Black Lives Matter

The music busines is responding to the death of George Floyd and its reignition of the Black Lives Matter movement. On 2 June it held ‘Blackout Tuesday’ in which many companies and organizations ceased business activity for one day in order to ‘disconnect from work and reconnect with our community’ and seek ‘an urgent step of action to provoke accountability and change’. Affirmative action has followed.

            In the first instance, there has been a funding pledge from entertainment companies and artists. The major labels, Universal, Sony and Warner have between them committed $225m, which will be used in support of black charities and to address ‘internal’ and ‘institutional’ change. YouTube has announced a £100m fund dedicated to ‘amplifying and developing the voices of Black creators and artists’. Stormzy had donated £10m to black British causes.

Secondly, there has been a semantic rethink. The One Little Indian label has changed its name because of ‘the violent history of the terminology’, the US Recording Academy has dropped the term ‘urban’ from two of its awards, and more broadly there are a number of labels who are rebranding their urban divisions. ‘Urban’ is being resisted because it is ‘rooted in the historical evolution of terms that sought to define black music’ and has ‘developed into a generalisation of black people in many sectors of the music industry, including employees and music by black artists’. Ultimately, its abandonment might result in structural as well as semantic change. The hope is that its departure will bring an end to the ghettoization of black employees and artists. The move is not universally welcomed, however. There are black music bosses who argue that this ‘we are all the same attitude’ will not work in a society in which some are more equal than others. They fear that the removal of barriers will result in white executives taking charge of black repertoire because they feel they know ‘better than anyone else’.

There is a manoeuvre that has received less attention but which could result in unquestioned good. One of the ways that racism has been ingrained in the music industries is through black artists receiving exploitative contractual terms. As such, it is not surprising that artists such as Kelis and Erykah Badu have retweeted a statement by the American professor, Josh Kun: ‘If the music industry wants to support black lives, labels and platforms can start with amending contracts, distributing royalties, diversifying boardrooms, and retroactively paying back all the black artists, and their families, they have built their empires on’. This has already had some effect. On Tuesday 9 June, BMG’s CEO Hartwig Masuch declared that    

Mindful of the music industry’s record of shameful treatment of black artists, we have begun a review of all historic record contracts. While BMG only began operations in 2008, we have acquired many older catalogues. If there are any inequities or anomalies, we will create a plan to address them. Within 30 days.

It is not only statues that are falling.

 

Pleasurable Guilt?

Sometimes writing should be withheld. In 2002, Gary Mulholland produced one of the finest list books about popular music, The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk and Disco. As well as covering many fantastic records, the entries are shot through with insights. They also glow with a righteous passion about the injustices of race, class, gender and snobbery. This book was followed in 2006 by The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk and Disco. It is a far inferior work. Aside from the fact that albums are frequently incoherent and therefore hard to sum up, Mulholland’s pronouncements have a tendency to jar.

            The worst instance comes with his analysis of Misty in Roots' Live at the Counter Eurovision 79. Despite including the album in his book, he describes it as ‘kinda silly’ and ‘pretty camp’. This stopped me in my tracks when I first read it. Had I been listening to a different record? Was I wrong to take this album’s earnest pronouncements on race and class seriously, when really I should have taken them with a pinch of salt? Mulholland thinks so. For him this record was aimed at a ‘white middle-class audience’ who sought ‘damning judgements upon their entire existence’. These judgements include the famous spoken word introduction to this album, which states that:

When we trod this land, we walk for one reason. The reason is to try to help another man think for himself. The music of our hearts is roots music: music which recalls history, because without the knowledge of your history, you cannot determine your destiny; the music about the present, because if you are not conscious about the present, you're like a cabbage in this society; music which tells about the future and the judgement which is to come.

The Radio 1 DJ John Peel, who was responsible for introducing this record to many people, was so taken with these words that they were included in the order of service at his funeral. Mulholland argues that, while they are supposed to sound ‘simultaneously spiritual, authoritative and stoned’, the speaker ‘just sounds gay’. He is similarly snide about ‘How Long Jah’, the track on the album that says most about racism. It is introduced with a cry of ‘how long must we feel the pain?’. For Mulholland this complaint sounds like a ‘granny with a backache’.

            This writing represents a hollow game of one-upmanship. Mulholland wishes to come across as being more insightful than other listeners while also attempting to best them in terms of liberal credentials. He wants to say that, not only is racism wrong, but it is perpetuated by the fact that white listeners take roots reggae so seriously. For Mulholland, a greater move towards equality would be for white people to take the piss out of these musicians in the same way they take the piss out of everyone else. This involves calling someone ‘gay’. Aside from this peculiar attitude, what I find most unforgiveable about this writing is that it did affect my listening and presumably the listening of other readers as well. I questioned whether in listening to this album I was just indulging in some form of pleasurable guilt.

            The music speaks more loudly, though. Misty in Roots certainly condemned whiteness - ‘Satan said I’m free, but I’m not free’ – and by extension could be said to be admonishing their white audience. This wasn’t a game of assuaging guilt, however. The group always preached togetherness. They were a fulcrum of the Rock Against Racism movement. They pointedly named their record label, ‘People Unite’, and launched the career of the white punk band, the Ruts. ‘How Long Jah’ asks how long must we feel the pain. It couches the problem in monetary terms: we are ‘economical slaves’ who cannot escape ‘money the controller’. Live at the Counter Eurovision is not preaching at a white audience, it is instead enfolding this audience in shared injustices and is suggesting ways to move forwards as one.

            And it definitely is not camp. In fact, what is most astonishing about Misty in Roots is that they sought unity and spoke of shared experience despite being the victims of institutionalized racism. In the same month that the album was recorded, Britain's far right party, the National Front, had planned to hold an election meeting in Southall, the multi-cultural district from which Misty in Roots hailed. The group helped to organize the anti-fascist response. In the resulting ‘Southall riots’ the teacher Blair Peach was killed by the police. The police’s Special Patrol Group also beat Misty in Roots’ manager Clarence Baker into a coma. He was then charged with assault despite the fact he was unarmed. Tragically, ‘How Long Jah?’ was not only speaking the truth at the time it was released, but it remains true today. Another generation has been born in slavery. Black lives matter.