A friend sent me a youtube video
What am I supposed to say to this? Am I to lament the unfortunate
crossover appeal of black music and style creating a subsequent dredging
of substance and meaning, or should I mark this as a moment of sincere
cross cultural enthusiasm and an adoption of black space as a
celebratory vehicle, even despite its not adhering to any rules of the
form. IE, rhythm, flow, and general excellence? What are we to make of
the minstrel aspects? The performance of blackness as spectacle? The
complicity of an actual black person, still regulated to a position of
server and “homie”. What of the donning of Sunglasses, clocks, and gold
chains? In the realm that these adornments spring from, they are parts
of ritual costumes used to deny access to the individual while
paradoxically announcing that individual’s presence as a person of life,
vitality, and matter. Its seems that often it is the strip mining of the
objects, and these forms of expression that further separate the black
masses from their political and social inheritance, It is indeed a short
jump from a gold chain and clock that asks “What time is it!?, to that
great sixties anthem of collectivism answering “It’s Nation Time!”
However from the distance of winding tubes that make up the internet,
and TV media, its seems a chasm as wide as the Atlantic Ocean.
