race, class, rock and roll part 2

This a.m., I worked more on article about race/class intersections in Detroit memoir, cranking out about two single-spaced pages on Erma Henderson's work, but I'm still thinking about integrating more on indie rock. Thought I had a neat and tidy article in the works, but I'm liking how this connection might complicae things. Maybe a wholly different article? Maybe a component of this same one. Dunno. Anyway, this is basically continued from yesterday, more on The Soledad Brothers (whose new album The Hardest Walk I'm enjoying very much)...

In that Guardian interview I talked about yesterday, Soledad Brothers also reference gender as an interlocking component of the futility of identifying solitary markers of difference as essential signifiers. Gender need not craft a particular narrative about empowerment, in this particular worldview. But the band does not ascribe transcendence of gender disempowerment to individual achievement, but rather through connection to the music and connection to a broader awareness. The blues are transcendent in a way that the liberal notion of the individual is not. The band references Rachel Nagy, frontwoman of garage rock covers band the Detroit Cobras, who creates an agonistic, aggressive persona on the stage, performing traditionally masculine rituals like making reference to sexual conquests and swearing. As the Soledad Brothers suggest, “nobody can mess with her.” (Reminds me of the scene in School of Rock where Jack Black's talking to "Turkey Sub" about her stagefright: "Aretha's a big lady too but people WORSHIP her")

Likewise Wendy Case, the frontwoman for another band associated with the Detroit scene, The Paybacks. Case writes lyrics that reject liberal notions of propriety and decorum. Gritty lyrics are not at all unusual in the world(s) of rock and roll, but Case’s lyrics specifically take up intersecting identity markers. For example, the song “Black Girl” appeared on the influential 2001 compliation Sympathetic Sounds of Detroit, produced by Jack White of the White Stripes in the months before they gained national attention. In the song, Case sings lines like “The blacker the berry the sweeter the juice,” in a build-up to a chorus that repeats the line, “She’s a real black girl.” Throughout, Case, a white woman leading a band of white males, extols the sexuality of African-American women. A moment of post-identity? A rejecting of liberal narratives about who does and does not possess cultural power.

Another song on the same compliation, “I’m Through With White Girls” by The Dirtbombs, takes up the same theme. The Dirtbombs track is filled with lines about “brown-skinned honies dancing” and “watching Soul Train on a Friday night,” all sung by a band comprised mostly of young white men, but fronted by Mick Collins, a veteran of the Detroit rock scene (formerly of great 90s band The Gories) who happens to be one of the few African-Americans associated with the movement. In their current incarnation, The Dirtbombs also feature an Asian-American woman playing bass.

So whose perspective does a song like “I’m Through With White Girls” come from? From the perspective of the white band members? The African-American band member? From the perspective of the primarily white audience? Is the song racist and/or sexist? Detroit garage rock likes to distance itself from earnest, socially conscious pop music, yet the Dirtbombs track foregrounds race and gender, stressing difference, emphasizing that both race and gender signify something. To liberal ears accustomed to platitudes about equality, the lyrics sound harsh and bombastic, more than a little offensive, perhaps reminiscent of Sly Stone in the 1960s, singing “Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey.” Key for the Dirtbombs lyric is the subversion of point-of-view, as the band calls attention to markers of identity (that of the multi-racial band, the “white girls” they sing about, the audience) in order to juxtapose shifting loci of attention. The song references Collins’ own African-American identity as well as the racist mythology of black men as a threat to white women. In the meantime, the lyrics highlight the white identity of much of the indie rock audience, allowing them to live vicariously the stereotypical markers of black life that the song outlines.

The latter relationship—the one between Mick Collins and his white fans—stands in as synecdoche for the contentious relationship between city and suburbs, perhaps the defining conflict of Detroit identity. Members of the Dirtbombs, like many members of Detroit’s rock scene, refer to growing up in the city (unlike hip hop stars like Eminem and Kid Rock), whereas their mostly white fan base resides primarily in Detroit’s suburbs. In the liner notes of the Sympathetic Sounds compilation, The Dirtbombs include in their list of band members Coleman A. Young. Instead of an instrument, Young’s band duties read simply “Mayor.” The liner notes joke alludes to Detroit’s long-time mayor, a polarizing figure loved by many African-Americans within city limits but despised by most whites living in the suburbs. Young utilized a rhetoric that sounded radical to most white ears, as he challenged the suburbs for siphoning resources and jobs from the black community in Detroit. When the compilation was released, Coleman Young’s successor, Dennis Archer (fair and full disclosure: I interned in ARcher's office in summer of 96), was in office. Archer used a much more conciliatory rhetoric and advocated cooperation between city and suburb. A moderate democrat, Archer embodied the liberal values of equality and tolerance. Like the Soledad Brothers associating themselves with a radical race consciousness, so too do the Dirtbombs suggest an aesthetic connection with a more radical political program, albeit in the context of a liner notes joke.

So 'whassup with all that?