This is defs Blerd (Black nerd) territory, and not like cool Black kid stuff, right. I do have a book on rap I bought, although I think it will take me a long time to finish, just like it took me forever to read that Bono book. (A LONG time.) In the meanwhile, my small media studies collection probs is very, very…. Cautious…. To put it politely. I don’t know if this really helps, lol.

The old stereotype, which people have probs already forgotten, at least consciously: I’m so happy you whipped me, master whitey! Thank you for making me your slave!

Vs, the stereotypical rapper (on Threads, lol): Happiness don’t bring no respect; happiness don’t bring no respect. I’m embracing antipathy and despair; I’m on my way up! Antipathy and despair: on my way up! Happiness don’t bring no respect…. Real, dog…. Homie, if you want to do this shit, do it real…. Give me somethin’ if you think I’m bigger than that other rapper YT…. That’s right…. That’s right…. Epithet….

lol.

I’m not saying it’s simple, or unparadoxical…. I know I sound awful, for real…. But yeah: I mean, you’d think people wouldn’t get stuck in a rut you know: so many people…. Then again, why would you say that, lol….

But yeah: at least it won’t take too long to get through: short book, less music, music that’s less, you know…. I mean, I want to listen to all of Prince’s music; I’ll listen to some of this, but I’ll probably pass on all the “The Complete Plantation Recordings” collections, right….

…. The editor sounds like he was one of the more good-hearted and honest white scholars of his generation, and yet he also spent decades studying a topic and became I guess a leading scholar, and yet only produced I guess one part of one book (he edited it, right): so in that sense he bore the scars upon his psyche of his age—he worried about everything; he thought so much he couldn’t write about his thoughts….

…. A number of European classical composers did warm to Black folk music, (and not just Dvorak, although he was one of them), mostly if not entirely after emancipation, I think…. Although that abolitionist from the 1830s quoted, I mean certainly both politically and academically it was a worse situation to navigate: but she did come off as unambiguously racist, you know; and she was the ~abolitionist~…. 😨

…. (Stephen Foster) But yeah; popular American music is Black, but it is easy to see how with, say, “Beautiful Dreamer” or whatever, paleface power snobs could claim that, whatever—(call) “paleface power”; (response) “BLACKPOWER!!”—and seem, I don’t know, credible, to incorrect but not necessarily intentionally racist people (who probably were pretty racist anyway). I mean, the 1840s to the 1860s, wow…. It’s much easier to identify it as “Cancerian” (July 4, 1826–and wow, Sun AND Moon in Cancer—whoo!), than “Black-inspired”, and Cancer traits (the Mother, basically) aren’t stereotypically what the Anglo American folk-man associates with African-Americans, right…. Not that the average person would necessary be able to articulate it like that, right: it’s all unconscious, on a couple of levels….

(shrugs) But yeah; it’s cute. The March sisters; Beth March, right. Not Jo. Not even Amy, probably. Not even Meg, maybe. But Beth—sure. “(squeals in delight) I thought everything in the world was from Europe! (starts to play) I wonder how he came to learn this music, (another chord). He probably met Merlin and Christ under the shade of the American sycamore tree, (another chord), (smiles).

…. And yeah: Stephen Foster’s music comes with a little disclaimer: “Five hundred chiggers were killed in the making of this song.” (Chris Rock) “Five Hundred! Five Hundred, CHIGGERS!? (beat) What IS a, “chigger”, anyway…. Am ~EYE~ a, ~~”chigger”~~??!!…. I need to know this before I can go on with my life. (gives look) (beat) (shows hands) It’s been a great night, (Columbus, Ohio—wherever)!!” (chiggers cheer—white ones)

lol

…. But yeah, not all the slaves were deluded or whatever; it remains that the slave songs are not the apotheosis of Black agency: at several points along the way from environment to composition to reduction to writing, even to performance, by elementary school choirs, you know: the nostalgic feather in the cap of the factory school, beneath the watchful eyes of the patriarchs in the portraits…. At several points along the way, whitey constrained/limited the process, right.

…. Some of these songs are so obscure + untitled that I literally can’t find recordings of them, right…. And just hearing the random Negro spirituals that aren’t the same song, it’s like, being back in the factory school for seven year olds, right…. Not such great memories, to be honest…. I mean, I guess school wasn’t as bad as family gatherings, or being at home with your parents, even…. Yeah, I was like, “I like school”…. I like being beaten, Massa Jim; I do, I do!…. I like having zero agency and being told that I’ll only be tolerated if I conform…. “Little did he know that even the half-conform thing he grudgingly did, warped his soul and distorted his mind, for years….” Yeah…. And yet, any dead artist, they treat them like they belong to them, just like their dog belongs to them, right…. Although to be honest, this isn’t my favorite music, right….

