Thread by @michaelharriot

This is actually a part of American history and how the music industry works.

A thread:

https://twitter.com/danteross/status/1676495785947729920

First of all, let’s get this out of the way. Almost every form of popular music & art created by Black Americans.

But it wasn’t just art, it was part of a cultural tradition.

Gospel music wasn’t just Black people singing songs about Jesus, it was a form of communication

It was literally how they learned to speak the language and preserve their history. It was instructions for escaping slavery and the first Google Calendar

How do you plan a revolt or spread the word of resistance or worship when your god is outlawed?

It’s estimated that 1 in 3 enslaved people actually practiced Islam but what do you do when Christianity is forced on you?

You hide your spirituality in your music. If you listen to the words, this is a MUSLIM negro spiritual.

But to these white folks, it’s just a song

When people note that Elvis got his musical style from Assemblies of God churches, it’s true. It’s one of the largest religious denominations in the US. It’s also the origin of the “Hillsong” music. But one ever mentions how that music and that style started

Long story short:

Black ministers started the Church of God in Christ in the late 1800s. It became huge in the South. When Jim Crow hit, 300 white COGIC ministers couldn’t take being under Black leadership. They left and started the

Assemblies of God is literally just whitewashed COGIC

They took the theology, the music and even the ways of worship. But their “ring shout” wasn’t born out of Gullah Geechee tradition and African & Caribbean spirituality. It had nothing to do with oppression. It was just what white people did in church

. https://t.co/BmdRP6w7Wiblackmusicscholar.com/lets-get-to-sh…

Same with the improvisational styles of Jazz, Blues, rock and even country music. The banjo was a African instrument that white people initially used to REPLICATE Black music.

If you don’t believe me, ask Thomas Jefferson

All of this eventually evolved into pop music. But before it was jazz, Blues or Rock, what was it called?

Race music.

That was actually the name of the Billboard R&B chart until they changed it to “Black Music,”

https://t.co/ao7t0d9Zzlencyclopedia.com/media/encyclop…

Perhaps the best example is Max Martin, the Swedish producer who churned out Black sounding “pop music” for Britney Spears, NSync, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande etc.

I talked about “going pop” on my podcast recently with music critic Matthew Allen

Now what does this have to do with white hip hop artists?

Well, EVERY white kid in America grew up in a world where hop is the dominant form of music. For a lot of white kids, hip hop is understandably their biggest musical influence

But CULTURE is something different

Theres a difference between being influenced by a musical genre versus people who part of the culture that CREATED the music.

Have you ever heard hip hop producers talk about drum machines or samplers? To me, the most amazing part of hip hop is the engineering aspect

How DJs took record players & beat machines and random studio equipment and FIGURED OUT how to combine it with poetry to make a whole new form of art.

But that is why a LOT of white people believe they weren’t privileged if they grew up poor. Privilege is about OPPORTUNITY

It has nothing to do with poverty. And this conversation is the best example.

If you are white you don’t have to limit yourself to hip hop and the stigma that accompanies it because to you, it’s just a musical genre.

BUT here’s how privilege works.

When white people use hip hop as a footstool to make rock or country or popular, more “accepted” music

They’re still making “race music”

They just don’t have to make it FOR or WITH Black people. They get to sell Black music without the Black CULTURE

That’s the privilege.

And it’s not fair to limit ANYONE’S artistic expression, even white artists.

The problem is, that we live in a world where our u ique history of race limits some people’s expression.

And those limitations are what PRODUCE the art and make it emotionally relatable to the WORLD

But the privilege is not that white people can make the art they want.

It’s that they can do it without the limitations that actually created it.

But what else can a white. artist do?

Make polka music?

Make Polka music