion of copies. And, yeah, anyway, so I liked the train of thought that you picked up on there. |
| S. RODNEY: 04:54 | Well, the way that you’re laying out the question, Stephen, I suspect given how well I know you, where you’re headed with this is that you’re suspicious of this being called “appropriation” because– and what is occurring to me right now in the moment is that it’s questionable because he’s not really– Rice isn’t really taking his culture. He’s parodying it. He’s satirizing it in a way. He’s making it into something else. What little essence there was of the black man, Antoine, I believe his name is who was taking care of that horse in that stable by himself, he was– what small essence of that remains in the act that Rice kind of developed is very little. I think the question of appropriation becomes so much more sort of– what’s the word– pertinent when we start to move into the territory of black people’s authentic experience being at the root of things like gospel blues, bluegrass, R&B, being then taken and used by people who are racialized as white or people we call white and used– and that music is used to make a profit without any recognition of profit being– or much profit or recognition being passed onto the black people who originated the art forms. So I think that here is where we have like– it’s sort of like a fire on the horizon. It’s like, “Oh, that kind of looks like what we’re going to end up calling appropriation.” But that’s not precisely the right word for it. It’s more like– what’s the word I used before? Satire or– |
| C.T. WEBB: 07:02 | You said satirizing and parodying– you said parodying. |
| S. RODNEY: 07:06 | Parodying, yeah. It’s a parody. |
| C.T. WEBB: 07:08 | Sarah, what about– I mean, we can’t– we– yeah [laughter], what do you think? |
| S. BOND: 07:14 | I think [laughter]– first of all, I want to say that I haven’t realized for a long time what my problem with Michael McDonald was until I really thought about why I am okay with The Doobie Brothers, but haven’t really loved Michael McDonald. And it’s not just his voice. I think that part of it is exactly what Seph is talking about, which comes down to the idea of profit and gratitude. That I think that one of the things that cultural appropriation has really shown us is that we can make this aphorism of, “Imitation is the highest form of flattery–“ |
| S. FULLWOOD: 07:56 | Form of flattery. Sorry. |
| S. BOND: 07:57 | –but that flattery doesn’t pay it forward and actually refer back. If there’s no footnote back to the original reference, then it really is plagiarism in a way. And I guess as a historian– |
| S. RODNEY: 08:10 | Agreed. |
| S. BOND: 08:11 | –part of it is just that watching people like Michael McDonald [laughter]– and, I mean, I’m not going to put this all on Kenny Loggins, but people who did yacht rock as they now call it [laughter] in the ’70s and ’80s that really is borrowing, as Wesley Morse points out, from Motown in a way that nods to them, but doesn’t directly recognize as the progenitors of this movement. And so watching Michael McDonald profit off of Motown albums is very odd because you have black backup singers most of the time, and those black backup singers are providing the soul and the gospel and the framework within which a lot of white male and white female, like Amy Winehouse, would move within. So I agree that we’ve gone pretty far in cultural appropriation in terms of widening the definition. But I do think it’s worth saying that part of this is about paying the people that should be paid. And so every time there’s an appropriation from Earth, Wind & Fire, every time there’s an appropriation from Parliament Funkadelic. And these people are not paid, that is just adding kind of insult to injury. |
| C.T. WEBB: 09:29 | So obviously, I find the issue of cultural appropriation a very, very hairy one and a very difficult one with my sort of understanding and position on how I think culture moves, in general, historically, and what culture’s function is amongst a community of strangers, which is I think to adhere larger communities that are not bound by kinship. And so it’s designed to travel. It’s designed to move, in some ways, anonymously. And so in the strands, kind of what we’re talking around, on one hand, we seem to be saying– and I’ll throw myself into this because as soon as you say something– I really resonated with Sarah’s notion of the footnote. One of the difficult things about academic writing and one of the things that I find most beneficial of academic writing is that you can trace thoughts, which is– |
| S. FULLWOOD: 10:28 | Yes, yes. |
