The Death of Rhythm & Blues, Nelson George

The Death of Rhythm and Blues, Nelson George

HOW I GOT IT: Recently I've been trying to learn more about music and music history. Hip-hop has held my interest for the last 16 years or so, and one of the things that compelled me was that it was the music of our time. I thought perhaps it was as important as rock 'n roll was to the 60's. Of course, then the question becomes: Were the 90's as historically significant as the 60's - and is music in general as integral to the times in the last two decades as it was back then? And then you ask: What the hell does integral mean? And then, as a wise person once said, you get surly and you cop an attitude.

Needless to say, hip-hop and my adolescent years are two inextricable enigmas. Racial politics, the future of art and intellectual property are three more thrown in. Music history is still a very useful lens through which to observe this great nation of ours. I read about George's book in Jason Tanz's cultural study/squeamish confessional, Other People's Property: A Shadow History of Hip-hop in White America. Tanz is extremely articulate and honest about his own experience, a journey from ignorance to educated speculation. He sites many sources, and George is perhaps the most highly touted. It is also a foray into a music genre of which who's history I know very little.

HOW IT WENT: In 1942, the president of the American Federation of Musicians succeeded in a proposed ban on recorded music. According to George, too many musicians at the time (many being "Big Band" bands) relied too heavily on live, on-air performances for income and exposure - and technology was impeding this. The only records allowed to be sold were ones recorded prior to the ban, which were sometimes new recordings pawned off as newly discovered "bootlegs."

However, by the close of the war, George says that tastes were beginning to change. The crooning singers (Sinatra, Perry Como, et al) eclipsed the full brass bands and band leaders that were combating the record companies and radio stations over this issue. Not only did tastes change, but the economic potential of music dissemination via the record versus the limitation of flesh-and-blood music only must have seemed more than a little silly. The record, apparently, never looked back from this triumph.

I read this the very same week as notable contemporary band Radiohead's landmark decision to sell their latest album for as little or as much as their audience deems appropriate. Not to oversimplify, but it seems that these two stories encapsulate a full circle of sorts, spurred on by technology. Record companies never feared music being played for free on the radio. In fact, they pay for this privilege. Each new technology provides new ways to create revenue. And if the old guard fails to adapt and, instead, chooses to bellyache about how the new technology stifles their cashflow through the previous outlet, then not only is their argument futile (technology will win out anyway), but their moral argument is unfounded. The artists who actually make the music are never paid as much as the company that gets the music to the listener. If the music can be brought to the listener for free on the web, then the money is made on live performances - which haven't been threatened at all by the advent of recorded music. The band promoters who bribed dj's to play music of a band in a particular market a week before they played in that town were the ones who learned this lesson. The executives (and yes, in this context Metallica acts as a corporation) who cry about music theft are gougers at heart,who have been driving up the price of music-listening to build their mansions and their yachts. A rational musician desires to have as many people exposed to their music as possible.