Maybe this is political, or doesn’t need a new thread
Seems to me he probably didn’t try hard enough, and definitely didn’t answer the question very well. Hard to look at this as anything but his prejudicial bias. I don’t think of the people who he did include as particularly intellectual. Certainly influential.
Who should he have included? I don’t have access to his interviews, and actually I dont read interviews of musicians, so maybe his choices are spot on and he just answered the question wrong. Or more likely he could have included… who?
Prince, Jimi Hendrix?
Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin?
Ok, the pickings are slimmer, but who do you think?
Yeah, and it shouldn’t matter, right? Why do I feel like it kinda does?
It’s his book, he should be able to choose who he wants. For the decades from the 60s to 80s, the masters were basically the ones he chose. That shouldn’t be his responsibility.
And cis, I f’cking hate those three letters. I don’t even consider it a real word
“Articulate” was an unfortunate word choice. He tries to explain it a few different ways, in terms of whether they talk philosophically about their music, and what exact genre of music that was, and so on. But my take is that he chose those people because (as he freely admits) they’re his friends and he likes talking to them, and it’s not super surprising that they are white guys like him.
If the title of the book didn’t suggest that he was ranking these guys above everyone else, and if he were a little more articulate himself in explaining what it is, I don’t think there’d be a problem.
Suggestions for alternative artists?
Joan Armatrading, Aretha Franklin,Ella Fitzgerald,
Although I’m not familiar with recent artists,
Perhaps some more candidates here:
Reminds me of SNL skit of MTV in the pre-Michael Jackson days when it was Basically All White, All The Time, when a supposed ‘spokesman’ for MTV, speaking in a very plummy RP accent, pointed out they didn’t want to include, say, an Eskimo band simply for inclusiveness’ sake, and as soon as black people contributed to American popular music MTV would certainly pay attention to them
I mean Anglophone is easy, we make friends with people we can talk to. As for gay, he came out in '95, so there’s that. But I feel like there’s a more general answer involving a history of cultural moats.
These are literally the only Black rock musicians I can think of (and Jimi was probably the only pure rocker as Prince was more funky and poppy). Most other Black musicians are hip hop and R&B artists. I love good hip hop (emphasis on good… as there’s a lot of shit), but wish we still got more brothers dabbling in rock as Jimi was probably the best guitarist of all time. It’s a stereotype but I don’t care… Black people on average just seem to have a better sense of rhythm than whites, and we need that innate talent applied to the rock genre as much as we need it for rap and jazz.
*- I just skimmed the first few posts and thought this book was just about rockers. But if it’s about musicians from all genres, then yeah, no excuse.