| C.T. WEBB: 10:28 | –and you can trace their origin. And I feel like that’s a real boon, and I appreciate that about the medium and the genre. That being said, culture moves a lot of times anonymously. And we seem to be saying that we want it to be appropriately commodified for its originators. Something that I think, in general, many of us might find distasteful is the commodification of culture. And two, the idea of ownership is deeply problematic. I mean, so do “black–” I mean, we’ve had previous discussions about this, Seph and Stephen before you had joined us, Sarah, about just– I find the categories of black and white, though they have clear social weight, very problematic to think with because I think they muddy the waters. And so [laughter]– |
| S. FULLWOOD: 11:22 | But what about culturally? |
| C.T. WEBB: 11:24 | Yeah. Well, that’s why I was going to say quote/unquote. I was going to put black in scare quotes because, clearly, there are cultures that we would lump into– Dominicans, etc., that we would lump into “black culture” that probably wouldn’t upset us if they didn’t footnote Willie Dixon in their musical tastes. We ascribe a certain kind of permissive ownership. Not every black artist has to footnote Run-DMC. Jay-Z doesn’t have to do that. But a “white artist,” we would expect that of. Now, emotionally, I’m there with you. I cringe. It makes me uncomfortable. Like, “Ah, ugh. That’s not right.” But in practice, in reality, it’s a pretty clunky way to go about parsing our collective creations as a society. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 12:18 | Well, why do you– you hit it on the nail for me, why do we expect whites to be more responsive to where they got the music from or how they were inspired than, say, a Celia Cruz or somebody else that might be using African-American or African diasporic rhythms in her work? Why do you think that is? It’s a question for everybody because I’m still thinking through it. When you said it, I was like, “Yeah, because–” like what Wesley Morse said, there’s a, “Okay,” there’s an, “Okay, she can sing. Okay, Teena, you go right ahead [laughter].” And there’s like, “Oh, boy, here we go again” because we know what the stakes are. We know what the stakes are. It’s what Sarah pointed out is that the money’s not getting back to the people who did it. And I remember sitting– yeah, I don’t know how many TV shows– I mean, cultural– what is it– award shows that I would sit through in the ’80s, and Little Richard would stand up and go, “Y’all never gave me nothing.” |
| C.T. WEBB: 13:12 | Yeah, right, right. |
| S. RODNEY: 13:12 | I remember that. I remember that. “I’m the originator. I’m Scarface [laughter].” |
| S. FULLWOOD: 13:14 | Then I saw him perform [crosstalk]– then you watch him perform, and you go, “God damn, I get it.” |
| C.T. WEBB: 13:20 | Yeah. |
| S. RODNEY: 13:21 | Right. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 13:21 | We can get it. |
| S. RODNEY: 13:21 | He was badass. Yeah, he was. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 13:23 | I get it. So why are we so much more touchy about whites doing this? |
| S. RODNEY: 13:27 | Go ahead, Sarah. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 13:27 | With quotes around whites. There you go [laughter]. |
| S. BOND: 13:28 | I think part of it may be that a part of oppression– part of oppression is not acknowledging the positive things that other peoples and cultures do. And so taking from people– white people taking from black culture is a form of oppression because it’s the continuing the lack of acknowledgment for positive things that have happened for so many decades. Whereas when black artists take from other black artists, it is perhaps not the same oppressive act as a white person doing it. That’s just a guess at what is happening. |
| S. RODNEY: 14:11 | Right. I want to say my own guess at answering this question, but I also want to give an anecdote, which is kind of a wonderful coincidence. Two weeks ago– I don’t know exactly how this happened, but I got this song “Regulators” in my head, which was one of my favorite tracks from, I think it was the early ’90s. Warren G and Nate Dogg, “Regulate.” So I listened to it– I watched it again on YouTube, and do you know who they sampled for that? Michael McDonald. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 14:47 | Check that out, yes [laughter]. |
