Vernon Reid famously said that your favorite song was a commodity before you ever heard it on the radio. This concept came to mind in a combination of reading things today first over at Blacksmythe and secondly over at Tooley's joint. How many in our generation are listeners?
Spence investigates the utility of listening to Booker T vs WEB arguments as we shake our heads in dismay over economic development and the proper discussion that is evidently not happening anywhere but in history texts for all we talk about those two. He comes to the same conclusion as I do. It's not only useless but dangerous.
Avery notes how much 'darker' we've gotten as he looks at the pages of Jet magazine in the 70s as they represented ideals of black beauty during that era. I note that, wow, we've come a long way. I did so in investigating a few pages of the Rodney Allen Rippy issue of 1975.
The most fun part of Jet is the bathing beauties and the music charts. It's the only part I read back in the day, making sure that I was hip. It's rather amazing that we couldn't know then that Carl Douglas would still be remembered and the Three Degrees would not. Everybody sings about Kung Fu Fighting, already I forget the song by the Three Degrees that I used to know and be inspired by, and I just read this stuff 20 minutes ago.
There are lots of ways to castigate consumer culture. But on the subject of Booker T. Washington and economic development there's no way to get around the bit about buckets and bootstraps. So when the conversation turns to the miracle of Obama's election and what it might mean to black Americans today, it's difficult for me to avoid the obvious comparisons. I don't know and won't guess what Washington might have said if he were not spinning in his grave or some other similar game played by us gadflies. But I do know what blacks who tend to be entrepreneurial and conservative have said about Obama today and last month and last year. They are more appropriate critics, and many of them said what I said. Obama gonna what? Yeah Right.
So it occured to me to throw Vernon Reid into the mix because Obama is the Funky President. And just like with teenagers looking at the back of Jet magazine, I percieve that many Americans are looking at the man at the top of the charts and singing the lyrics to his song. They are listeners. They are recieving the commodified products of a political machine, an industry that knew what to say before any speech was said.
I don't know how sad to feel for the guy who buys a Barry White album or the Isley Brothers single in hopes that playing it at the right time will make the right girl have the right feeling for him. I don't know how sad to feel for the girl who listens to Lionel Ritchie and dreams of having the right guy say those exact same words, once, twice, three times. But I'm sure there are some awfully clever songwriters and musicians who are glad they do. Because they get paid and they get power putting together those notes and lyrics. Until there are music stores and radio stations full of romantic product. Not romance; it's not the real thing, it's just the commodified product.
I do feel sad for the guy who buys a political promise hoping that invoking it at the right time will make the right somebody do the right something for him. Maybe the right congressman will put together the right jobs program. The right think tank will come out in support of his 'silver rights'. I'm sure there are some awfully clever speechwriters and pollsters who are glad they do. They get paid and they get power putting together those phrases about hope and change and reform and diplomacy and other such commodified democratic shiny things. Not progress; it's not the real thing. It's just commodified progressivism.
You know a good song when you read about it on the Jet top 20. You can sing it and you can't wait to hear the next time the DJ gives you the new song from your favorite band. You listen attentively for inspiration.
Perhaps we have a generation of attentive listeners. But how many can play instruments for themselves? OK let's not be too demanding. How many of us have a piano in our home upon which a talented friend might play for the party? That used to be the way it was up in Harlem back in the days of a rent party. We actually knew the piano player and we actually sung the song right there and it wasn't a commodity. It wasn't part of The System we all love to hate. But we threw our own parties - we didn't go to the club and stand in line and wait to be searched for weapons, or picked up by some dude with a big fancy car.
Yeah everybody's waiting for 2010 and 2012 when we all get a chance to undo some of our 'doing' the last time we cast a ballot at the clever commodities exchange we call democracy. Meanwhile we talk about what some old artists might have done or said before we were born. What would Booker say about...? I'm not listening.
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