Race and Music

Just found this on the Moodmat blog:

Moodmat One Question Interview: Theo Parrish

Amazing and on point about Detroit, the US, and music. The comments at the end of the interview by other readers are disappointing. You know, it is possible to be white and not get offended when a person of color points out that racism is alive and well throughout the United States in all its guises.

Winter Research

I came here in winter last February and now we're back here again…it's cold and snowy and I love it. The kids went sledding today with Pops while I sat at work and stuffed envelopes. Well, it's a good thing they have such an amazing father who will stay home full time! Blessed boys! Anyway, research has been picking up again. I just got home from a great interview with John Johr. We were at a restaurant in Ferndale called The Emory. I got to drink some nice beer and have an interesting interview with a young Detroit DJ. It was super loud in there though, I hope the recording turned out well. I should probably listen to it tonight to find out...he was speaking pretty loud into the mic, so that should help! So we had a great conversation, he was really friendly and interested in what I was doing here.

Oh yeah, that Scan 7 photo below – totally not mine. Copied and pasted. All the other photos on this blog are taken by me or by my husband. But I wanted to include that photo of Scan 7 so readers unfamiliar with them could get a visual sense of what I was talking about when I was describing that DJ Surgeon/Scan 7 party. Is that cool in blog world? I don't know, still sorta new at this.

And, a few days ago I googled record stores in Detroit trying to plan out a record store outing – not that I have any money to spend on anything, but I thought it would be cool to check out places that Detroit electronic musicians buy their music. Anyway, I stumbled on an article from the Metro Times, a local free paper, by Carleton S. Gholz, about record stores in Detroit from 2003. Then I found lots of other articles he had written from 2000 to 2008 on Detroit electronic music and remembered that he contacted me a few months ago through this blog. So now I have my very own Carleton S. Gholz archive!! Yes, I printed them all out – double sided though!

The sonic sources in electronic music are evasive.

I went down to see DJ Surgeon and one of the Scan 7 DJs play at TV Bar a few weeks ago. Its part of the Thursday series at TV Bar. They often have local DJs play on this night. I didn’t know anything about Surgeon, but I knew that I was excited to hear Scan 7 play – I didn’t know how many members would be there of Scan 7 (there are 7 of them), but I knew it would be good. It was an interesting night. It’s called TV Bar, so there were wide, flat screen TVs mounted all over the place. It’s a relatively large place, there are two main rooms. In the first room is the bar and lots of chairs and tables and couches – there were TVs all over playing sports. Some were hanging from the ceiling away from the wall, some were against the wall at the bar. In the second room, there was another, smaller bar that was not in use. There were TVs hanging from the ceiling above the bar there and there were TVs on the wall opposite the bar. There was also a TV on the wall behind the DJ equipment setup in the DJ booth. Some of the TVs in that room were turned off – there must have been at least 6 TVs in that room. But the TV behind DJ Surgeon was on while he was playing. It was tuned to Cartoon Network – so there were some goofy nerdo late night cartoons playing while Surgeon played – it was really weird and distracting. I found myself sitting down in a really tall bar chair listening to the very loud and excellent music (Surgeon was fantastic) and watching cartoons. I tried really hard to ignore the cartoons, but when I am in a club, I usually turn my eyes toward the DJ most of the time. I just find that the most interesting to watch. So my eyes automatically went to the DJ booth, and the TV was just so bright and alluring, it was difficult to avoid staring at. The volume was turned down completely and the closed captioning was on – so I could even read the shows. It was just weird. Thankfully, Surgeon turned off the TV when the Scan 7 DJ came on – then it felt more official, like all eyes and ears were finally focused on the music. It was a relief for me.