| S. RODNEY: 14:49 | The track is Michael McDonald, “I Keep Forgetting.” So what happened was I watched “Regulate”, and then I went looking, and I watched “I Keep Forgetting,” and I watched a couple of things with him and The Doobie Brothers performing together, “What a Fool Believes.” And then I went back and looked at a video where Warren G’s talking about how he sampled Michael McDonald. And what he said was that they actually split the profit four ways. He took a quarter. Nate Dogg took a quarter. Michael McDonald took a quarter. And then The Doobie Brothers were given 25% of the receipts of the sales of that particular track. And I was super impressed with that because I thought the story’s going to be like, “Yeah, we took it, and then Michael McDonald called us up one night, and was like, ‘What are you doing? Where’s my money?” But no, it was above board. But here’s the thing, Travis– one second– is that what’s also super fascinating and something I’m sort of wrestling with and I don’t have an answer for yet is like how it is that this kind of recursive motion happens in music where Michael McDonald essentially becomes famous for being a white man who sings like a black man. Sings a song, and then a black man, a generation away, takes that and puts into a whole other kind of formulation of blackness, which is– you could argue there’s a beginning of a kind of gangsterism in hip-hop. I wouldn’t necessarily make that argument, but there’s a way in which he’s gesturing towards street life being the most authentic kind of blackness. That’s fascinating to me that that happens. |
| C.T. WEBB: 16:34 | It is, and it’s how a bullshit category gets reified over and over and over again. Just, again, the idea of thinking about cultural creations usefully or productively as black and white, I think– not necessarily in this small circle, but functionally, in the culture-at-large, I think, is a dodge because I think really the issue is poverty. Really, the issue is access to education. Really, the issue is 400 years of the slave trade not being appropriately rectified by– |
| S. FULLWOOD: 17:16 | Or recognized, yeah [laughter]. |
| C.T. WEBB: 17:17 | –yeah, by the United States. And so borrow, sample, repeat, whatever it is on the cultural level, we are talking about the sliver of the sliver of the elite who have already all benefited from that system. Little Richard excepted. There are certainly people that did not get paid– “paid” as was appropriate earlier in the 20th century. But that’s less the case now. More, what the issue– what I would argue is the real issue is that we are living in the remnants of a system that was never properly addressed by the society. And pointing out how “white” or “black” artists are borrowing or not borrowing from one another, lets us off the hook too easily. I’m not saying, “We shouldn’t be talking about that.” This is the topic of the podcast, but as a culture– |
| S. RODNEY: 18:11 | Right, but you’re talking about the crumbs that fall from the table, right? |
| C.T. WEBB: 18:14 | Yes, yes. Absolutely. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 18:15 | I don’t think of them as crumbs. I think they’re through-lines. I think that what Sarah mentioned earlier about the footnotes and some other things. These are simply– these are injuries. They’re not crumbs, and they do indicate where to look at the effects of slavery or the effects of oppression. They look at these things in very personal ways. And so I can kind of get– I was trying to get behind what you were saying, Travis with the arguing over who owns what, but we’re clear about that [laughter]. I think we are clear about that. I think that we can say– I think it was in the article– and actually, I want to turn to Joni Mitchell in a moment [laughter]. |
| S. RODNEY: 18:56 | And just to– |
| S. FULLWOOD: 18:57 | No, go ahead. |
| S. RODNEY: 18:58 | –clue in our readers so we know what we’re talking about. You’re talking about Wesley Morse’s article in the 1619 magazine, correct? |
| S. FULLWOOD: 19:02 | Yes. Right, which starts off with, “For centuries, black music forged in bondage has been the sound of complete artistic freedom. No wonder everyone is always stealing it [laughter].” |
| C.T. WEBB: 19:14 | Right, right. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 19:15 | And it starts off with the greatest line in every article I’ve ever read is [laughter], “I’ve got a friend who’s an incurable Pandora guy [laughter].” I think you can go so many places with that. That’s so awesome and wonderful. And by the way, Sarah, I really like Michael McDonald, and a lot of these “blue-eyed soul” guys, I think it could be really nuanced in terms of the cultural– not the cultural appropriation, but it’s the consumption that I think that are in the weeds. For a lot of people, it’s like, “Well, if you love Teena Marie, then can you still be stand-in and be thoughtful about cultural appropriation?” I’m like, “You can do all of it. I think you can.” And that’s not what you were arguing, but I was thinking about it earlier, do you know what I mean? |
| S. BOND: 19:53 | Right. I agree. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 19:54 | Yeah, because that’s like, “Michael McDonald, have you heard him sing on Peg? Oh, my God.” |