…. I suppose they do still have a certain charm, if one is in the mood. Still, in this age of rap and rebellious pop, it is hard to imagine even a nostalgic person hearing them outside the aforementioned school, or else a church, right. Something officious. The bots, the Kantians, like the dead better, but the wheel of birth and death never rolls faster than it does for the musician. There is still a sense in which it is Black music, though, even today. I remember once I was at my Episcopal church, and for one service instead of the usual bad classical music that I endured—not even classical music I could ~like~, right—they had this special music session for like white 1820s folk music, and it was ROUGH, dog. Drove me out of there swearing not to come back—I forget the exact story of how I was near the edge—but yeah, swearing not to come back, didn’t come back except for a wedding months later, left that not prepared to come back if they had a bloody mass wedding of like twenty couples, right. Something about turning the Beatles into a nostalgic act that you could pair with the fucking grey tunesmiths of the church mouse centuries, right: grudgingly give obedient pop twenty minutes out an extended hour twenty minute jam fest, right: BAD; yeah, but 1820s white music, complete with Kantian history, right: “you can’t really say that there’s white folk music and blaccfo’kmusik”, you know like…. I mean, there’s no words for it, you know: the songs of the Red man scalpers, and the epithet baiters, right….

No words. Period.

It’s a cliche but there is no American music, or modern popular music, without the Blacks.

…. I don’t know how well I’d like the slaves or the freedmen, or how well we’d get along; but I do have a pretty clear idea, I think, of how even the anti-slavery whites putting on a brave face would treat me, if I didn’t look like them—cumbersome paternalism, you know.

…. But yeah, just generically about Black music and white music since I might never read a “history of Black music” book, you know—maybe, maybe not—and this was like the ~beginning~, right. I’m listening to a few songs a day now of a Boyz II Men album, and, although I’m sorta familiar with them from my “music” period, I was Surprised how ~tender~ and ~~romantic~~ they are: in an industry full of cliche, right: they are not a cliche. And of course, I know an old 50s liberal, and whenever he hears Black music from after 1975 that doesn’t sound like The Beach Boys, basically, (I mean, sometimes people liked Brian Wilson, right), he just repeats this same spiel he never seems to remember is always exactly the same, and it’s as though he’s reciting some grand thing in Greek and he’s pleased with himself: “rap is sexist”, etc. And it’s like, if it’s R&B, I don’t have the heart to correct him; he’s so closed-off, you know…. And it’s like, re: Boyz II Men, it’s hard to remember the Maroon 5 album I listened to the other day (or two—stages) again, an old favorite—“Songs About Jane”, right: and certainly the ~~musicianship~~ on that record is Masterly; it really is: it brings pleasure. But the, words, are SO AWFUL, so misogynist, so ~~controlling~~, right…. And the scholars do say that that is often a sort of pattern: the Black fraternities don’t really act “like fraternities”, you know: it’s the white fraternities that act “like fraternities” and rape people and control people, and everything…. You know. It’s a control thing. Any race can produce a male that tries to control his partner: but sometimes the white race produces some really awful, controlling, shitty men, you know. Because they’re the ones who own the slaves, and everyone is their slave, basically.

…. That it’s pedantic and patronizing gives only the slightest hint of what the book is, yet it sets you off in the right direction, you know.

…. ~(door kicked open) Get on in there.
—But Mr. Jay Z sir, I didn’t say: I didn’t mean—
~Oh, is that how it is now? Before I was just a monkey to you, eh? But now I’m, Mr. Jay Z!
—(crying) But I just said you LOOKED like a monkey; I understand that there are differences, too!

And I mean: it was not an accident; it just wasn’t, you know…. It’s so…. It’s got such a…. Such an uppity white boy stance towards things, like…. Like, we are white men, we have ~large~ brains; we have things like dignity, culture, and language…. The brutes can’t really talk the way we can, but their tribal customs make for a fascinating study…. I mean, I like them, myself, although they are monkeys, of course—

(door kicked open)

~And it’s not even like a KKK publication, you know—not even close. This was like the respected academic music studies book, published by people who considered themselves Afrophiles, you know—even if they also considered themselves as white as the lilies in God’s garden, you know…. I mean, it was published in 1969, and it’s stayed in print…. The guy wasn’t young in 1969, you know: but it was written in those allegedly heathen days, right, and probably many youngsters picked it up as one of the more left/Afrophile books around; some of them probably liked it, you know…. Like it wasn’t two years after the first Juneteenth, you know: supposedly everything was “better” by then, right: isn’t that the narrative?…. In 1969, our Really pro-African writers were publishing papers comparing Blacks to monkeys; things had gotten out of control. Blacks shouldn’t be studied at all; they should do the dishes.

