In the spirit of Carl’s music posts, I figured I may as well do more than defend good American bar bands like NRBQ.
So like Carl, I will take a page from the ‘60s too and speak of the ’60s band The Kinks, but I will do it from the early ‘70s instead of the ‘60s. Namely, I will speak of one of the Kinks’ “concept” albums, viz. “Muswell Hillbillies.” Already the title makes an acknowledgement to American folk music, i.e., hillbilly music. Now as Carl has let us know, all American music is African American music. Jazz, blues, R&B, rock and roll, etc. has its roots in the southern society which integrally included the enslavement of blacks. Out of this experience of oppression came all the music that we all today love in American music. So to be authentic, such music must be based on this basic experience of the brutality of slavery even if indirectly and diluted over decades. Even as these official modes of oppression became illegal and over time became socially unacceptable, one must wonder of the hidden sources of such good music. This music has existed in the last 50 years or so since the ’64 Civil Rights Act. The good music somehow has remained, and many people (including white people) have carried it on. So what is the authentic context of such music if it lacks the serious experience of oppression?
Across the pond, Englishmen like John Mayall, the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton were ‘60s epigones of African American music who could somehow mechanically reproduce the sound of the American south, but who apparently had no real idea of what they are playing in that their experience (even as working class whites in an English class system) was entirely alien to the modes and mores of the American south. But if this is true, I suppose this was also true of Elvis Presley in that he was not black and was promoted by Sam Phillips in some tawdry hit making studio factory in Memphis. Perhaps tawdry hit making is the result of “equality of conditions.”
Of course, I don’t think this is entirely what Carl is saying, but the implications of his posts have this idea at heart. However, I’m not sure this race and oppression issue is the case in fact. Frank Tirro’s history of jazz shows a much more complicated history of musical types and influences. One should not forget the Paul Whiteman Band (no pun intended) and Bix Beiderbecke and Benny Goodman in the early history of jazz. This is not race counting, nor is it a denial of the importance of the suffering of black Americans shown through their experience of oppression—it is simply a matter of fact regarding the origins of modern American music. Likewise, Harry Smith’s Smithsonian anthology belies the belief that American music was simply Stephen Foster and John Philip Sousa before there was folk, blues or jazz.
Yes, the jazz and blues and ragtime artists who left a mark on American music were predominantly African American, and they should be applauded in a way that they were not in the past. For that matter W.E.B. DuBois wrote of the distinctive sublimity of the “negro” spiritual, and he claims that only through the experience of slavery could such spiritual strivings come to the fore.. This history (written by the likes of DuBois) should not be forgotten. Black American music is surely some of the best American music that exists. Perhaps such music was always popularized by the white American middle-class (like Beiderbecke), but who can say, because the white kids were always there simultaneously? The music is the music.
For instance, in hip hop the Beastie Boys, Third Base and even Vanilla Ice were early musical pioneers in this so-called genre of black music of hip hop.
So the ‘60s English rock band The Kinks came out with “Muswell Hillbillies” in the early ‘70s. On this album, which includes such rockers like “20th Century Man,” The Kinks take American music and blend it with old English folk music. “20th Century Man” is surely a late coming white Englishman’s lament written in the idiom of black American music. Yet it is also a song made of its own, and the desire to not wanting to die here (in this 20th century) shows a universal theme (at the time) that rock (as opposed to rock and roll) was not simply some playing out some version of a perversion of the desire for freedom found in traditional African American music. Some may argue this, but I agree with ray Davies—”You can keep all your smart modern writers”–and if you’re reading this you too have survived the 20th century!
And so I also think of The Kinks song “Complicated Life” also from “Muswell Hillbillies.” It incorporates both English folk and black American music. It is neither parody, nor is it an antiquarian piece. It is amusing in its “ol’ timeyness” of song structure and arrangement, but it also speaks the truth as much as any Johnny Cash or Kris Kristofferson tune. It speaks of Tocquevillian individualism in terms of literal heart disease. Still, it doesn’t truly advocate what it advocates, and hence it speaks otherwise and is therefore truly ironic.
After listening to this song, I think that DuBois was perhaps wrong about the “color line.” Or rather, perhaps in his celebration of the negro spiritual, he was speaking about music which rises above the “color line” in the same way that he says Shakespeare and Goethe do.
In my view, The Kinks’ “Muswell Hillbillies” does this, and is therefore worth a listen.
For “20th Century Man”–
For “Complicated Life”–
August 2nd, 2011 | 8:21 am
John, I’m on vacation now near Zion national park–just witnessed a sunrise worthy of a Berlioz or a Beethoven–so, while I may later post an entry that addresses your reflections on what to make of the Brit experience in translating R n B, here I’ll just have a few comments.
1. I do enjoy the Kink’s pop-art: “Sitting on My Sofa,” “Waterloo Sunset,” etc., and these more rootsy songs here are quite fine. And check out the lyrics to “20th-century Man”: praise of William Gainsborough in a rock tune!
