The Invisibility of Black Independent Artists 0

by Fredara Mareva • Uncategorized • Tags: , , , , ,

So John Blake wrote a column on CNN.com about how the radio doesn’t play songs about Black love anymore.

While he was right in that you won’t hear torch songs on your local Hot/Magic/Jamz FM station, his justification for that lack and his assignment of blame were completely wrong.

Blake starts the article with a solid point with which many people would agree:

Listening to black music today is depressing. Songs on today’s urban radio playlists are drained of romance, tenderness and seduction. And it’s not just about the rise of hardcore hip-hop or rappers who denigrate women.

But then he takes a sharp turn towards flat out wrong:

Black people gave the world Motown, Barry White and “Let’s Get It On.” But we don’t make love songs anymore.

If you didn’t know better, you’d think that the above sentence was the logical conclusion of the first two: the radio doesn’t play songs about love and romance anymore because Black people don’t make them anymore. Damn. That *would* be depressing. IF IT WERE TRUE. The reality is that the Black independent music pool is teeming, damn near overflowing, with songs about love, romance, tenderness, and seduction. So the real issue is: why aren’t these songs included in the aforementioned urban radio playlists?

Rather than address the role of corporate radio deregulation and loss of Black radio ownership, Blake blames the artists themselves. To me, the implications of his logic are two-fold dangerous. First, they reinforce the mainstream perspective on Black music rather than advancing the conversation about Black music. His CNN column could have been a fantastic platform to enlighten audiences about all the great love music that Black folx are *still* creating. But no, the conclusion about the dearth of radio love songs must surely be that negros were on crack and aint got no daddies. Yuck. That leads to the second reason his justifications are dangerous, he is giving a pathological explanation for why Black folx can’t seem to deal with love. Academics and journalists LOVE to use the fucked up circumstances of being Black in America to explain why Negroes stopped doing something or can’t do something. This all too familiar tune goes a lil somethin like this:

“Why don’t black people graduate from high school? Cuz they smoke crack. Why can’t Black women get married? Cuz they aint got no daddies. Why are there so many Black men in prison? Cuz we stopped going to church”

I’m not suggesting that personal responsibility is not a part of the equation, because it is. But in this case, personal responsibility is exactly what compels artists like Bilal, The Foreign Exchange, Jill Scott, Avery Sunshine, Dwele, and countless others to make music DESPITE the fact that they will not get mainstream urban radio play or a Grammy nomination. If you’re writing columns for CNN you should at least be informed about what does exist.

So Sunday night I went on a rant about this article, but after thoroughly discussing it on and offline my perspective evolved. I still think the article isn’t great but there are two useful takeaways for independent soul artists The good news: the overwhelming response and amens the article received means that there is a market for your music. The bad news: whatever you think you’re doing to connect to said audience isn’t enough because people still don’t know you exist. I’m an  optimist, so I look at this as a challenge to figure out what to do differently and better.

That’s the continued difficult, but not insurmountable challenge. That’s what this space is about: exchanging ideas, best practices, and resources so that artists can build sustainable careers for themselves. The truth is that as a groundswell and infrastructure builds around these artists, results will come more quickly and easily. Hope you stick around and add your two cents.

P.S. Shout out to the folx over at Creative Loafing for shining light on the artists that are apparently invisible.