DJ Surgeon was really fun to watch. He was more like a turntablist than most other DJs I see play in Detroit. Kind of like what Terrence Parker does, but still very different. They both have their own distinct style and flow. Also, Terrence plays more house and “inspirational” music; Surgeon plays more techno and electro music. So that alone makes their sets sound different from one another. I was reading online about DJ Seoul today, and he seems like a turntablist as well. But I don’t see this term associated with any of these DJs in print at all. I’m using it because in my interview with TP this weekend, he described himself using the word turntablist. Surgeon seemed like a sonic surgeon – cutting and dissecting beats and other pieces of music to create a whole new musical performance. Terrence Parker was talking about this this weekend during our interview (yes, it was a great interview!) – he was describing his own DJ style, and turntablism in general, and he even brought up mashups as another example. He said these DJs take two pieces of music from two different contexts and manipulating them to create a whole new piece of music in its own context. It was very exciting to hear TP describe music and DJing using those ideas and terms – just along the lines of what I was hoping to discover here. Back to Surgeon – he was really precise, seemed like he was cutting records on the spot and melding new sounds together. It was strangely dark up in the DJ booth, but it was mainly because of all the insanely bright TVs around. That made everything else look really dark. Surgeon had a head lamp with a red light on – that was interesting. The crowd was mainly white and young, although there were a few African American people there. I was surprised by this – since both DJs were African American, and pretty important to Detroit’s electronic music, there might be a larger proportion of Black people in the crowd. But I have found that with events where the DJs play more techno music and less house music, the crowds are usually predominantly white. Still not sure why, trying to figure it out in my interviews.

I don’t know the Scan 7 DJs very well, or if they even call them selves DJs because they play live PA with drum machines, samplers and other electronic equipment. But the man from Scan 7 who was playing that night was basically hanging out with Surgeon in the DJ booth the whole night. When it was his turn to get on, he had a mask on covering everything but his eyes. He wore a Scan 7 baseball cap, and a long sleeve shirt and jeans. I think he had a UR shirt on. One of them turned off the TV and the Scan 7 guy got set up. Surgeon introduced him using his records – he put on a Kraftwerk track, maybe it was “Numbers” and made the “7” on the track play over and over. I can’t remember how he did it since I am writing this so long after, shame shame. There are three possibilities: Surgeon had two records playing the same song and he was going back and forth between both while Scan 7 played some sort of droning, ethereal sound on his equipment. Second possibility, Surgeon had a track that played the “7” segment on the Kraftwerk track over and over with an echo and some kind of droning music in the background. And third possibility, Scan 7 had that segment on his sampler and was manipulating it with other sounds to introduce himself. I don’t know, it’s often difficult to figure out where particular sounds are coming from. The sonic sources in electronic music are evasive. His set was magnificent. I had never heard Scan 7 before and he was really cool. I didn’t know what to expect. The music was super intense and so much fun to listen to and dance to. I was thinking there about something a DJ who used to wear a mask during his sets told me – that the mask that he used to wear was not about militancy or trying to scare people, he wanted to keep himself invisible and let the music stand out there alone for people to take and appreciate. I don’t know if that is the same philosophy for Scan 7, but that’s definitely the vibe I got. He was kind of in a corner, in the dark, with that mask and hat on, and really focused on what he was doing. He wasn’t oblivious to the crowd, I could tell he was aware of what was going on around him and how we all were responding to the music. But he was successful and being almost invisible behind the music. Surgeon would play with him periodically, adding some beat juggling or other turntablist techniques to the set.

I did not recognize anyone in the crowd. There were two drunk girls there, one was completely wasted and dressed up – she kept going up to guys and staring them down. Some guys were into her and would dance with her. There was this one guy who was clearly into the music during the Scan 7 set. He was kind of an indie hipster guy with some scruff and goofy glasses and skinny jeans. She kept going up to him and getting in his face – it was so silly, he was clearly uncomfortable and annoyed. A few other annoying things happened too while I was there. Sometimes I get really tired of going out by myself, but there’s just a few people that I know well enough here and who enjoy the kinds of shows I am going to. James often stays home with the boys because we can’t always afford a babysitter, but he also gets tired and really doesn’t want to stay out all night and then have to parent the next day. WhoDat and I sometimes go out together and we always have fun, but she doesn’t always want to go to the places I’m going to. My friend Ellen lives about an hours drive outside of Detroit, so that's not always easy for her either.

Anyway, it was a fun night. At the end, Surgeon called out that he had CDs. I went up there and he was really friendly. He had 2 mix CDs that he made and then a double disc of his own music that he produced. I bought that one for $10. I didn’t know what it would sound like, I just was in the mood to support and I had some money. It turns out the CD is excellent – I love listening to it. Well that was the end of my night. It was a good one.

Photos

I was looking through my photos of Detroit and realized I have lots of cool images that have not made it to my blog yet…shame. These are from the Belle Isle House Music Picnic back in August.


My very cool husband.

WhoDaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat

Rick Wilhite

That's right, he almost cleared the tent, and it was awesome.

