{"id":174,"date":"2013-02-11T22:47:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-11T22:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/11\/indie-rock-class-race-and-culture-in-america\/"},"modified":"2013-02-11T22:47:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T22:47:00","slug":"indie-rock-class-race-and-culture-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/11\/indie-rock-class-race-and-culture-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Indie rock, class, race, and culture in America"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Great essay. -egg]
\u00a0– –
Indie rock, class, race, and culture in America<\/a>:
<\/p>\n

Martin Douglas’s “The Only Black Guy at the Indie Rock Show” is a fascinating longread about race, culture and class, partly a memoir of Douglas’s life as a young black kid in a North Carolina housing project who loved indie rock; partly a critique of the way we think about what blackness, whiteness and culture are. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The black kids of my generation and the ones before it were raised with the notion that it\u2019s essential to hold onto one\u2019s \u201cblackness,\u201d and that venturing outside of those boundaries meant you were trying to assimilate to white society, to \u201cbe more like one of them.\u201d But essentially every African-American child growing up has an intimate knowledge of some version of the black experience, and the way we dress or the music we listen to still won\u2019t hide the color of our skin. I never saw my interest in alternative culture as a way to obfuscate my racial identity. Aside from the annoyance of being typecast as a fan of a band purely based on superficial concerns, that conversation overlooked the one substantial reason why there are a lot of black people who relate to TV on the Radio\u2019s music: They are a band primarily consisting of African-American men who often explore what it means to be African-American. For a generation of alternative music fans made to believe we were betraying \u201cwhat it means\u201d to be black, a band had finally come along that made that very idea a theme in its music.<\/p>\n

But as TV on the Radio started to grow in notoriety, it still created a schism in my initial attraction to rock music; here was a band that was, for all intents and purposes, \u201csocially acceptable\u201d for black people to like. This falls into my earlier point about young children emulating people who look like them. I imagine if the band were around when I was younger \u2014 with their overtures to shoegaze, incisive and smart lyrics, steadfast commitment to experimentalism, and Kyp Malone\u2019s beard \u2014 they probably would have been my favorite band throughout my entire childhood. At the very least, I wouldn\u2019t have felt like such an outsider for loving alternative music.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Only Black Guy at the Indie Rock Show <\/a><\/p>\n

(via Andre’s Notes<\/a><\/i>)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Great essay. -egg]\u00a0– –Indie rock, class, race, and culture in America: Martin Douglas’s “The Only Black Guy at the Indie Rock Show” is a fascinating longread about race, culture and class, partly a memoir of Douglas’s life as a young black kid in a North Carolina housing project who loved indie rock; partly a critique […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-2O","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}