Accountability in Music • Page 87

i still don't like the insinuation that people think the way they do because they want to look "woke"

 

I didn't say that's why they're doing it but it's definitely not coming across the way you think it is imo

 

Like it looks like you're just toeing around the issue and making excuses, I know that's not your intention at all but that's how it comes across because honestly it is an excuse

 

I think that a lot of people on here are very defensive of hip hop because we've had to defend its legitimacy against real racist comments or viewpoints, often times with people using the "foul language" thing as a slight against the genre because they don't really have much else.

There are very valid criticisms of the genre that can be spoken about without, like Jake said, tiptoeing or making excuses.

 

Yeah I get that but it's gotten easier over the years to tell who's coming at hip hop with bad faith and who is legitimately confused about some of the issues and contradictions in the genre

 

i haven't felt like i've "defended" any of the criticisms i just think that it's worth handling them differently than in other music spheres. all these things are "bad" but the same methods done against punk bands probably won't work for the hip hop scene

 

I know you feel like you haven't defended anything but it's not hard to see why someone might think that's what you're doing in some cases, which is kind of my point, I just think everyone including myself should be aware of it because I've made some of those arguments before that I'm not sure I would still make

 

I will 100% admit to tiptoeing around these issues because, as a white person, I haven't felt that it's my place to comment on issues in the hip hop community. I honestly feel uncomfortable saying anything a lot of the time when these discussions begin because of that and so I haven't said anything. I get what @OhTheWater and @sophos34 re saying though, and I need to educate myself better on how I can address these issues in constructive way without overstepping.

 

PoC should obviously have the leading voices in these issues with hip-hop but if you're white and wanna engage with the culture musically you've gotta be able to call out the bad and not be silent and complacent. you can't just have the good parts and leave the bad

 

Generally speaking, if you don't feel that it's your place to criticize the hip hop community, I also don't think that you should be the one defending problematic aspects of it. Not saying that I feel that it's my "place", but I think I can have a coherent discussion on both sides of the fence.

 

I don't defend it though, I tend to just say nothing because I don't know what to say. I don't know, I'm just putting my feelings out there and trying to learn.

 

I get you. I wasn't directly referencing you, I'm guilty of it sometimes too.

 

what does this mean though?

 

i value consistency more than anything else when it comes to handling these situations. i believe it really hurts any sort of movement if it seems people are only going against acts that they don't personally like while favoring those who they support. i feel it needs to be all or nothing across the same issues.

the thing is, if i feel that if a punk/emo band has some gross misogynistic lyrics, it's very easy for me to know that they should not be supported. but some of that language is so embedded within rap music culture that i feel i can't put the same standards on there because it is part of the industry. not that it shouldn't be talked about at all and made it known that it is an issue, but i don't feel comfortable dropping every rapper that uses dehumanizing language towards women. i hope it won't be prevalent like it is now but it is, and it's something that needs to change on a larger scale than just dropping support of artists.

do we drop chance because he worked with r kelly or kanye for working with chris brown just like we drop artists like four year strong for working with JJR? rae sremmurd or future for collaborating with kodak black? i don't think you can look at it exactly the same way. does it make it any better? no, and we should talk about it and how it is bad that these artists continue to get platforms even though they are abusive humans.

part of this response has to do with the whole "well you make it seem like you have a hard line but you still listen to kanye" conversation that happened. obviously i'm not going to tell someone they SHOULD stop not listening to an artist because of that, that's disgusting. but this is my own justification for my own actions here.



i'm sure i explained this poorly as i always do, but yeah. i just can't push rap music as a whole aside because there currently is a culture of acceptance of misogyny and abuse. these standards also don't apply to the people who actually committed physical abuse of course. these are the things that are all rattling around my head

 

It's part of both industries...you're saying you're giving leeway to a certain industry because...it's..."embedded"? How does that make way for any kind of progress on the issue? How is not acknowledging that it's unacceptable going to change things for the better, now or in the long term?

 

i think we should acknowledge it's unacceptable. i've said that from the start. i'm saying that in order to have the same standards as i do for rock artists, do i stop listening to the entire genre until this is changed?

