Rockism
As a kid, I liked everything: rock, hip-hop, classical, jazz, pop, dance, country, whatever. In my teenage years, however, I succumbed to the pressures of a racist society and turned into a devout rockist. I dutifully renounced pop, disco, techno, even hip-hop, anything that was "inauthentic." I swallowed the rockist dogma that grants legitimacy to Delta blues and classic Motown but not contemporary R&B; to bluegrass but not commercial country; to acoustic jazz but not fusion. I felt earnestly moved by the rockist national anthem:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJNgEZyEeh8]
It took me until my twenties to shake this atavistic silliness and re-embrace the whole universe of Afrocentric music not made by white guys with guitars. Wherever I go, however, I continue to encounter resistance to such musical practices as sampling, synths, rapping, dancing and fun. This resistance is epidemic among my friends, fellow musicians and students, and the music world at large. Consider this post my contribution to the fight against rockism. So what exactly am I talking about here? Urban Dictionary defines it best:
Rockism is essentially a prejudiced attitude to any form of popular music that doesn't conform to the values of rock music (in the most narrow and conventional sense of the term.) The most obvious example of this is the tendency of middle-aged fans of 'classic rock' to describe any music that involves the overt use of electronic instruments as not 'real music'. Do you really think Jethro Tull are better than Kraftwerk, or is it just rockism? Extremely narrow-minded taste in music. Rock 'purists' who are so obsessed with raw blues-based rock music that they fail to appreciate anthing else. This is basically the reason why people complain about rock being 'dead' these days and believe that all current music made now is pure garbage (the only current bands rockists like are The White Stripes and The Strokes).
The rockist canon is well-represented by Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. However, these lists are problematic because they attempt to accommodate non-Baby-Boomers by including an awkward smattering of jazz, country, R&B, hip-hop and EDM. Endless Window, in an otherwise not very cogent post, does pose this eloquent challenge to Rolling Stone:
In this new frontier, why should we be doomed to a life of old print publication that, for purely generational reasons, still insist on the primacy of white heterosexual middle-class men with guitars, and that Exile on Main Street is mankind's finest work?
Rockism has become passé among the music critical establishment, but it's alive and well on the internet. Here, for example, are some of the greatest hits of rockism on Quora:
Do you think that music slowly started getting worse after the 70's?
Why is there such a decline in the quality of popular music?
It's easy to equate rockism with racism, sexism, homophobia, or a combination of all three. There's some ugly history to support such an equation, most infamously Disco Demolition Night. Not all rockists are even aware of the political content of their beliefs. I will observe, however, that rockists direct most of their ire at music made by and for African-Americans, women and girls, gay people, and the intersections of all of those groups. The kind of virulent hatred that leads to mass record burning is not a good color on anyone. My own rockism concealed some bad attitudes I unreflectively picked up from my peers and my elders. As I got older and did more self-scrutiny, I came to realize that I had been right as a child, that rock is no more valid or "authentic" than any other kind of music. During its heyday, rock was coextensive with anti-authoritarianism and free thinking. It's a cliche to say that the rebellious aspect of rock has been co-opted by corporate America. But in the past few years, something else seems to have happened to rock: it has become an avenue for outspoken conservatism. The burgeoning Christian rock scene is one indicator; the presence of Ted Nugent on the national stage is another. For me, what really brings home the connection between rock and a yearning for a more wholesome past is seeing Mike Huckabee play bass on his TV show. Here he is accompanying Lynyrd Skynyrd, whose Confederate bona fides were never much in doubt:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsAY9nJEcTg]
Wikipedia usefully contrasts rockism against poptimism, the idea that there no guilty pleasures. Poptimism says that if music makes you feel good, then it is good. This doesn't mean that you have to love everything on the radio. I mostly find the music on the radio boring or irritating. I find most classic rock, jazz, country and classical boring and irritating too. All the different styles and genres appear to contain roughly the same ratio of good to bad. The best musicians and producers I've met are the most ecumenical in their listening. They may not love everything equally, but they strive to find the emotional message in whatever they're listening to, and to understand how it's being communicated. Paul Geluso, my professor of audio production at NYU and my supervisor as a recording engineer, exemplifies poptimism (and every other kind of musical optimism.) In Paul's Advanced Audio Production class, people brought in a dazzling variety of music, the full spectrum of NYU hipster tastes, from death metal to Engelbert Humperdinck. I kept waiting for Paul to register distaste for something, but his reaction every time was some variation on "Cool man!" I know he has his tastes and preferences, and certainly has a discriminating ear for production, but somehow he's learned to suspend judgment when hearing what other people like. It's a quality I admire and am trying to develop in myself.