Trends and Entertainment
Redux: Will the Recession Spark a Music Revolution?
Little known fact: Many of America’s quintessential cultural elements – the hamburger, the hotdog, Hollywood, baseball, horse-racing and rock-and-roll, to name a few – can be traced to Great Depression. We’ve been shocked into recalling that financial markets feature cycles of contraction and expansion. But culture does, too. Oddly, these cycles appear to be inverted. When the market contracts, culture seems to expand. Innovators emerge, values shift, and tastes change. People begin to play outside the box.
Take the case of rock-and-roll.
The opening scene of the 2008 musical-biopic Cadillac Records takes place in the early ’40s. A black, Mississippi sharecropper sings as his hoe slices the hard soil. A couple of suits arrive, identifying themselves as historians recording American folk music. The black man takes up his guitar, leaning into the mic. Muddy Waters, as the man came to be known, captured the country with his signature blues style. Along with other forms of American “roots music,” his sound became the foundation of rock-and-roll.
During the Great Depression, Roosevelt encouraged regional forms of American art, from painting to poetry. The Federal Music Project, part of the WPA, got folk musicians playing, rural and urban kids learning, and field collectors collecting music. It was musicologist Alan Lomax who recorded Muddy Waters in Mississippi during a project for the Library of Congress. “Roots music,” as it was then called, gained exposure across the country. Americans started turning from ’20s ragtime and big jazz bands to something more raw and accessible.
Sam Phillip, the founder of Sun Records, cotton-picked his way through the Great Depression, learning the blues and other music pioneered by African Americans. In 1952, Phillips founded his own record label, where Memphis blues greats like B.B. King recorded. Their albums were often released by Chess Records in Chicago, where Muddy Waters was signed. Phillips began to record artists who mixed blues with white, southern roots music like bluegrass, country and hillbilly boogie. That magic combination created a sound altogether new: Rock-and-roll. Elvis Presley cut his first commercial record at Sun.
Fast-forward to 2008. Just as the Roaring Twenties were ruled by jazz, jazz, jazz, American music has been dominated for two decades by rap, rap, rap. Many of us who were moved by the social messages and raw poetry of early rap have tuned out as yet another bling-obsessed rapper sings superficial lyrics over the same old bass line. Enough is enough. With the economy in freefall, the excesses of rap will seem staler than ever.
Already there’s a pick-up in the regional music scene and signs of a return to the troubadour tradition of poet-musicians. Philadelphia’s Mischief Brew stirs up elements of swing, old-time country, and punk. Nashville’s Old Crow Medicine Show is winning critical acclaim with their twangy, rootsy tunes, while the Seattle-based Fleet Foxes are reviving vocal harmonies with a folk-sound so compelling The Guardian calls it “a landmark in American music, an instant classic.” (Check out Fleet Foxes’ MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/fleetfoxes).
With a fresh new face in the White House, Americans may be more receptive to the idea that government can do good things. During the Great Depression, progressive programs helped kick-start a music revolution. This got the nascent record-industry grooving and created the best PR campaign America could ask for as rock-and-roll reached a global audience. There’s no reason why government can’t play a similar role today.
Where people are suffering, poetry springs to life. In the places hit hardest by the sub-prime disaster; in the shadow economies of immigrant communities; in urban centers where artists can’t find work. Poetry happens there because that’s how human beings have always coped with the hardest times. So why not launch a search to find it? The arts programs of the Great Depression brought artists like Willem de Kooning, Orson Welles, Zora Neale Hurston, and the great Muddy Waters to the attention of the public.
Couldn’t we use a little inspiration and entertainment? Right then, President Obama. You talked about some exciting things –- like an Artists Corps –in your campaign. How about a New New Deal for the arts? Let’s think of it as part of America’s rehabilitation program. A celebration of our talents, our diversity, and our history. That’s a cultural investment with out-of-this-world pay-offs.
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5 comments for “Redux: Will the Recession Spark a Music Revolution?”
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An interesting — if not terribly original — piece. A couple of things: It’s Sam Phillips who founded Sun Records (note the “s”), and Old Crow Medicine Show has been around for nearly a decade. If they are part of a “pick-up in the regional music scene and signs of a return to the troubadour tradition of poet-musicians” brought about by the recession, that means they knew about it years in advance and maybe should have thought to warn us instead of simply playing “their twangy, rootsy tunes.”
[...] Parramore, writing at Recessionwire: Little known fact: Many of America’s quintessential cultural elements – the hamburger, the [...]
I was recently downsized at a company, I have been in Music for years. Music has always been something that makes life a lot better and without a doubt is helping me stay centered. One of the things that these programs can do is keep the music alive with young people, music builds self esstem and helps youth express themselves to keep on the right track, We all need a song to sing.
I think this is a great article. I have been writing about this new “renaissance” (similar to the Harlem Renaissance), and a new “arts movement) (as in The Black Arts Movement) for a few months now on my blogs, in terms of a resurgence in art and music, particularly in the Black community.
In the late 70′s/early 80′s we saw songs like “Don’t Push Me Cause I’m Close To The Edge” from groups like Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, then groups like NWA from the West Coast in the 90′s and groups like Arrested Development, A Tribe Called Quest,Public Enemy, and KRS-One in the 90′s as well who all spoke of life on the streets, positive upliftment, and exposed us to the problems of the black community, all during up and down economic times. We even saw filmmakers like Spike Lee and John Singleton make their marks on the scene by telling stories of urban decay and racism, in the midst of excess; they talked about groups and neighborhoods that some seemed to forget about, much like today.
I also feel that many rappers, like Jay-Z, Nas, and Jeezy, recently have taken a turn away from the “bling” laden hip hop music and turned their attention to concentrate on the plight of the community again, combining their efforts with a focus on politics. Jay-Z gave a free concert in Cleveland during the Obama campaign, providing thousands of children and adults with a glimpse into how hip hop and politics can be merged to form “a more perfect union” if you will, to make and encourage change in the community. Nas and Jeezy both focused their rap lyrics on the realities of a Black President, before the election was even over, providing hope for many.
Still further, rapper will.i.am, in collaboration with many others, has taken this idea of hope and change to another level with his combination of songs, music videos, and celebrity endorsements for his “Yes We Can” song among others. will.i.am (and other artists – there was a remake of the “Wake Up Everybody” song) has demonstrated his knack for capturing the attention of the larger community, similarly to the groups in the 1980′s who created songs like “We Are The World”, when, again, we were on the verge of economic turmoil, all over the world.
Also, in the 90′s there was an uprising of poets and spoken word artists (similar to The Black Arts Movement) who have continuously spoken about hard times in the community and have kept the plight of the community at the forefront of their performances.
My posts about the impact of music for CHANGE include:
A Soundtrack For Change (The Obama CD)
http://mediathinkblog.wordpress.com/2008/11/05/a-soundtrack-for-change/
Will The Real American Please Stand Up? (hip hop and politics)
http://mediathinkblog.wordpress.com/2008/11/01/whos-a-real-american-hip-hop-artists-rally-for-change/
Thanks for this article. I’m positive we will continue to see more creativity amongst artists, poets, authors, etc. as we move through this recession. There is an African concept called SANKOFA (looking back so we can move forward) and perhaps music WILL turn back to it’s “roots”, again, so that we, as a nation, as a world, can move forward.
“Bring it one!”