 

Sorry if this is out of place but I wanted to respond to the guitar teacher person a few pages back.

I think it is too big an undertaking for us as music intructors to discuss the problematic nature behind every artist our students listen to or want to learn from. If you feel uncomfortable with a certain artists a student likes, that is probably best dealt with via the parent, imo. And (I’m sure you already know this) be prepared for the parents views to be wildly different from yours on certain topics. I don’t always agree with the people who hire me, but if I try to only be hired by people I agree with, I’ll likely end up in need of another form of income to make it sustainable.

But even then it sometimes gets iffy- for example I once had a guitar student who’s father signed him up for lessons. He and his father were big metal heads, and his mother was very, super religious. She said that metal was devil music and she didn’t want her son learning it. But the thing is, it’s what he wanted to learn, it’s what kept him motivated. So I had to have a conversation with the mother about how my job is to help him grow as a musician and forcing him into a box he didn’t want to be put into did not help him grow, it actually made him want to stop playing. (This is just an example of how the parent isn’t always “right” so to speak).

If I’m with a student, particularly one as young as what was mentioned in the earlier post, I don’t know if I would take it upon myself to talk to her about matters of sexual assault— and I don’t know that the parents would want me to either. The same way I don’t bring it up with every student who wants to learn a zeppelin song or new found glory or something.

The reason for this to me is two-fold— I only see these students for somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes a week, depending on the student. Even 10 minutes spent on a topic outside of what I’m hired to teach them is a big chunk of that time taken. The other reason, and this one is really important I think, is that songs come and go but skills stay forever.
So we can learn a song from a problematic artist, and we can learn the theory of what it’s made up of, and we can learn the new chord shapes or techniques or things that show up in the melody or anything of that nature- and in two years we will have forgotten the song itself but we will still have the skill we got from it. The chord shapes, the composition technique, the chops required, etc will still be there long after the song and/or artist has left the student’s listening rotation.

When I was a young one I would sit at home and literally learn entire albums for fun... I don’t remember any of those albums hardly at all anymore, but the skills I got from that practice (ear training, technique work, etc) all are part of what I use for my job every single day now.


Sorry again if this is out of place but I hope it helps that one user at least a little bit.
Back to lurkin’ I go

 

Hey, thanks for taking the time to write such a thoughtful response, I appreciate that.

To be clear, I completely agree that it's not appropriate to detail assault cases with young kids, in the case I stated I was only very euphamistic.

I suppose my thinking is that yes my main role is as a teacher of an instrument, but I also believe I have a role to play in how my students engage with music in a broader sense, and with that I want to encourage thoughtful choices with listening. Absolutely not the priority of my job though.

 

no, nobody has even said the entire genre should be dismissed, nor implied that. kanye, of whom you said probably shouldn't be cancelled, is not the entire genre, either.

 

i'm more saying from my own experiences and keeping things consistent for myself. and i'm definitely not just talking about kanye. i'm talking about future, i'm talking about young thug, i'm talking about chance, i'm talking about yachty, i'm talking about uzi...etc etc etc.

 

OK, I've had time to catch up on this thread now and I'm glad to see there's been some really good discussion about a variety of different things. A lot of the things I was going to say, or thought of to say, have been said by others already, so really I just want to answer flesh out a few thoughts on a few things ... (pardon the typos).

(Using this post as a jumping off point.) I think this is an interesting point, I think that by and large the disconnect I've seen has been where some people believe, or state, that they think once an artist has been "outted" as an abuser or an enabler of abuse they want to remove that music or album from their lives completely. No more listening or supporting. And, in some of those conversations I've seen it start to go toward the "because I'm doing this, anyone that doesn't basically write this band off is wrong/bad/awful" — that's where a lot of the times the conversation goes off the rails. And, when that is then paired next to the fact that if someone says that and then acts differently toward another artist, I can at least understand the frustration. Personally, the way I think I want to deal with it, myself, in the future when talking about these kinds of things is to make it clear that I'm not telling or even recommending what people do with their listening habits. But, that they should be aware of what happened and be aware of what it says to others when they are promoting or listening to music that's come from someone that we know is problematic and here's how we know, and so forth.

