So there was this Guardian opinion piece:
And *of course* the default position is:
*lol*
but it's stuck with me.
Why is our instant reaction so dismissive?
Firstly, it seems like a very silly thing to say. How can a white band be black? how can some white bands be more black than others? Isn't it 'typical guardian nonsense', Beryl? Aren't we massively over-generalising?
Well I keep my eye on the guardian and while I know it wanders into silly territory for some of its comment, by-and-large I appreciate their attempts to broadcast a range of opinions. I assumed that the writer was a white male - like most radiohead fans I know - but turned out to be a 'black girl'. Just that realisation made me think deeper about this.
Are Radiohead a white-white band? Most people's impressions of Radiohead would be... wingey. that's their reputation, from early hits like Creep and Fake Plastic Trees. But their fans, we know that there's more to them than miserable white male winge. Pablo Honey is a pretty white album, right enough; it's all white strummed acoustics and white distortion. The reputation has been hard to shake off, and broadcast-heyday singles from 'street spirit' to 'karma police' have cememented it; radiohead-as-miserable was a universal idea enough to be used as a suicidal punchline in the final episode of Father Ted.
Radiohead's reputation is better applied to bands like Coldplay; they're just about the whitest band I can imagine. Coldplay cash in on their white male priveleg privledge privele privilege hard; utterly unremarkable music with the assumed qualities of born leaders. If you think that's not right, consider their first glastonbury appearance, when their singer told the audience that the group belonged on the big stage. When I saw Ed Sheeran headlining glastonbury on the telly - ahead of such incredibly talented and radical performers like Kate Tempest and Janelle Monáe (and their bands) - I was annoyed from the angle of 'how low the standards are set for male genius compared to female' but of course the same argument can be made about ethnicity.
What I think is really pertinent about the Guardian article is that it defines Radiohead's key character as not a wingey band, but an experimental band - something that's been true since My Iron Lung ep went off in all sorts of directions and has only grown since then - and then reminded us that experimentation and innovation are key characteristics of 'black' music. Radiohead take the template of white rock and incororate jazz and electronics in a way many other bands never bother to.
Even Radiohead's breakthrough song Creep - surely the epitome of winge, the sound of the default male desperately looking for something to be miserable about - when taken as a tale of imposter syndrome, is an anthem for anyone who's part of an under-represented or discriminated group.
Queeruption band Houmousexual, in their song 'don't be slack all yr music's black', quote Tom Robinson: "i do apologise to white people, but let's face it, every really important musical innovation in this century has been black' and I think that's what makes this argument work for me. Of course, it would be racist to say 'all innovation is black'. I'm dubious about our ability to generalise at all really here. But ultimately, what is important is not my Default Male take on the article, with all of the self-assumed value of my opinion - it's the fact that the liberation comes from getting a diverse creators behind the scenes. I don't find it silly when a newspaper celebrates the 'blackness' of a white band, when it could be celebrating black musicians directly - if that's what a black columnist wants to write about, I can only celebrate along with them.
