This week the Slate Culture Blog, Brow Beat, took NPR to task for its provincial music taste, which is leaning heavily on white, bearded indie rock bands. Jody Rosen wonders what happened to NPR’s supposed progressivism:
NPR’s audience skews white and college-educated; so does Animal Collective’s fan-base. In matters of musical taste, everyone has a God-given right to provincialism and conservatism, even those NPR listeners who consider themselves cosmopolitan and liberal. The numbers, of course, tell a different story. The NPR list leans not just white, but male—dudes with beards and guitars. So far in 2009, the No. 1 song on the Billboard charts has been by a black or female artist—or by groups featuring both blacks and whites or men and women—a total of 41 out of 42 weeks. (The exception is the current No. 1 hit, "Down," a collaboration between an Anglo-Asian R & B singer, Jay Sean, and an African-American rapper, Lil Wayne.) Who are the progressives again—the public radio crowd or the Top 40 great unwashed?
But Rosen is quick to point out that NPR isn’t devoid of black music. They just have a funny way of loving it. He sketches a theory of black music at NPR that rings true, and that perhaps reflects their listenership as well (a listenership that includes myself). It’s the DORF matrix:
Dead: artists who have shuffled off this mortal coil. There was a significant spike in this category this summer with the passing of Michael Jackson. In general, though, NPR prefers its dead black musicians decades dead. Bonus points are awarded to performers present at the 1963 March on Washington, and to Bobby Short.
Old: musicians of advanced years. Crusty soul-belters on the comeback trail, gray-bearded jazzers, Motown legends, defunct rap groups.
Retro: musicians, young or old, performing in styles two or more decades out of fashion. Sixties soul revivalists; old school rappers who "[stick] with the puns, jokes and silly one-upsmanship that once defined hip-hop …Thank goodness"; Lenny Kravitz.
Foreign: black folks who live in far-flung places. And/or the children of Bob Marley.
I thought about the DORF matrix on my way home from work Friday evening while listening to an NPR segment that featured Bun B, a legendary bad-ass from Port Arthur, Texas who’s never done anything remotely NPR-flavored. I wondered, “did they read that article and take the criticism to heart?” Maybe, maybe not. The piece from Bun B was his tribute to Goodie Mob’s 1995 record Soul Food. But Goodie Mob arguably fit pretty well into the OLD category, since they broke up in 2004.
A Goodie Mob reunion is planned involving Big Boi from Outkast, one of the few rap groups I actually know pretty well. If I’m not too busy listening to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Bon Iver, I may check it out.
N P R – I thought you were talking about N A P. We seem to be pretty dorfed out these days too.
Agreed. I toyed with making this a longer post. One which basically asked the question: “if the unwashed masses are elevating hiphop and R & B without help from NPR, why should NPR feel bad about not covering it?”
Especially when their coverage is as awkward as that Bun B piece was. Not all music lends itself to the antiseptic, monocle-wearing coverage of the kind you get on NPR. Nor is hip-hop likely to benefit all that much from NPR’s positive coverage.
Your usual protest is a bit different. Since all the other blogs are handling [insert Pitchfork indie-rocker / pop artist here], why does NAP need to cover it? I hear that. I’m trying to branch out more myself.
But said branching gets harder as one gets older. That’s one of the reasons NPR sounds like it does. And one of the reasons NAP reads like it does.
It seems to me like their coverage of music in a significant way is fairly recent (like past decade-ish or so), and perhaps parallels the surprising mainstream rise of indie rock. So I figure better indie than nothing (and certainly better than top 40 imnho). But I haven’t listened to NPR regularly, so perhaps I’m mistaken about that?
Write what you like, which unfortunately might end up being white boy indie bands. The last thing you want to do is try and force yourself to cover things you don’t really care about. Sadly, reading about indie band anything is about the most uninteresting thing I can imagine at the moment. But then as always nobody asked me. The NAP is kind of top-heavy with well educated music doofuses with indie-rock tastes. That’s just the way it goes. At least the writing is often enough better than the garden variety Pitchfork drivel.