2. Just to be clear about my Bayles-ian theory: I don’t really say that “Out of this experience (slavery) of oppression came all the music that we all today love in American music. So to be authentic, such music must be based on this basic experience of the brutality of slavery even if indirectly and diluted over decades.”
2a.) Plenty of folk or popular musics around the globe do not come out of slavery-like experiences and all of them at the least are authentic.
2b.) As to what is special or powerful about American music and where it comes from, I don’t say it’s just slavery–I also hold it comes from African slavery, and from American Freedom. Moreover, I hold that it may come very, very indirectly or unconsciously–country musicians who might strenuously deny being influenced by blacks, to take one example, or any musician, black or white or whatever, who might have learned the music well but not have had suffered any oppression-like experiences.
August 2nd, 2011 | 9:05 am
So both the post and Carl’s response I can believe in, except: The American experien ce of freedom includes the southern stoic warrior–both in the gentlemanly and citizen-soldier dimensions, reflected in our art (novels, films etc.) and to a lesser extent in our music. And then there’s the southern, non-black Christianity…which includes some good music too (although not as much as someone might hope). The experience of the southern white after the big war (reduced to third-world poverty) isn’t that different (it is different!) from that of the emancipated (but still hugely constrained, impoverished) black.
August 3rd, 2011 | 11:26 am
As a sometimes commenter here I just wanted to let you know out how tickled I am that you chose to use the YouTube clip of “20th Century Man” I made/posted. (I originally made it for use in a contemporary political theory course I was team teaching, so it’s added fun to see it in this context.)
As for Davies… I’m not sure how much irony we are supposed to take out of songs like “20th Century Man”. There certainly are echoes of an earlier generation to be found there. There is something decidely anti-My Generation about the Kinks of this era. (This was also heard earlier on albums like “Village Green Preservation Society.” As much as I’d like to believe otherwise I’m pretty sure Davies’ tongue was planted firmly in cheek when he sang lines like “God save little shops, china cups, and virginity.”) Certainly, whatever Davies own take is on modern writers there is a deep ambivalence about the size and scope of the modern liberal state expressed on “Muswell.”
The connection of this idea to a uniquely American experience, and a uniquely American musical form, can best be heard on a out-take from the “Muswell Hillbillies” sessions. “Mountain Woman” tells a bluesy country story of a TVA style governmental agency impacting upon simple folk (“uneducated, but they’re happy”), taking their land to build a dam and power plant. It’s not hard to guess where Davies’ sympathies lie here. Obviously, Davies found a parallel in these types of stories which he connected to English experiences.
It should also be noted that America is not only a land of parallels on this album, it is also the land of escape. On the track “Oklahoma USA” Davies sings of an English female factory worker,
“She walks to work but she’s still in a daze
She’s Rita Hayworth or Doris Day
And Errol Flynn’s going to take her away
To Oklahoma U.S.A.
“All life we work but work is a bore
If life’s for living then what’s living for…”
August 3rd, 2011 | 2:27 pm
I will add another thought here: Despite the obvious parallels Davies is drawing to the American experience, particularly the black/poor/Southern experience, “Muswell Hillibillies” contains an undercurrent which marks it as uniquely English. Blues music draws much of its power from showing how the pain and suffering of the black experience could be universalized. The woes and cares blues singers sang about amounted to somethng more than a complaint about individual troubles. (If it didn’t rise above this somehow the genre would amount to little more than “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.”) The listener is invited to identify with the singer and, at its best, the music is cathartic. We may not have experienced exactly the type of loss being recounted in the song, but we do know loss. The music becomes less “Look at all this bad stuff that happened to me” and more “Look at the boat we all are in.”
There isn’t nearly as much of that on “Muswell Hillbillies.” Take for example the song “Have A Cuppa Tea”. Davies’ take on his grandmother’s faith (and, for that matter, her generation’s faith) in the restorative powers of tea gently makes fun of the custom. As a response to the ills of this world (in this case mostly physical ailments) Davies obviously finds the tea making response slightly ridiculous. The effect here is to differentiate his generation from those that preceeded it. Thus universality of experience is lost. (Though one could argue English youth of Davies generation put their faith in the restorative powers of another substance they sometimes called “tea.” Think of the tune “Harry Rag.”)
What is left then is more nostalgia than anything else, and it is difficult to imagine nostalgia leading to much. Solace? Maybe. Cartharsis? Never.
August 3rd, 2011 | 10:44 pm
Thanks, Rich, for your Kinks-expertise, and for your you-tube montage with the lyrics. Like a lot of the mid-60s pop groups, the Kinks were making an effort to explore the sounds, feel, and “roots,” as it were, of British middle to lower class life.
And the characters the Kinks gave us were usually sketched with sympathy…unlike the pop-art paradigm of “Eleanor Rigby.”
So I’d their type of nostalgia, their type of ambivalence about modernity, can be a beginning of wisdom. Mark Henrie has a great essay on how nostalgic feelings can lead to genuine conservative thought.
