CASH IN THE APPLE
By Cash Michaels
BLACK
MUSIC MONTH - If you want to know what’s popular in music now, just
drive around with your nine-year-old daughter one day, listening to the radio.
Lots
of pop hits featuring artists, quite frankly, who can’t sing.
But
they’re selling CDs.
One thing to take note of, however...the days of the great black singers are over.
Gone
are the Michael Jacksons, the Luther Vandrosses and the Whitney Houstons.
And
the once great singers that are still around are too old to make new records.
So
exactly where is today’s great black music coming from?
That’s
easy…THERE ISN’T ANY!
Let’s
be serious, who can you name from today’s generation of black singers who can
hold a candle to treasured artists like Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and
Marvin Gaye? Are there any James Browns or Smokey Robinsons out there? What
happened to the great girl groups? The LaBelles, Supremes and Three Degrees.
There’s
one thing our generation could count on during the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, and
that’s that we knew that each musical generation was creating more great
artists, just by example.
So
when an Alicia Keyes or India Ari give all praise and honor to the masters like
Stevie and Smokey, it’s because as children, they listened to the greats with
amazement, and were inspired to learn their crafts.
Today,
what is there to learn from? There is very little, if any artistry out there
for young people to emulate.
It’s
sad.
It
is also sad that the songs today are pure crap, undeniable garbage. There is no
great songwriting. There aren’t any great, meaningful lyrics anymore.
What
passes for black music today is trashy rap. There is no advancement of the
black music culture.
What’s
more, the formula for making good black songs seems to be exploited by folks
like Disney and Nickelodeon, who are making a fortune creating teeny bopper TV
shows with songs that easily could have passed for black pop 30 years ago.
And
what is really funny (but sad) is listening to some of the new music on pop
radio, and realizing that it really is old 80’s disco in terms of composition
and beat. The proof is when the station decides to go “old school,” playing a
song twenty or thirty years old.
You
really can’t tell the difference.
That’s
bad. That means that old music is definitely being recycled for today’s
audiences.
I
bring all of this up because this is supposed to be Black Music month. June is
supposed to be the time when we celebrate the rich history of black music, and take time to remember, if not discover, if not rediscover, the greats like
Louis Armstrong, Dinah Washington and Count Basie.
We
should be sharing REAL music with our children. We should breaking out the old
Motown tunes by the Temptations and Tammie Terrell.
We
should be insisting that our children memorize Aretha’s, “To be Young, Gifted
and Black” as an anthem of cultural and educational excellence.
And
we should remind ourselves that the reason why the world embraces black gospel,
funk, soul, pop, classic rap and of course jazz, is because they are all music
of love. Some of the greatest black songs were written and produced by
extraordinarily gifted white songwriters and producers like Carole King (who wrote
Aretha’s classic “Natural Woman”) and the songwriting team of Burt Bacharach
and Hal David (who penned many of Dionne Warwick’s greatest hits like “Do You
Know the Way to San Jose?” and “There is Always Something There to Remind Me?”)
Instead,
we’re allowing our music to die on the vine.
So
I don’t know what we’re going to do this Black Music month. We’re losing one of
our greatest resources, and doing little to save it.
Trust
me, when our children hear and see our vintage music, it is like opening a
whole new world to them.
I
know. I spent time on YouTube with my youngest daughter, watching old video
clips of Gladys Knight and the Pips, Diana Ross, Wilson Pickett and others. It
was pure delight watching her get into the classics.
That
is the timeless, boundless power of black music.
Let’s
do all we can to preserve it, shall we?
As long as the airwaves (TV & radio) are controlled by the majority, we will ALWAYS be a minority. That honor comes with exploitation of our fine product and the limited reach we have when radio and TV are in firmly in the control of others' hands. Black music is NOT dead. It's just not getting the mass exposure we enjoyed when we were free to express ourselves. Now that a black president is "in power," the powers that really be don't wish to give us more. That's why we don't have the powerful voices we used to have. One more thing: If OUR powers that be - the Cathy Hugheses the Suttons, the Stevie Wonders who still own a handful of stations - would act as REGIONAL A&R by exploiting WHATEVER we create musically rather than a puny black/urban Top 40 list, we'd rule! Blacks used to be prognosticators of where music was headed, now we're the beheaded! Gary D. Jackson
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