| S. BOND: 19:59 | Yeah, I think it’s– I don’t deny that he has a wonderful voice. I would say that I love Kenny Loggins much more, and I grew up with a lot of Allman Brothers as well. And Allman Brothers is a lot of Southern banjo and violin that was based off of Southern fiddle. So I think, perhaps, I may have too visceral of a reaction to things like CCR and a lot of Southern rock in general probably because I grew up in the South, and I got sick of hearing “Sweet Home Alabama [laughter]” directly associated with a lot of racism. And also, I hate “Sweet Home Alabama.” And so, perhaps, this is my own personal preference being a Southerner that a lot of these songs got played out for– |
| S. FULLWOOD: 20:50 | Yeah. Yeah. |
| S. BOND: 20:50 | –me. But also– |
| C.T. WEBB: 20:52 | Sure. |
| S. BOND: 20:53 | –I mean, I’ve mentioned before to Seph that one of my favorite documentaries is called “20 Feet from Stardom.” |
| S. FULLWOOD: 21:01 | I thought you were going to mention that. Great. |
| S. BOND: 21:01 | And that’s about black backup singers who were never acknowledged. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 21:03 | Yeah, mm-hmm. |
| S. BOND: 21:04 | And I just adore it. So part of it is probably also gender. Part of it is probably that I saw a lot of men benefiting– like The Rolling Stones, in particular, that benefited from black women– |
| S. FULLWOOD: 21:17 | Oh, yeah. |
| S. BOND: 21:19 | –vocals in the background and probably– that’s probably, I’m over-correcting by my hatred of Michael McDonald [laughter]. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 21:29 | I didn’t get that you hated him. I just got that– when you said it, I wanted to say, “Hey, I like Michael McDonald.” Not to lighten everything up, but I was thinking about the complexity of this thing that we’re talking about. I own all the Teena Marie albums, and I will own anything they put out posthumously because I love her voice [laughter]. But I’m very– thank you for that, though. I appreciate that. And those women sang the hell out of Sweet Home Alabama, and they intended to. I’m so glad that you brought that up from 20 Feet from Stardom. |
| S. BOND: 21:55 | Yes. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 21:56 | They sang the fuck out that. I was like, “Yes!” |
| S. RODNEY: 21:59 | Yes, they did. But [crosstalk]– |
| S. FULLWOOD: 21:59 | I liked Alabama after that [laughter]. |
| S. RODNEY: 22:02 | But I want to say, too, maybe this is muddying the waters a little bit more, but I have a similar response to certain– I want to say– wow, I’m not sure this is the word, but I want to say shibboleth. No, that’s really the right word. But there’s a touchstone. There are particular songs that, growing up, as a black boy and then man in the US, I was in spaces where I constantly heard “Midnight Train to Georgia.” And I cannot tell you– I was sick of that, at least [laughter], 12 years ago. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 22:40 | Okay. |
| S. RODNEY: 22:40 | Or the James Brown, “I Feel Good.” Oh, my God, every single award show where they gestured towards blackness in the ’90s, it was, “I feel good! Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah [laughter].” |
| S. FULLWOOD: 22:50 | Oh, yeah. |
| S. RODNEY: 22:51 | And I’m like– and he’s doing the shaky leg thing, and he’s on the floor, and they’re trying to pick him up. And I’m like, “Could someone please turn this mess off?” I mean, I want to say that just– this is what pop culture does, though, right? It reduces things to aphorisms. It reduces things to– so there’s a problem there just in the way that pop culture gestures sort of– what’s the word? Uses footnotes because their kinds of footnotes are the sort of– not like, “Here’s what happened in such and such a time, and you should look it up here.” But more like, “Here’s the aphorism, and that’s all you get.” |
| C.T. WEBB: 23:35 | Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, again, I have two responses to the direction of the conversation. I have an emotional response where I, of course, feel burned out on all of the things [laughter] that you guys all noted [laughter] and want variety and novelty and the B-side of the album and all this– of the single, I should say. But at the same time, I would say that something like that James Brown replay probably did some good in lowering the anxiety of “mainstream white people” about black culture. I mean, if Stephen wants to say, which I think is a fair point, that– I’m sorry, actually, now I forgot the connection I was going to make with what Stephen said earlier. Hopefully, it’ll come back to me. But it’s to say that these ways that they get packaged in very saccharin nuggets, little bites, right, actually serves a cultural function though. And it lends itself to– I would say maybe not– oh, right, we were talking about through-lines, like, “How do we trace this stuff down?” I would say lends itself to what I would argue is probably a collective good, which is the further exposure of white culture to– and I’m going to use the short-hands because of the conversation, even though I don’t like them– white culture to black culture, right? I mean, it makes it more familiar over and over and over. Yes, absolutely. |
