The lure of black music

 

I know quite a few Sri Lankan-Australians, and it occurred to me that every time I ask them what sort of music they are into, they seem to answer “R&B” or some variant thereof. Perhaps that merely says that I need to meet a wider variety of Sri Lankan…But I think it’s fair to say that some communities seem disposed to certain types of music.

Of course, a person often gravitates to something primarily because the people around them are into it. And asking someone “Why do you like that kind of music?” usually doesn’t result in answers more elaborate than, “It sounds cool” or “It’s got a good beat”. But dig deeper and what draws a certain person to a certain genre of music often reflects something about their culture and the way they see the world.

If you are a wannabe anthropologist like me you can start to speculate about these sorts of things. Why, for instance, do Pacific Islanders have such a love of reggae and soul music? I’d guess that a large factor is that those genres are deeply rooted in the church’s traditions of harmony singing, which is a huge part of Islander culture. In addition, there is clearly something in the meaning and feel of music from black America that resonates with the culture and experiences of the people of the Pacific. Likewise, it’s not hard to see why so many young Sudanese-Australians are so strongly drawn to hip-hop, which shows black people taking pride in themselves (while not always in a positive way, of course). Some things are a bit harder to work out… for instance, what is it with the whole of East Asia and cheesy ballads? That one is still a mystery.

In Australia, contemporary forms of African-American pop, such as R&B and hip-hop, have enjoyed a somewhat wide appeal, but have often been a largely “ethnic” phenomenon, especially in contrast with rock. Back in the day, I was a regular club-goer at venues specializing in this kind of music, and the faces in the crowd were predominantly brown: Filipinos, Pacific Islanders, Mauritians, Africans and South Asians. This is also reflected in the music scene, with the same ethnicities represented from grassroots level to the corporate mainstream – think Kate Ceberano or singer-songwriter Israel (Filipino), Jade McRae (Maori), vocal group CDB (Indian/Sri Lankan), Kylie Auldist (Samoan) from The Bamboos. Few TV shows have introduced mainstream audiences to a plethora of brown faces the way that Australian Idol did, and most of those faces were soul/R&B singers. The Malaysian-Indian winner of season 1, Guy Sebastian, is the most obvious example but there were plenty of others.

It’s not hard to tell why an Australian of African descent might be drawn to R&B or other black American styles. Likewise for Pacific Islanders as I mentioned earlier. But why Indians and Sri Lankans? South Asians IN South Asia don’t seem to demonstrate any disproportionate level of affinity or affection for black music or black people. A Tamil friend of mine, Jeremy, tells me that Sri Lankan youth back in the motherland seem to be far more into hard rock than anything else, while young Indian-Indians obsess mostly over the “Filmi” pop music emanating from the Subcontinent’s massive film industries. Yet raise them in Australia and the younger generation somehow grow into massive R&B fans.

So why is that? Part of it, Jeremy tells me, is that dancing is a big part of a Sri Lankan’s social life and thus it is unsurprising that they would go for something rhythmic. But more crucial it would seem is a sort of “brown connection”. R&B, soul and hip-hop are primarily African-American styles, and have long been partly defined by their separateness from “white people music”. Could it be that non-white people in a predominantly white country find some connection to the music of another country’s non-white minority?

Given my own journey in musical taste, I think so. I was mostly into hard rock well into my late teens until the discoveries of Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley and Living Colour seemed to flick a switch in my head. Suddenly hair metal and grunge just didn’t cut it for me anymore. A growing appreciation for funky grooves led me to the conscious hip-hop of De La Soul and Public Enemy; and then at university I fell in with a bunch of Indians, Sri Lankans and Mauritians who somehow indoctrinated me into liking Jodeci and R Kelly. And within the space of a few years, black music had become my thing.

It helps as well that these are genres in which the physical beauty of non-white people is celebrated. The images of rock music seemed to reflect the white kids who were around me in high school, but I never really saw myself in them. The images of hip-hop, reggae and soul spoke to another side of me. Black music, and the people who create it, are largely defined by their “Otherness; so they are a logical match for someone who for much of their life feels like “The Other”.

But mostly it’s just because it’s cool and it’s got a good beat.

Author: Eurasian Sensation

They also call me Chris. I'm a community worker and educator, and I'm interested in things.To observe me in my natural environment... try eurasian-sensation.blogspot.com.

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