WHAT'D HE SAY?

Recently, I was listening to "Stomp & Swerve," a CD companion to the quite excellent book by one David Wondrich titled, appropriately, "Stomp & Swerve."

It's all about that weird, mystical, racist period in music- y'know, the one before anything had a name? Blues wasn't blues yet, jazz wasn't really jazz either (it was just coming to be called 'jass' which in and of itself sounds explicit. Actually, if you read the book, you'll find out it kind of is!) and country music wasn't called 'country' music- instead, it was called 'cracker music,' or 'hillbilly jass,' that is, when people didn't just call it 'music.'

See- there were a ton of white people around back then. Not that there aren't now- but in terms of ratio, there were just shit loads and bushel fulls of white folks all over the damn place. Hence, the popular music of the time before jazz and blues and country all bust out of the regions they were created in (thanks, almost entirely, to the advent of recorded music and distribution channels) was mostly marches. Oh, and waltzes!

What happened that made music as rich and interesting and as varied as we know it today- from the Halls and Oates and Loggins and Messinas to the Metallicas and the Cannibal Corpses and the Dead Kennedyses, to the Babyfaces and TLCs of the world- was black people. Black people had an interesting, rich musical heritage that white people had been ignoring for years (along with myriad other things) whilst mistreating them and forcing them to build their houses and raise their children. As I understand it, this was so the white folks could sit around in white suits on large southern porches and sip mint juleps. But I'm probably missing something.

To make a long story short, all that African musical heritage started to mix with regional musical styles, and all those crazy, fucked up marches and waltzes, and started to branch into weird, terrifying and (fortunately) short lived, racially ignorant proto-genres, like Cakewalks and Minstrel Shows.

From that odd bunch of stuff came jazz, blues, & country, and from them came rock n' roll, electro, adult contemporary, easy listening, hip hop, and black forest metal.

OK- so this is a rough version of the entire history of music.

Anyway- stuff like minstrelry is so ridiculously ignorant that it is mildly hilarious and quite sad that THAT was what people went out to see. Well- to me anyway. But if you can get past the white gloves and grease paint, the music was revolutionary at the time (and much of it- musically- is still a rousing listen), and in all that goofy hokum were the seeds of jazz and blues and country music as they came to be. So as you can imagine, it is a pretty fascinating time to read into, white folks dressing up like black folks and dancing around assholes or no.

Back to the CD.

It's a very interesting collection of 27 tracks repeatedly mentioned in the book as milestones in terms of what they signified for the future of music, and all the weird turns it was taking.

The problem is that in all that experimentation and change was a prevailing ignorance towards any culture besides white, and specifically, white and European. So... let's just say its not the kind of thing you'd wanna listen to every day. But when held against your run-of-the-mill gangsta rap CD, there are probably less racial epithets per song than what kids are running around listening to today. The difference is in the spirit. Old songs were laughing at. New songs laugh with. Anybody who's been to jr. high while still playing with action figures knows the difference. But I digress...

I could go on. It's an interesting and hot button issue, these old time farts and their shenanigans.

Taking all this into consideration- there is a warning label on the "Stomp & Swerve" CD. Being one to always take heed, and also one who gets a good laugh out of ludicrous warning labels, I read it. And it says:

"Warning: Contains Historical Racially Derogatory Language."

Really? A CD of proto-jazz from 1906? A CD with songs like "Carve Dat Possum" and "Watermelon Party?" A CD that has vastly more openly offensive titles than that?

Is there an old man out there (one who isn't already pretty outwardly racially obtuse, which...may be hard to find) who's gonna pick up this CD and be SURPRISED, let alone OFFENDED?

Hm. Maybe.

If only everything and everyone were so clearly marked, we could save ourselves a lot of trouble.

But then... maybe that keeps things interesting. If everything were clearly labeled, there'd be no risk involved in any interpersonal relationship. It'd be very Metropolis-esque and dull, perhaps.

But who am I to say?