|
|
Before the Whitening by Domenico Ferri
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17th, 2006 at 10:07 PM
Race, Rock, and Elvis
Author: Michael T. Bertrand
and
Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture
Author: George Lipsitz
Before the Whitening:
The Racially Integrated Origins of Fifties’ Rock and Roll
In its current form, rock and roll has become somewhat of a hackneyed slogan that only gains discernable meaning when it is abbreviated and subsequently attached to a derivative classification. A lengthy list of recent rock permutations includes classic, rockabilly, surf, pop, garage, glam, punk, progressive, hard, soft, alternative, indie, math, space, and even Christian rock, just to name several. Although each of these subdivisions is born from a racially integrated musical tradition, one would have difficulty recognizing it because white musicians now dominate rock music in both commercial and independent settings. In lieu of this fact, rock and roll as both an institution and art form, however white and amorphous it has become, hardly challenges the color line as it once did during the 1950s. Nevertheless, the process by which rock music fell decisively into the hands of white management and became dominated by white musicians is the story that begins where this essay ends. The chief purpose of this work is to illustrate that rock and roll in its earliest form consciously and unconsciously challenged the stubborn legacy of southern racial segregation insomuch as black and white musicians, for better or worse, collectively made music that channeled energy born from a shared socioeconomic crisis.
Rock music’s earliest manifestation can be traced to distinctly afro-American forms of music including early rhythm and blues later infused with an array of white influences such as country and folk. But before scholars can account for how white record executives more or less hijacked this mode of expression, it bears mentioning that rock music was once a kind of Gramscian phenomenon, a product of a racially mixed milieu whose imperfect coalescence led to a backlash against racial intolerance in the South by way of shared economic desperation. Michael T. Bertrand in Race, Rock, and Elvis convincingly illustrates this point by highlighting the degree to which Elvis, despite what he would become after the fifties, embodied an organically formed event in popular culture that saw white and black drawn more closely together, challenging the racial status quo and clearly affecting the culture industry. George Lipsitz in Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture argues that the genesis of rock and roll was in fact a synthesis of “white country and black blues music.” This artistic amalgamation reflected the shared challenge of preserving identity and creative spirit in the face of the hegemonic norms of an industrial society devoid of opportunities for upward mobility for blacks and an increasing number of whites.
Lipsitz sees rock and roll as a biracial class dialogue in which working-class whites embraced and added to black music in an effort to articulate a shared social frustration. Thus, the colorless, though vibrant, soul of a marginalized southern working class served as the ethos of fifties rock. Before record companies could adulterate this electric, interracial, postwar, working class, sonic spiritual force in order to gain the acceptance of white moralist critics, “people who made their living from rock and roll in the early 1950s recognized the ways in which music helped break down barriers of race and class.” Lipsitz furthermore associates the white middle class youths’ embracing of rock and roll as a signal that “the legitimacy of the emerging corporate-suburban culture” was being called to question.
While Lipsitz offers a clear vision of rock music’s underlying racial dimension, his characterization of rock and roll also fits into a larger framework of analysis, which insists that popular culture is intimately connected to a dynamic American identity. Bertrand, on the other hand, penetrates more deeply into the historical significance of the music as it pertained to the social environment from which it emerged. Before examining critically the interracial origins of rock and roll, Bertrand validates popular culture’s social profundity by rejecting regarded Marxist philosopher Theodor Adorno’s assertion that the culture industry is solely an enterprise designed to reach desired economic ends by means of manipulating the masses. Bertrand describes nascent rock music’s verifiable influence on the music industry, a point epitomized by notable disc jockey Al Jarvis’s statement that “the good parts (of rock and roll) will be absorbed into our culture and the bad parts will disappear.” The downside of this relationship is that by 1956 the interracial spirit and unbridled energy of rock music, along with the potential for any independent record label’s national success, had been pushed to the wayside. While rockers challenged the color line with their integrated creative process, the music and the politic was soon rejected by conservative members of the entertainment industry who felt that rock and roll’s commercial success depended on manipulating its controversial image into something more acceptable to mainstream, white America.
Nevertheless, the very fact that rock and roll had mass appeal in spite of measures taken to censor it suggested that there was indeed a “conspicuous presence of race in popular music.” This new element in postwar popular music first led stockholders, boards of directors, and chief executive officers to consider obscuring the racial origins of popular artists so as to not ill affect sales potential. Such a masquerade could not be executed, mainly due to the fact that youth throughout the South during the fifties “had to confront the social and racial issues attached to rock ‘n’ roll before they could endorse the music.” Although Bertrand does acknowledge a certain level of social awareness in the rock and roller, he does not endorse a direct link between rock and roll and the civil rights movement. This may be due to the fact that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke ill of rock and roll saying that it “plunges men’s minds into degrading and immoral depths.”
Regardless of rock and roll’s virtues and the various ways audiences interpreted or rejected them, the socioeconomic conditions that led to its conception are, in truth, the forces that temporarily inspired white and black to create together. In addition to framing rock and roll as a key agent and revelator of social change, both Bertrand and Lipsitz support the broader argument that the examination of popular culture is a site where invaluable insights about a changing American consciousness do emerge. This is not to say rock music did not have its bigoted critics and rock performers did not experience vicious racial violence. The point is that however hostile the reception, the music itself possessed a spirit that represented change and agency generated from those who created it. Elvis himself emerged from this integrated environment of musicians only to become the perfect white capsule that could retain rock’s appeal sans explicit racial overtones. Once record companies pegged Elvis as the perfect white package for rock and roll, audiences could forget the key ingredient of blackness that initially made rock the resonating marvel it was. Elvis certainly did not object.
|