| S. BOND: 25:15 | Can I ask a question here? |
| S. FULLWOOD: 25:19 | Mm-hmm. |
| S. BOND: 25:20 | Does it breed respect? Okay? Because I think one of the big points here is, not just that it is being used by white culture and whether that’s okay but does it breed a deference and a respect back to the person that created it or helped to form it? I think that’s the thing that’s difficult is like, “Does deference come from these references?” or, “Are they references without any respect back to who created them or who innovated them?” |
| S. FULLWOOD: 25:53 | So for me or for Travis? Because he was making the point, but I’ll answer it for myself. I don’t think it breeds respect. No. I think that what it does is it feels like a gesture towards something that I can’t really identify other than capitalism, other than making money, other than, “Hey, two fingers pointed at the person. I know what you guys like,” when black people are so very diverse just like white folks. So it doesn’t– when Seph was saying earlier he got tired of all this, “I feel good [laughter]!” That’s all of ’80s movies, right? |
| S. RODNEY: 26:27 | Yes [laughter]. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 26:27 | [inaudible] Soul Man. There are all these movies [laughter]– |
| S. RODNEY: 26:30 | Every other one, God damn. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 26:31 | I know what that is, there’s a black person– |
| S. BOND: 26:33 | Oh, Soul Man. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 26:35 | I love Rick and Morty because they have this episode where this one black mailman goes, “My man. My man. My man [laughter]. My man [laughter].” I was like, “This is so awesome [laughter].” Someone has captured that noise in my head in the ’80s where I would just groan and go, “Oh, God, this is the–” I would like to think that there was some sort of cultural connection or maybe some deference or even some connection. I think the connection is really fraught with a bunch of stereotypes and fraught with things that don’t feel authentic to me. |
| S. RODNEY: 27:11 | So I want to jump here and say this– and I really wanted to bring the conversation back to this because we started off talking about blackface and kind of went somewhere else. I think there’s a connection that occurs to me. I know this is a connection that occurs to me now, which is that– and Wesley Morse sums it up really well on page 65 of his article and the 1619 magazine. He says “Paradoxically, it’s dehumanizing [bent?]–” he’s talking about minstrel shows now, right, which were started off by Rice, “Paradoxically, it’s dehumanizing [bent?] let white audiences feel more human. They could experience loathing as desire, contempt as adoration, repulsion as lust. They could weep for overworked Uncle Ned as surely as they could ignore his lashed back or his body as it swung from a tree.” So this is the connection, right? Because if you can do something, right, which is a bit– I’m riffing a bit on the argument you made, Travis– which is you can do something culturally by making something that was not palatable, more palatable, right? You’re doing kind of alchemy. You’re changing the thing that that black body that might appear to them at 10 PM on Broadway in New York in 1978, might be treated with contempt, with fear, with loathing, but you change that by putting it on stage and by making the gestures of that black body suitable for entertainment. But that’s the alchemy that is precisely the problem with minstrel shows, right? Because we shouldn’t have to– and when I say, “we,” I mean people who recognize themselves as black– shouldn’t have to move the needle off of loathing to desire. Basically, being a human being means that I get to show up, and you don’t loathe or desire me. You just let me be. |
| C.T. WEBB: 29:16 | So yes, absolutely. And how do we get to that “just be” if we are constantly parsing what is white and black? I mean, to use your own story, Seph, we had several conversations about how you felt a weight off of your shoulders when you moved to the UK because there was a way in which you were not– your body was not seen and fetishized and weighted– freighted and all the [inaudible] of that term. In the UK, not every culture has– now, they’ve all got problems– |
| S. RODNEY: 29:59 | Agreed. |
| C.T. WEBB: 29:59 | –but they don’t all have this problem. And so I don’t know how we get to the other side of what you very clearly and beautifully articulated, I think, about just allowing yourself to be. How do we get there if this is how we continue to parse things? And I’m not talking about the historical redress. I’m talking about addressing 1619. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about constantly boxing and categorizing cultural productions as white and black. |
