TT 470: Identity Politics Postmortem
the past and the future, with comments about Florence Price and Billy Joel
The reelection of Trump has generated thousands of think pieces. Did “woke” help our side lose?
Freddie deBoer has a killer post today about identity politics.
I think the story that’s most immediately relevant and profound is how the default person in media went from being, in 2012, a vaguely apolitical center-left liberal Democrat to, by 2016, a relentlessly hectoring social justice advocate. The change happened in my world and before my eyes and I still feel a certain kind of whiplash about it. The story deserves to be told…
I don’t follow all these issues carefully, but I trust deBoer on this topic.
On the musical front, let me take this time of liberal bloodletting to mention Florence Price. In the woke era, the classical establishment decided that elevating this long dead black woman composer would expiate their sins.
Price’s ragtime-ish piece “Nimble Feet” has had new reach; I just counted 40 performances uploaded to YouTube in the last few years. The piece is attractive although a bit bland. However, that’s not my problem, for a basic argument for diversity is easy to understand. What I find so frustrating is that none of the performers I listened to treated “Nimble Feet” like common practice black music, meaning a situation where the pulse is ruthlessly even and the syncopations work in African opposition to the ground rhythm. Rather, the performances are full of a romantic European attitude.
Going one step further: Florence Price took the gatekeepers off the hook. The gatekeepers could fund the performance of an old Price symphony (or a new Concerto in Memoriam George Floyd or whatever), get the social justice kudos at the gala, then go home and watch their stock index go up. Meanwhile, nothing about common practice black music was learned within classical institutions.
Our symphonic musicians should just finally learn to play the blues and a beat! It’s not that hard! If you can learn to play Mahler, you can learn to play the basic blues and a basic beat. Once again, this was the point of my New York Times essay about Rhapsody in Blue, “The Worst Masterpiece.”
People accused my essay of being woke, but that’s not true. Woke seemed to be partly a sudden division into “those who know” and “those that don’t know,” and the associated proliferation of elite language never felt right to me. There’s nothing sudden about Rhapsody in Blue. I’ll go to my grave yelling that American classical musicians should have started the process of learning about black music the day after the premiere of Gershwin’s masterpiece in February 1924.
Times are changing. The second Trump era grimly beckons. Florence Price has probably had her day in the 21st-Century sun, to be gently retired now alongside other shibboleths.
And that’s also a problem, because bad old habits will undoubtedly return unchecked.
Last month I heard Billy Joel’s “The Longest Time” on the radio and looked up the original video from 1983. It’s a great song! I love it. The video is also quite great….
….But it’s also a tribute to black doo-wop, and there is one black person in the hit video: The janitor.
I don’t like scolding something that has given so much pleasure to so many. (The video has 57 million views.) But I’d be a lot more comfortable if the janitor was white like everyone else. If there were a few obvious posters of Joel’s favorite innovative black doo-wop musicians of the ‘40s and ‘50s hanging in the hallways of the high school location, so much the better.
Joel undoubtedly would have not done the video quite like this in the recent woke era. What about in the future? Will the presence of a token black janitor return as an acceptable move in a few years, when yesterday’s social justice rhetoric is all but forgotten? Since Joel is a big talent, I hope he’d still feel that 2022-era pressure, but the ultra-rich usually just do what they can get away with.
As the old saw goes, “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.”
Related post: Philip Ewell’s musicological book from 2023 is peak woke, and I found plenty to criticize.
Trivia for the jazz heads: Billy Hart told me that when he talked to Tony Williams about their favorite doo-wop from the 1950s (when they were both kids), it turned out they both especially loved Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.
I'd be blunter. You feel now a bit more free. Imagine how still muzzled you would feel if Kamala had won. I was nonplussed the morning after. I felt relief. It wasn't what I'd expected to feel.
I would think this is all a distraction. In my opinion, its who whe are as americans. the new deal -> great society was an aberration to our true identity. I dont agree with that thinking but im convinced thats the american character.
As for the arguement that people resent being talked down to, well, Orson Welles is having a good laugh in his grave over new jerseyans currently calling the fbi about ufos.