It’s like, wow…. Wow.

…. It’s like they really thought that the “Negro” dishwasher in the kitchen, or whatever, was “putting on airs” for whistling while he worked, and the white man with ridiculous spectacles giving an after-dinner speech which he especially translates out of Ancient Greek and into English for the special benefit of the ladies and the poor relations—why, he was just the way the world fucking is, right.

(shakes head) How do you diagnose him, doctor?

…. I don’t mean to insult Indians, but I feel like if Gandhi were a Black man he’d have been more pessimistic; the line would have been: “First they ignore you, and then they call you a monkey, and then you call them a racist, and then they get upset.”

😭 ooooh! He called me a racist!…. It’s not true!…. It’s not okay…. We all died today; it’s over…. Ooooh…. 😭

…. But yeah: white vs Black, history—

Yeah, while it would be nice if the lyrics of songs weren’t basically interchangeable (I liked the Backstreet lyrics better, so I guess that’s they weren’t 100% clone troopers, but I heard I think it was Justin Bieber singing an “as long as you love me” song that I initially thought, was, the Backstreet Boys, right….)—but yeah, there is a sort of liberated feel to say a Prince song not least because the lyrics *don’t* have a subtext, right: whereas with U2–not a bad band; I don’t think that white musicianship is inherently inferior to Black people’s, although Blacks are more likely to put in the effort, IMO—but yeah, all U2 songs—even 1990s “this is not a U2 song” U2 songs~ are like, Bono is a smart motherfucker who hates himself for not being smart enough…. And that’s entertainment to him, right. And listen—slavery is bad for everybody: but you can, you absolutely can, trace that sort of deluded white intellectualism back to the days of slavery, and whether you weirdly embrace it and hate yourself for it, or just ~even more weirdly~ brag about your delusion, you know: neither of those is healing the operations of your brain functioning, you know.

And God, does whitey brag about his intellectualist delusions, right: that’s what God gave us whitey for; it’s his mission, right.

…. Word people came be hard to figure out, you know.

(grandfatherly old scholar in classic formalwear, looking at the camera) White people suck, just in general, kids. The following essay proves that white liberals can be racist blowhards with a cold, empty space where their hearts should be. Hear now, In Full, “Racist Meanderings About My Friends, The Darkies”, (TV screen transition)

~ It’s like…. You could have written your own fucking essay if it was that important and the other guy’s work was racist B.S.? —Whaat? Somebody doesn’t want to preserve every single word of whitey’s, even when it’s totally useless and a waste of space? But we’re here for the words, son. Gotta help them out….

…. It’s amazing how much of the old way, the wicked religion, of judgment, fear, and alienation, got into everything, and all the way down to the bottom, even into the people laughing and singing and having a good time, right. (And making the sincere good sympathetic loving Northern White tilt his head in confusion and say something patronizing, right.) “This party can’t be no fun, now—Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord: Oh! Praise the LORD!!!…. This party can’t be no fun.”…. It’s like there’s a sort of mendacity as an alternative to psychic suicide, as an alternative to just lying down and dying inside and being like the Eternal Master of the New World, right…. Although, beneath the makeshift armor, the heavy blows were certainly felt!

…. But yeah: “white folks is a miracle of affliction”. Meanie attacks duckie and hurts him, and then stops him from saying straightaway how he feels about it, and then takes what he does say and decides it means that duckie likes it when meanie chops him up and eats him, you know.

…. God, just to listen to white people talk, right. “All through the centuries and centuries of slavery and terrorism, and all the things the primitive blackepithets I love so much have suffered in this country…. I look over the whole course of human history with the eye of an angel and the heart of God’s own saint, and I think to myself…. At least there was whitey.”

…. And yeah, whitey and his Bible stories were both new and inevitable/absolutely imposed and necessary, even for the resistor, for the Black guy in the 19th century or whatever, but…. I mean, in the 2020s, it’s hard not to see it as:

(Uncle Tom guy) (throws arms wide expressively) I lub’ Big Bruddah!
(and then the secret policeman shoots him in the back of the head with his pistol, killing him instantly)

Right?