| S. RODNEY: 30:32 | Agreed. Agreed. And I think that the example at the end of Wesley Morse’s essay is really beautiful. He talks about Lil Nas and how Lil Nas, essentially, just jumped over those cultural boxes to just kind of span genres with his track– y’all help me out, what is it called? Old Town–? |
| S. FULLWOOD: 30:52 | I have never heard it [laughter]. |
| C.T. WEBB: 30:53 | Old Town– the– |
| S. BOND: 30:55 | Country Road? |
| C.T. WEBB: 30:56 | Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. Thank you, Sarah. Yeah. |
| S. RODNEY: 30:57 | Right. Right. And basically, country folks, country radio stations didn’t want to play it. |
| C.T. WEBB: 31:03 | They flipped out. Yeah, that’s right. They flipped out [laughter]. |
| S. RODNEY: 31:04 | They flipped out. But it still became [laughter] the number one video or music single in those parts. So, I mean, I don’t know where I’m going with this [laughter], but that’s a conundrum is what I want to say. I want to say there’s this shining example of someone who’s somehow vaulted these Sloughs of Despond, but I don’t know how we do it. |
| S. BOND: 31:34 | Right. And I agree that there needs to be this dialogue instead of a movement, linearly, from black culture to white culture, the perception that it only moves in that direction. I think Lil Nas X is a good example. And you already brought in Warren G of it moving back and forth. I think that the binary pair, the polars of white and black or the perception of a binary pair that isn’t really extant will begin to dissipate when a dialogue is created rather than the idea that it only moves from the creation within black culture into white culture. |
| S. RODNEY: 32:13 | Agreed. |
| S. BOND: 32:14 | Once it moves back and forth, I think that the fluidity will begin to break down the fake walls a bit. |
| C.T. WEBB: 32:23 | Mm-hmm. |
| S. RODNEY: 32:23 | I like that. I like that. Yeah. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 32:25 | Can I just tell you one story about Joni Mitchell? |
| C.T. WEBB: 32:28 | Please. Yeah, yeah. |
| S. RODNEY: 32:29 | Yes, please do. |
| C.T. WEBB: 32:30 | And let’s make this– this’ll be our segue. |
| S. BOND: 32:32 | Yes. |
| C.T. WEBB: 32:32 | So, Stephen, bring this home [laughter]. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 32:34 | Yeah, yeah. I’m just so excited and happy. I wish you guys could see my face [laughter]. So a couple years ago, I remember hearing a story about Joni Mitchell saying that she identified with black men. And so whenever she saw them, she would do a nod– for want of a better term, “the nigger nod [laughter],” right? Like, “What’s up [laughter]?” Right? So I went and found it today because I was like, “Oh, I got to say something about this because I think it’ll be useful.” So the very first article that came up with Joni Mitchell and black men is this article in the BBC, “When Joni Mitchell wore blackface for Halloween–“ |
| S. RODNEY: 33:11 | Are you serious? |
| S. FULLWOOD: 33:11 | –BBC, October 28th, 2016. |
| S. BOND: 33:14 | What? |
| S. FULLWOOD: 33:15 | And here it is– |
| S. RODNEY: 33:16 | Oh, my God. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 33:17 | This is a quote from Joni Mitchell– |
| S. RODNEY: 33:17 | Oh, no. Oh, no [laughter]. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 33:19 | “I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard when a black guy walked by me with a Diddy Bop kind of step, and said, in the most wonderful way, ‘Looking good, sister. Looking good,'” she told Q Magazine in 1988. |
| S. RODNEY: 33:33 | Oh, my God. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 33:33 | “His spirit was infectious, and I thought, ‘I’ll go as him [laughter].’ I bought the makeup, the wig, the sleazy hat [laughter], and a sleazy suit. And that night I went to a Halloween party and no one knew it was me.” That’s all. |
| S. RODNEY: 33:48 | Oh, my God. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 33:49 | That’s all I wanted to say. |
| S. RODNEY: 33:50 | Okay. And on that note– |
| C.T. WEBB: 33:51 | All right. That depressing fucking story [laughter]. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 33:54 | Shit. |
| S. RODNEY: 33:54 | What the hell? |
| S. FULLWOOD: 33:56 | God damn [laughter]. If it pleases the court, I’d like to return to this at another episode [laughter]. But thank you. |
| C.T. WEBB: 34:04 | Yeah. So, Sarah, Stephen, Seph, thank you as always for the conversation. I think we’ll pick up next week. |
| S. BOND: 34:12 | Thank you. |
| C.T. WEBB: 34:12 | Thank you. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 34:13 | Yeah. |
| [music] |
References
**No references for Podcast 0092*