Black Music

It is the weekend of Martin Luther King Day, when we celebrate the birthday of one of the very, very few people I really consider a true hero. His cause was great, and he rose to it like no one else. Amen.

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I just read a New York Times review of a recently-published collection of rock writings by the late critic Paul Nelson. David Hajdu wrote the review, and he is a fine music and popular culture writer, whose books include favorites Lush Life, about Billy Strayhorn, and Postively 4th Street, about Dylan and Baez’s early days. Hajdu, in his review, writes that Paul Nelson “didn’t like black music.” What? How could such a good writer as Hajdu make that statement and not elaborate? What does it mean? Saying “I don’t like black music” is kind of like saying “I don’t like sandwiches.” There are too many kinds of sandwiches. You must like some sandwiches. A rock critic who says he doesn’t like black music can’t be a reliable resource for insight into any rock music, whatever its sub-genre.  I don’t recall ever reading Paul Nelson, but I guess now I don’t feel any need to do so. 

So, what is black music? Music by black people? Then this is black music:

Brook Benton‘s black. But his albums generally go in the Easy Listening section. I guess this is black music:

Prince’s music is generally pretty funky, with elements of soul, but it rocks even more, and this song comes from his homage to psychedelia, Around the World in a Daze. 

Black people are involved in every genre of music, and most of the splinters.  How can you separate rock music from “black music”?  Music being made by black artists directly created rock, when late-forties R&B started morphing from a swing beat into a straighter beat.  The music of black people not only led to rock, but to folk (Paul Nelson’s other preferred genre), jazz, country & western, theatre music, many styles of Latin music, and pretty much everything else.  Not to mention soul, funk, blues, and rhythm and blues.

One of the best “rock” songs of all time was made in the early forties by a lone bluesman, Bukka White:

That’s black music, and it’s rock, too.  To hell with Paul Nelson.

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