August 4th, 2011 | 7:33 pm
what you say about american music,i’ve considered many times before. i couldn’t disagree with you more.america’s music does not come from black people. it comes from all musicians through the years influencing eachother and creating with what they’ve learned and “received” from somebody else. to think that black musicians have not been influenced by white musicians is simply nonsense.to think that black musicians were not influenced by country and folk music that was already prevalent here before the escalation of slavery is nonsense.to attribute to a race of people credit for what you call”america’s music” is about as racist as you can get.New songs come from the old ones.
August 8th, 2011 | 10:38 am
J.B., “to think that black musicians have not been influenced by white musicians is simply nonsense.”
It is simply nonsense. Which is why I never said it. Nor did John really say that I said it. Nor did Peter say it.
Cross-polenization is a big part of American music’s richness. The greater extent of our mixing things up reflects a.) our devotion to freedom, b) our immediate taking to spread-the-sound technologies, most of which were American-invented anyhow.
What I do say is that of all the distinctive things about the various American musics, the MOST distinctive things can be TRACED to black influence, which is both an African culture influence, and a “dealing with slavery and its impact” influence. And those influences have been translated and transformed in all sorts of creative ways by whites, southern whites particularly.
In fact, the comparative weakness of American black music circa 1980s-2011 probably has a lot to do with with misguided and ham-handed efforts by blacks to become more authentically African, from the late 60s on, by turning to melody-de-emphasizing and beat-emphasizing funk and then hip-hop. Of course, anyone who knows African music itself knows how this was not a successfully realized turn to Africa itself. The rawness and defiantly impoverished sound of hip-hop is unlike anything you hear from Africa itself. (On this last point, consider esp. seminal hip-hop [Run DMC, Fat Boys, BDP, etc.], before producers and the sampling wave that came in around 1988 gave it more aural depth.)
So all in all, I think the downplaying of the European-rooted in Afro-American music by blacks has weakened it. Take one sort of example: a Chuck Berry, a Fats Domino, a Ray Charles were ready to learn from Nashville…but it’s hard to even pretend to do that once you’re encased in hip-hop.
August 15th, 2011 | 8:26 pm
Fascinating dialogue.
Can it be directed towards a separation: between the experiential, sensuous (as Copland describes it) plane, and the sociological, anthropological plane.
We all probably have similar reactions to listening to those old records. They are quite remarkable when compared to contemporary examples; no conventional virtuosity whatsoever, yet somehow they still demand repeat listens. We like how they sound.
You Really Got Me is arguably as an important a musical event in the 20th century as the riotous premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (the first punk concert?), or the befuddled reaction to the premiere of Cage’s 4’33″. Certainly it came about much earlier than the Beatles’ important records (Tomorrow Never Knows onwards) and to these ears and rock-criticism-reading eyes is right up there with Public Enemy’s Fight the Power.
On the ‘anthropological’ side, the Kinks are equally remarkable. The legends of their early career (bad record deal, a ban by the AFM) parallels the career of Stravinsky, interestingly enough. Instead of a bad record deal, Stravinsky had WWI and the subsequent ignoring of 1917 ‘bolshevik’ Soviet Russian copyright by Western countries to stop his dreams of financial livelihood (not to mention the fact that orchestras were broke post-1918, so his masterpiece ballets scored for huge orchestral forces were simply not performed much; he started writing small works based on his conception of ‘jazz’, which he toured independently; the most notable example, L’histoire du Soldat, was responsible for creating the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, but I’m drunk and I digress). And instead of an AFM ban, Stravinsky had global upheaval to create a similar forced peripaticism/confinement (identical result of psychological isolation).
Where the Kinks have three major periods/styles (Pye/RCA/Arista), Stravinsky has the Russian/Neoclassicism/serialism. Where both could be charged with misogynistic attitudes, they both look much better compared to their prominent contemporaries (Picasso, Nijinsky, Griffiths, Toscanini, Rollings Stones, pre-Ono John Lennon, etc).
Finally, they are both notable curmudgeons whose successes were resented by their entitled contemporaries. Both Western Europe and the US really did look down on Russians, despite Rachmaninov et al, and Stravinsky was treated with condescension immediately after he started really displaying his inimitable individuality. Likewise, the pop music elite resented everything about the Kinks; they could barely play their instruments, they were ridiculous in appearance and presenatation – and did not only not care but enjoyed this resentment; and they were truly defiant in their unprofessionalism (unlike the Stones, for instance, who spouted an anti-authoritarian rhetoric, but who were genuine economists behind the scenes).
So I’m even more drunk now and I’m lost in my own rambling. There may have been a point at the beginning, but that’s definitely gone. I hope you get something out of the middle/muddle.
Chhers.
January 10th, 2012 | 5:31 pm
[...] as Davies was likely aware (recall the art-history savvy lyrics our John Presnall pointed out in “Twentieth Century Man”), that the painters Turner, Whistler, and Monet had all painted the sun shining through London’s [...]
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