Can White People Sing the Blues?

(Originally written April 12, 2007 in Book 16)

Class Notes

Plato & Mass Media

"Television is a vast wasteland".

The problem with TV is that to watch the grotesque TV is to implicitly approve of the grotesque behavior on the TV.

Gracsik - Why is Rock music so noisy?

Noises are sounds that interfere with communication.

To say that something is noisy is to claim that it violates accepted rules of a given society.

Timbre is what people are saying is the noisiness of rock.

Timbre - sonic color, texture

Rudinow - Can white people sing the blues?

Blues involves more than simply making the correct sounds.

"Lost fair deal goin' down" - Robert Johnson
"Mean ol' frisco"
"Boogie Woogie" - John Lee Hooker

1. The propriety argument - Blues is a style that belongs to Black Americans. Whites are stealing when they play the blues.

2. The experiential access argument - Whites cannot understand what it means to be black. You have to have suffered massive oppression in order to produce genuine blues music.

Problem with #2: "The myth of ethnic memory". Not all black Americans today have any genuine concept of harsh oppression of slavery or Jim Crow laws.