This is a response to Justin, two above.
Some is in that article; some is in this thread. An example: the music industry in the early '60s had a complicated racial structure. There was a lot of money being made by taking songs written and originally performed by black artists that were locally successful and repackaging them with shiny white teen-idols to sell to suburban white kids. A lot of The Beach Boys' early success and institutional support is linked to their shiny suburbanism while delivering r&b grooves to white teenagers. You can read Mike Love talking about hanging around black kids and getting into R&B. But the black writers and original performers of R&B songs made a lot less money than the repackaging with white performers. That's just what was happening at the time. It's not their fault, but it was an aspect of what they were a part of. The Beach Boys had some unusual talent and grew out of that, but that's what their start was.
A lot of American folk is rooted in the poverty of the depression. One can analyze a folk musician's music in that light without being taken as asserting that the musician was impoverished during the depression. Why can't people read an analysis of music in the light of racism without freaking out that the musician is being called racist?![]()
Some is in that article; some is in this thread. An example: the music industry in the early '60s had a complicated racial structure. There was a lot of money being made by taking songs written and originally performed by black artists that were locally successful and repackaging them with shiny white teen-idols to sell to suburban white kids. A lot of The Beach Boys' early success and institutional support is linked to their shiny suburbanism while delivering r&b grooves to white teenagers. You can read Mike Love talking about hanging around black kids and getting into R&B. But the black writers and original performers of R&B songs made a lot less money than the repackaging with white performers. That's just what was happening at the time. It's not their fault, but it was an aspect of what they were a part of. The Beach Boys had some unusual talent and grew out of that, but that's what their start was.
A lot of American folk is rooted in the poverty of the depression. One can analyze a folk musician's music in that light without being taken as asserting that the musician was impoverished during the depression. Why can't people read an analysis of music in the light of racism without freaking out that the musician is being called racist?