But here's what I've seen (and this is in general, not specific): Someone will post about something in a thread about a band and what they've done. And there's usually a little back and forth, sometimes good, sometimes bad, and then the conversation changes and goes back to music ... and then someone will say something passive aggressive about how people aren't addressing the issue and are "ignoring" it, which will then set off another round. And I think it's the crimination of others coupled with the apparent 'hypocrisy' that has become a bigger issue and caused this to boil over.

I'll take an example that happened to me recently because I've thought about it quite a bit. After the entire 30STM thread went down, where I banned a user that was going far outside of the rules, had been warned multiple times, and who I think had some posts that embodied some of the worst things we've talked about in this thread about wanting to make people feel bad for not having the right answers to some very hard questions. Anyway, after that a user posted a "freethebannedposter" message. *That* user had also been warned for years on end about this kinda thing. So, they were also banned. That led to a Twitter message basically saying that I am a fake ally and don't actually care about social issues because they were banned and because I still occasionally post a news story about artists like Moose Blood and Neck Deep. That message was liked by people on this website, effectively in my mind co-signing the message or the core of it. And that's fine. People can be very rigid in how they handle the music they listen to and talk about and let into their lives. People can think bad things about me. That's fine. However, to then see a some of those same people that "liked" that message about how I don't *actually care about social issues* ... talk with immense praise and hype for Kanye West? That struck me as odd at best. And then from the same people that called me out as not caring about social issues comes silence to their friends on a pretty big (IMO) social issue. And so that's why I can understand this feeling of smug hypocrisy that I think is an underlying issue with many. People acting like they have all the answers and know it all, and by god do they have their twitter snark on point.

We all are hypocrites, make mistakes, and are learning ... and I think a lot of us would be better served walking into the conversations knowing that and instead of passing judgment and condemnation — wanting to talk about why what an artist did is problematic, and why/how we've decided to handle that based on each particular event. And trust that when people have all the information they can make decisions. And maybe by talking about we are where we're at we can help them find answers too. And that also means that if we talk about why we don't think someone like JJR should be in the music scene anymore, we're actually looking at accountability and what it means to him, us, and those he continues to work with and associate with. And then we can have actual discussions about how far outward that should spread. (I'm now way off on a tangent, time to wheel it back in.)

So yeah, it bugged me a little to see people like posts or defending someone saying some pretty awful things to me and making accusations about how I don't care about social issues based on news stories I post, and then go in hard on fandom for an artist that has a problematic history as well. To be made to feel like I'm uniquely awful by some people made me think of the 'ol Less Than Jake line, "Everyone here hates everyone here for doing the same thing that they do."

I think this is well said. And, again, it's why I think that when people are making posts telling others not to listen and basically calling them a shitty person if they do, that we have crossed a line. I think we also need to be more willing to talk about how yeah, you may listen to something problematic and also want to speak out against rape culture or explain why a band doing XYZ is bad. Being unwilling to constantly look inward and address your own feelings, shortcomings, or beliefs, I don't think ends well. And for those that are only outward thinkers, always on the prowl to call someone out and point out anything they may have said ineloquently or not done quite right ... I find to be the worst kind of ally theater.

Maybe it's true that's all you've seen, but I can assure you it's not the case. I've seen some very, very harsh things go on when someone is just talking about why they choose to still listen to artist X and not artist Y. I've also seen a lot of direct targeting, even following people into threads to quote them or comment to them about anything they say. And then I've seen those posts "liked" by a similar group of people when it happens. I've seen conversations of people wanting to talk about the source of accusations and where and why and how we should look at different ones and wanting to learn about what makes a good source. For example, I've seen people make comments not that dissimilar to yours yesterday talking about the Kanye West abuse allegation — about how that website looked really shady and not reliable — and have seen them torn into for it. When we're talking about something to the degree some people have: burn all their music/stop listening to them/cut them out of their lives forever, and we're talking about difficult things like anonymous sources and unverified sources and claims as well, I, personally, think we need to have better answers for people when they ask about an anonymous internet link beside just accusing them of victim blaming and getting "harsh." I know I view things very differently if I read something online from a username that was just created and I don't know, versus if I talk to a person, or someone that has talked to a person that has made an accusation. I don't think I'm a bad person for wanting to trust first but then verify when we're talking about serious topics, and I don't think it's that unreasonable for those of us that want to be involved in these conversations or are trying to raise awareness or make a better music scene, to be expected to have an answer to someone wanting to talk about the source of an allegation and what makes something more trustworthy than another and where it came from. I agree with your point about that Kanye article, for example, I've spent quite a while trying to track down anything about it and can't find anything. However, I also know that if someone had said that same thing dismissing a link as a "bad source" in another thread, for another artist, they would have been jumped on. I've seen it happen before by members that are still here, and some that are not.