White Midwestern Hip Hop…Get Down On It

I went out to see Atmosphere on October 27^th with James at the Royal Oak Music Theater. It was not a research related event, I just wanted to surprise my husband with a fun hip hop show. We have both been fans of Atmosphere for years, and other artists on the Rhymesayers label. They are a hip hop duo, Slug is the MC and Ant is the DJ. They are from Minneapolis, MN and are white men in their mid 30s. They have been making music for about ten years and tour nationally frequently. I don't know if they tour outside of the US. The Royal Oak Music Theater is in Royal Oak, one of Detroit's many middle to upper class suburbs. We have seen Atmosphere in Bloomington, IN, in Chicago, IL, and now here, and the crowd is consistently made up of young white people, mainly men, with a few people of color scattered around. That's how the show was in Royal Oak. Tickets were $20, so it was not cheap, but it was not as high as a lot of other mainstream performers are trying to charge lately. While there is some ethnic and racial diversity in Detroit's suburbs, Royal Oak, and surrounding suburbs are primarily white in population and that was evident in the crowd.

Atmosphere had three other band members with them, an African American man on keyboards, a white man on electric guitar, and an African American woman vocalist. The music was excellent. The three new members played parts of songs on their instruments that had previously been played using vinyl in past performances. The music was excellent and the crowd was live. It was such a fun show. One thing that really struck me is how moved Slug was by the crowd. He really seemed genuinely surprised by the excitement and energy that was coming from the fans: people screaming and yelling, hands in the air, fans singing lyrics, it was really intense. A number of times Slug spoke to the audience commenting on how great Detroit was, how great the people from Detroit were, how much he loved Detroit. He did not say Royal Oak, he said Detroit. Now Detroit is a weird place in this regard –people from Metropolitan Detroit (meaning surrounding suburbs + Detroit) claim they are from Detroit when talking to someone from outside this region, regardless of whether or not they actually venture south of 8 Mile Road and east of Southfield Hwy (the major roads that form Detroit's city limits).

After writing this last paragraph, I took a break and James told me about a song on an Eminem hip hop album that is about this issue. There is apparently a song on it in which he raps about people being from this area and never driving past 10 Mile Road, which is still a good two miles from Detroit's city limits. I have yet to carefully listen to the song to hear what he says, but I thought it was really interesting. For those who might not know, Eminem is a rapper from Detroit, did a movie called 8 Mile about hip hop in Detroit – which is a pretty intense scene from what I hear from some of the DJs I have spoken with here.

So, back to Atmosphere, Slug, who is not from here and probably doesn't know about the economic, racial, and ethnic dynamics of the Detroit Metro area, was clearly impressed with Detroiters. I have no way of knowing how many people in the crowd were actually from the city of Detroit. However, the majority of people in the crowd were white, like 99% of the people. Detroit's African American population as of the 2000 US census was 81%. The crowd seemed to represent suburban Detroit and neighboring Ann Arbor. I mention Ann Arbor because at one point during the show, Slug mentioned The Blind Pig club in Ann Arbor, and lots of kids yelled. These issues are extremely important to the multitude of experiences of living in and around Detroit. There have been many times I have heard about people refusing to go into Detroit because of the supposed dangers of it. They even avoid going to places like the Detroit Historical Museum which housed the exhibit "Techno: Detroit's Gift to the World" a few years ago. A panelist on a conference that I organized at Indiana University, October 2006, called "Roots of Techno: Black DJs and the Detroit Scene," mentioned this issue. She was a co-curator of the exhibit at the Detroit Historical Museum and explained the tendency of suburban residents choosing to not attend such exhibits, or to not frequent Detroit museums and other public institutions because they do not want to go into the city. Fear keeps people out. Interestingly, a DJ explained to me in an informal conversation that he doesn't like to go past 8 Mile Road in the other direction because it pisses him off – the wealth, the waste, the fear, etc., meaning he prefers to stay within Detroit's city limits. I love hearing comments and stories like that because it gives power and agency to people in Detroit, and to the city itself. Public recognition of the greatness of the city of Detroit is a really important thing. Another DJ has told me that when he plays in certain suburbs, kids have told him that they don't even go past 15 Mile Road because it's all the "ghetto" down there. Now there is an obscene amount of wealth throughout Oakland County, certainly between 15 Mile and 8 Mile. Oakland County is the county I live in. Detroit is in Wayne County. Oakland Co. contains many of Detroit's suburbs. There was an Oakland Co. government official, don't know who, speaking on MSNBC over the weekend about the bailout of the auto companies in Detroit. One thing he said is that Oakland County is one of the wealthiest counties in the country. After hearing that, everything that I see around me started to make sense. I live in Oakland Co. very close to Detroit. Anywhere I go in Oakland County, the types of cars I see on the road are surprisingly high end, expensive cars. The neighborhoods that we go through when driving around Oakland Co. are often wealthier neighborhoods with large houses, multiple expensive cars in the driveway, and large yards. It makes sense that Oakland County is one of the wealthiest in the country.

