A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Jared A. Ball, Ph.D.
Culture is the expression of collective personhood. The culture of Africa's descendants in the U.S. has been demonized, belittled and viewed as a threat ever since the days when slavemasters banned use of the drum. With the wholesale gentrification of urban America, a new wave of cultural ethnic cleansing is underway, as inner city entertainment venues are being closed, and owners of remaining night spots collude to squeeze original artists with substantial and established audiences out of commercial viability. Like coffee, some are too black, too strong.
Cultural Genocide: The Drums Fall Silent In Chocolate City
by Jared A. Ball, Ph.D.
āBands are literally told to leave their congas at home in order to re-form themselves as jazz or R&B bands, and the famed āpocket,ā go-goās equivalent to hip-hopās ābreak beatā is said to now be off limits...ā
āFuck all the corny laptop DJs that killed the realness.ā I found this comment from Washington, DC-based DJ EuRok about DJs adopting new digital music technology as opposed to the traditional vinyl record to be quite relevant far beyond its immediate focus of the closing of DJ Hut, the long-time mainstay of DJ and hip-hop culture in the city. Perhaps it hit harder considering that only a couple of weeks earlier one of DCās more prominent Go-Go music sound men told me that āgo-go as a culture is going to die.ā In each case, the impact of gentrification and new technologies were seen by those who would know to be having a nasty impact that goes well beyond the ravages of uprooted community. To the extent that DC represents a national trend and all that is related to issues of gentrifying communities in what has even been likened to an international return to the European model of cities for the wealthy and suburbs for the rest, the nationās capital also exemplifies the impact on culture of colonial relocation and land-grabbing.
Of course, the cultural expression of Black people has long been a battleground of theft and appropriation. And, as all uninterrupted processes, it continues today. In this case, the long history of āracial cleansingā in the United States has a style and impact that is equally modern in its creeping and slick demeanor. For instance, Washington, D.C. has been targeted as one of Clear Channelās āBranded Citiesā or the plan for complete corporate advertising emersion where āBrandscapingā turns communal spaces into ācontrolled environment[s]ā where ābrands [are] to be experiencedā and unavoidably interwoven into peopleās daily lives. This is the live version of what some lament as the creeping shift of sleeker, more convenient and accessible DJ digital technology which encompasses the closing of record stores which, as all public spheres, mean so much more than a place to purchase albums. It also includes the policy of cleansing the city of its most recognizable cultural expression. Go-Go, with its live musicianship, polyrhythmic, conga-based funk has, according to sound man Greg McNeils, been all-but banned from the city proper. Bands are literally told to leave their congas at home in order to re-form themselves as jazz or R&B bands, and the famed āpocket,ā go-goās equivalent to hip-hopās ābreak beatā is said to now be off limits. And similar to EuRokās dismay at the shift to digital formats McNeils describes a similar trend where street vendors and small store operators are being forced out of business which in turn hurts the underground distribution of go-go mixtapes, or PA taped recordings of live performances, which have been the mass medium network of distribution for those without access to radio.
And he is not alone , cats have been seeing this. Oddisee, of the crew Diamond District, recounts how āmom and pop stores {are} replaced by Couture,ā and Head-Roc, the āMayor of DC Hip-Hop,ā who himself has lyrically tackled the issue of gentrification, has recently launched a campaign to expose the vicious network of venue operators who continue to deny local Black artists space to perform and who assure that those who do are held in a state of Electric Purgatory or debt peonage as they must cover their own promotional costs or perceived lack of audience draw.
'ācultural genocide,...includes all policies aimed at destroying the specific characteristics by which a target group is defined, or defines itself, thereby forcing them to become something else....ā'
And all of this is also slickly hidden beneath DCās tightly-controlled media environment which is quite right-wing in general and specifically managed to assure that none of this music is heard on the cityās sanctioned radio. Just this past week, as is the case every week, the dominant āurbanā radio stations had all their top ten songs, as measured by times played, or spins, selected by one of three corporations, two of whom, Sony Musicās CEO Howard Stringer and Warner Musicās CEO Edgar Bronfman, share an incestuous board of director interlock.
But the issue really is the impact of this nationās brand of colonialism and how it manifests the ācultural genocide,ā as defined by the United Nations who explain it as āthe imposition of [an] alien national patternā¦ā which āincludes all policies aimed at destroying the specific characteristics by which a target group is defined, or defines itself, thereby forcing them to become something else.ā This includes assaults on the target populationās ābooksā¦ languageā¦ religious worksā¦ destruction or dispersion of objects ofā¦ artisticā¦ valueā and so on. Shifts in technology which force cultural reformations, that also further limitations of the public sphere, that impose alien cultural forms or, in this case, bastardized corporate versions of the cultural expression, that disappear underground communicative traditions, and again force a removal of the drum all relate to the physical forced removal of colonized populations. And as the nationās capitol, as goes DC, so goes the Black nation.
For Black Agenda Radio Iām Jared Ball. Online visit www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
Dr. Jared A. Ball is assistant professor of Communication Studies at Baltimore's Morgan State University, host of WPFW's Jazz & Justice, which airs every Monday at 1PM EST, a co-founder of CBC Monitor, and among much else, one of the minds behind VoxUnion.Com.
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