I agree. I think in some ways that really was the ground zero for this. When the conversation turned to what to do with the band, their music, now/next ... that did spark a lot of this. Some wrote off the band forever and I know I saw quite a few people making others feel bad that they weren't willing to take that step yet. Discussions of is it even ok to listen to an artist I think can be helpful for people to work through their feelings on things. But when someone says something (which I probably have done), like "I don't understand why you'd even wanna listen to this anymore" ... it's not great. And when it gets as far as "I don't want anyone in my life or to even be around anyone that would still listen to this" ... then I don't even know how there's any chance at any conversation at all. That seems to be shutting down any chance of talking about anything at that point.

This is very well said and just wanted to say I agree. Otherwise you're just making it all about you. I think that people also treat something like a drive-by news forum troll and other members of the community too similarly. Someone that's just made one account and is saying something dumb in a news thread. (Like this: https://forum.chorus.fm/posts/2012725) I think sometimes deserve a little bit of a snarky response. They're not interested in a good faith engagement or trying to understand. But I don't think that should be the default way to handle any and everyone that is engaging with problematic art or talking about it. Knowing the difference is hard. I've probably fucked that up more times than I can count.

I think there's a difference between making someone feel uncomfortable, and putting someone so far on the defensive side of things that they're simply never going to even be willing to look at your point or argument. For their to be actual learning, of course people are going to have to feel uncomfortable, that's where a lot of the growth comes from, but there's a difference in my mind between working into that conversation and walking into a bar guns blazing and not caring who you gets hit. Everyone's too busy diving for cover and trying to defend themselves to even think about the overarching point. How and why they're uncomfortable ends up being to the detriment of learning instead of the impetus.

Thanks for writing this. I know how hard thinking about this kinda stuff can be.

Well said.

I think at the very least one should be aware of the different 'standards'. And thinking what you really want the outcome to be for the rock genre. Is the goal to clean it up? To make people aware? To get all abusers out of it? To show what is or isn't welcome in the scene? I think knowing and having these kinds of goals at least can clarify that for you. I definitely don't have the answer here, but I know it's hard to speak with authority on a topic like "I don't think this music scene should enable people who abuse others, or help those that do" ... which I think is a worthy goal ... and talk about how Four Year Strong working with JJR is pretty awful, but then at the same time punt on the discussion of Chris Brown being on an album. Personally, I feel like I have a chance to change our music scene for the better by talking about it. I also want to talk about Chris Brown being on an album for similar reasons, but I don't have any belief I'm going to change anything there. However, I do want to have some moral clarity for myself even if I think I have a better chance at impacting something in one musical world versus the other.

 

I wish I could like that post more than once @Jason Tate

 

Punk Talks, Pinegrove, and a Mishandled Allegation

 

Everyone should read this.

It even includes a statement from the individual that Sheridan wrongly spoke for when it came to the Pinegrove situation.

“It has recently been brought to my attention that Sheridan Allen did many things without my knowledge, support or permission involving the Pinegrove situation, even after I had already asked her to remove herself entirely from the situation. I told Sheridan repeatedly that I didn’t want to go public or for any public statement to be made. I never asked for her to request or demand any type of statement from Pinegrove or Run for Cover. I’ve never said or implied to Sheridan that I wanted to ‘take down’ Pinegrove. Her commenting and responding to Facebook comments and tweets about the Pinegrove statement, as well as doing an interview with Track Record, while referring to herself as an involved party, was done completely without my knowledge or consent. She also spoke to others about things that I had told her which I never expected to be made public in this already complicated and traumatic situation.”