Now for Detroit, there certainly is a lot of poverty, suffering, and neglect in Detroit. And as a result, there is a lot of crime in Detroit. But that does not mean that the city as a whole, the population of the city, the art and culture of the city, education in the city, all of this deserves to be abandoned by the outside population. Detroit is a thriving, fascinating, beautiful city. And I write that and say that as a political act of advocacy for this city. But more importantly, I really believe it. People who live in Detroit often are filled with pride for their city. The public institutions like the library, art, history, and science museums. Theaters and concert halls, sports arenas, public art, there is so much in Detroit to be excited about and be impressed by. It's not an empty, dead city. You can't drive for miles and not see anyone, unless you are only looking for wealthy white people, then you might be missing all the people who don't fit that description on the sidewalks of the city. You might imagine Detroit as a desolate, ugly, nasty wasteland. I don't. So to hear Slug of Atmosphere make such wonderful exclamations about Detroit and Detroiters is strange and confusing and conflicting and exciting all at the same time.

Miscellaneous stuff that happened over the past month.

I’m finally back, and it’s snowing!! But it’s melting…I really love winter. While everyone around me is complaining about the weather, I just keep looking outside loving all the white fluffy flakes and day dreaming of sledding with my kids.

I’ve been taking a break from writing fieldnotes because I spent the past month preparing applications to the Mellon Foundation and to AAUW for dissertation writing grants. Those went out last week and now I can get back to interviewing and fieldnote writing. I did go out to a few events over the past month that I did not get a chance to write about.

Halloween night, Friday, October 31, I went to WhoDat and Marcellus Pittman’s Halloween party at Planet XL. Some friends were there, it was really nice to hang out. The club is still getting set up. I haven’t been there in a while, I should go to Rick Wilhite’s Thursday “Speakeasy” party there again soon. I think they’re actually doing it this week on Thanksgiving night! Anyway, when I got to the club, Marcellus was playing and seemed really into it. He was hunched over the tables playing records and making adjustments on the mixer. It was a really empty club, it’s Detroit – so that’s not much of a surprise for most events. I wondered how difficult it is to play to an empty club – from what people have told me, you just play for whoever is there, but you also just play for yourself. I expected Marcellus to play some really dark, deep intense music, but he played a lot of funky things, lots of vocals which I also didn’t expect from him. It all sounded great! He played a White Stripes song which sounded so good in the midst of all the other music he was playing. Some folks came from another party at the Russell Industrial Center – it’s an artists’ collective/community with gallery spaces, artist studios, and other spaces. That’s where the People’s Art Festival was that James sold photos in. Anyway, I think on the fifth floor is a space for parties, a friend who went said it was more like a rave and way too loud for them. Mike Clark and some others were playing there – it was a pretty big lineup. Here is the email from someone who posted this to the 313 listserv:

The Russell Industrial Center hosts 2 parties for Halloween night...

Hallowpalooza. $10 entry

Mike Clark, Swayne Jensen, Benjamin Hayes, DJ Body Mechanic, John
Johr, Jay Langa, Franky Banks, E Spleece, Major Taylor, Todd Westin
aka Jit Wiggins, DJ Dez, Nick Speed, Danny Brown, Fat Ray, United
Souls, Giant Slyde, Blackmale he Band, Enemy Squad, The Process, Benny
Stoofy, Emily Rogers & Friends.

Fashion hosted by Ziam.

Funk Night $5 entry

Frank Raines, Scott Craig, Will Sessions

Some of the musicians listed, I don’t know. But there are some hip hop artists in there as well as some electronic DJs. Ziam, the fashion hoster, is apparently a well known figure in the Detroit club scene. He is a performance artist who always is expected to have on some wildly creative clothing.

http://metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=5179

That’s a Metro Times article about Ziam. There’s not much current up about him – I mean over the past year. But he definitely seems like an interesting person, and an interesting part of Detroit. Anyway, I guess the party at the Russell was like a rave from what I heard. So we all hung out at Planet XL, and Marcellus played some really nice music. At one point he cued up a record at the very beginning and got ready to drop it right when the other track ended – it was so precise and sounded excellent, just really dramatic. I wish I could remember what the tracks were like, I didn’t know what they were, but now it has been so long that I don’t really know how to describe them. Oh, I forgot to add, Kyle Hall came in briefly and brought a record to Marcellus while he was playing. Marcellus put it on almost immediately and announced it. It was quite nice. Also, he was hilarious on the mic during his set. The set was broadcast on netmusique.com, same as WhoDat’s weekly radio show. He was doing a devilish laugh into the mic for Halloween. He mentioned a few birthdays, and then said it was the Devil’s birthday – it was pretty funny.

A few weeks later, I had a DJ lesson with WhoDat. She asked me to bring my own records. So I mainly spent the lesson by myself at her turntables while she cleaned up around downstairs and we talked about the records. It was a lot of fun. I have a few records that I bought on my own over the years, mainly from a trip that James and I took to Detroit when we lived in Bloomington and were trying to figure out where to live in Detroit. It was in winter 2006 a bit over a year before we moved here just so we could explore the area and figure out where to live and what the city looked like. We went to Record Time in Ferndale, when it was still open, and listened to records. They had a pretty extensive electronic music section, and a big part of that section was dedicated to Detroit music. Well, I was sitting over in that section the whole time and James and I each got our stacks of records and went over to the listening station to play our records and listen to them on headphones. Vince Patricola worked there at the time, he moved away from Detroit last spring, shortly after I started my research here. We never got to do an interview, but we met a few times and he was certainly an important part of Detroit’s music culture. He was the editor of Detroit Electronic Quarterly, a local magazine with great interviews of local musicians. He put out a number of issues. Anyway, I didn’t know who he was at the time, but he came over to me while I was listening and asked me if I was a DJ. I said no; I didn’t know it then, but he probably knew everyone who came through there and listened to records. We talked a bit and he looked at the records I was listening to and then went to get me a few more. I still remember the DJ Bone record he brought me – it was great, I bought it and got to listen to it at WhoDat’s. So I listened to most of my records at her house that night – oh, I don’t have turntables right now so that’s why I haven’t heard many of my records since going to Record Time. It was fun to spend time listening to what was on my records with a new level of attention than I was used to. I was listening for what WhoDat talked about at the beginning of the lesson – she described what a DJ might listen for when she goes through records trying to learn what is on them – you might like the whole thing, you might just like one song on the record, you might just want to use one section of one song – the intro or the break or something. She also talked about how DJs try to figure out what will sound good with other tracks, trying to figure out how to use your records in a set. I also had some records that a few other Detroit DJs gave to me – quite a nice stack of things, most of which were all excellent. There was one track, however, that when I was listening to it, I said aloud that some tracks just don’t need vocals – the vocals made the song sound really goofy. I really liked the music except for the vocals and I kept hoping that the vocals would stop so that I could enjoy the rest of the sounds, but the voice just kept going all through the track – it was pretty cheesy, deep male voice, I’d have to look at the record to see the song title, then I could remember what he was saying. It was just so frustrating. Anyway, WhoDat thought that was pretty funny and said that she wanted to use my voice saying that on one of her tracks. It was a great night. Next lesson, tonight!!, she said to bring my records again and we’ll try to mix them. I will choose the first one, then she will choose one and I’ll have to blend it, then I will choose the next one and blend it, and just keep going like that. I’m excited!!

And after doing all that writing and editing and re-writing for grant proposals, I have yet another proposal to write. I am planning to go to IASPM (International Association for the Study of Popular Music) in San Diego in May, the weekend after DEMF! Some ethnomusicology friends and I are going to submit a proposal for a roundtable discussion. My first submission to a major conference!!

And finally, I was just looking on www.detroitluv.com last night and after some pretty quiet weeks in Detroit, there are three fantastic parties in one weekend. Of course, just when we can’t really afford a babysitter and I’m going to be exhausted already anyway, there are three great parties to go to. Well, I’ll be writing!

That's right.