Rachel’s Note: This is for all of those people who like to blame hip hop for everything.
We have a problem in this country–classical music is corrupting our middle aged white male population. It has really gotten out of hand when you have middle aged white men fighting each other to hear this music. Egged on by the violent melodies of the Boston pops, two angry white men disrupted the performance with a violent altercation. The fight was so bad that one man had his shirt ripped off, and women were screaming with fear.
Any music that could drive people to such violence, must be regulated. These conductors and musicians are bad role models for the middle aged white men in this country.
You can check out this shocking video, which shows how our middle aged white men are reacting to classical music.
You decide. Classical music–has it become too violent?
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[snark]
I object to the use of the word “classical” to describe what the Pops play.
[/snark]
Remember Rite of Spring? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rite_of_Spring
After that one, rioting became almost expected during modern art ballet performances. Performers were regularly handed out emergency whistles, just in case. I don’t know when this stopped. Probably WWII.
And then the Nazis came around and said that modern music was too Jewish and put a halt to it in Germany. The Leninist party did the same in Russia, claiming it was too elite.
Yay, history.
Gee, and I thought it was just lack of money that was keeping me away from concerts. I could not get the video to run, but I wonder if perhaps there was an inopportune cell-phone involved?
That classical music can be dangerous I don’t doubt; I read somewhere back that whatever you play, it is plumb hazardous to be sitting in front of the trombonists. Then there is the ordeal of braving traffic, other shoppers and so on only to find that the classical section of Silver Platters has shrunk farther still, like a snowbank under a hot wind.
I can think of a vital bit of regulation, and that is one that’d keep good discs from going out of print. If I had a nickel for every time I hear something I like on the radio and it turns out to be unavailable, why, maybe I could hunt those discs down…
If it’ll stop people from running their mouths or their cellphones during a performance then classical music will have succeeded where hip-hop has failed miserably.
You know, this thread is even funnier at Rachel’s Tavern, where there are some outraged, sputtering people who appear to think she is entirely serious. Y’all should go look there too. Heh. ;)
classical music is TOO VIOLENT. it should be BANNED. i have listened to classical music and the way that it makes you feel is NOT OKAY. CLASSICAL MUSIC IS ABOUT MAKING PEOPLE HURT!!! when my FATHER listens to classical music he gets ANGRY and VIOLENT. once he PUNCHED HIS BOSS in the NOSE. this PROBLEM needs TO BE SOLVED.
BAN CLASSICAL MUSIC!!!!!
[Ha, I had to rescue this from the spam filter.]
Mandolin, Don’t forget–save the middle aged white man.
When Stravinski and Diaghilev debuted The Rite Of Spring in Paris,
the audience broke into fistfights in the aisles, which evolved into a civil riot.
They were giants in those days.
ah yes…the unacceptable classical music scene. entirely too much sax and violins.
Color me offended but this seems to trivialize a very serious issue in the black community. Like it or not there is an issue with hip-hop and its influence on our youth and young adults. The crime, thug mentality (gangstahood), racism, misogny, greed, and materialism that current pop- hip-hop glorifies has become the drumbeat of many who will constitute the future adult black population of this country. Music has always been a retreat for black people, unfortunately the retreat into pop-hip-hop has turned from art expressing life, into life imitating art.
Wait, what? I hope that was just a more subtle satire than mine.
Polymath: Funniest. Line. Ever!
Zakia: Meet Jeff. Jeff, Zakia.
Zakia, The same things you are saying about hip hop were said about rag time 100 years ago; the blues over the past 150 years, Jazz for the past 75 years, and rock-n-roll for the past 60 years.
And they said this about classical music about 150 years ago, but the people were Europeans.
The social problems are real, but blaming it on the music is an extreme over simplification.
Do you know that as the popularity of rap has increased the crime rate has fallen? In fact, in 2006 the crime rate increased slightly and rap sales dropped by 21%. It’s a spurious correlation, but we can say rap causes crime when the crime rate has fallen as rap’s popularity has increased.
Geez, Rachel, it’s obvious. Rap sales were down, the rappers didn’t have any money, and so they had to go out and commit some crimes – thus bumping up the crime rate. Duh.
Make your cracks and jokes, but we know whats really going on and see what its doing to retard our kids and our communities because we are living it and dealing with it. You seem to have NO clue how the past few generations have internalized the ideals and messages portrayed in popular hip hop and how it has warped the meaning of being black and black success and black priorities in a community that is suffering already. Again it used to be art expressing life, now it has become life imitating art. Fortunately big wigs in the industry, parents, and black leaders are finally waking up.
And I’m glad it sagging in popularity. Hopefully that’ll give real hip hop a chance to come through.
http://talking-stuff.blogspot.com/2007/02/hip-hop-faces-increasing-backlash.html
One of the choruses from an early Verdi opera, Nabucco ( = Nebuchanezzar), was adopted as the “theme song” of the Risorgimento, the anti-Papal anti-Austrian occupation movement to unite Italy under Italian leadership. The choral characters were ancient Jewish captives of Nebuchanezzar singing of their desire for freedom (roughly, “Go, Thought, on golden wings…”). This ancient setting allowed the song (and opera) to pass the censors. Think anti-war protest songs in the Vietnam era.
I agree with Zakia. Call me humorless, I didn’t find the satire funny.
Rachel’s crime synopsis is irrelevant. The violence in black inner city neighborhoods has gone down a notch from insane to just horrible. Anything that reinforces this homicidal bullshit should be challenged, be it hip hop or whatever.
Every leftist says their against crime like every conservative says their against racism. They say it but the won’t lift a finger to stop it.
I agree with Zakia. Call me humorless, I didn’t find the satire funny.
Rachel’s crime synopsis is irrelevant. The violence in black inner city neighborhoods has gone down a notch from insane to just horrible. Anything that reinforces this homicidal bullshit should be challenged, be it hip hop or whatever.
Every leftist says their against crime like every conservative says their against racism. They say it but the won’t lift a finger to stop it.
drydock,
I don’t dismiss the very real effects of crime in poor black neighborhoods, but hip hop is not the cause anymore than rag time, jazz, the blues, or rock-n-roll were in their era.
The real causes are poverty, lack of basic infrastructure maintenance, a poor education system based on race and class segregation, discrimination in the criminal justice system/poor police community relations, lack of living wage jobs, the disappearance of manufacturing industries. and so on.
The people blaming hip hop for all of this are totally missing the mark. If we got rid of hip hop tomorrow. We would still have all of the problems mentioned above.
I’m not defending the violence or misogyny in hip hop, but I am saying we need to get real about the causes of these problems. Plus, hip hop is an aesthetic. You can dismiss the whole genre because of idiots like 50 Cent.
Zakia said, “And I’m glad it sagging in popularity. Hopefully that’ll give real hip hop a chance to come through.
talking-stuff.blogspot.com/2007/02/hip-hop-fac…”
Zakia, I think you and I agree here. Much of hip hop is not violent of misogynistic, and we need to spend more time to promoting kind of hip hop.
Rachel,
Is it an either /or?
In theory, can’t hiphop be a contributing cause to violence (and thus worth addressing) without being the primary cause?
And in theory, can’t it also be a good focus because of its ease of identification/ease of change/etc? It would be easier to change hiphop than to provide an infrastructure, fix the criminal justice system, and build manufacturing plants, would it not? Even if the quantifiable benefit is less, the cost/benefit ratio can make it worth doing.
I don’t actually think hiphop is necessarily to blame; I don’t know enough about hiphop to make a judgment. But the argument seems a bit polarized, and that doesn’t seem likely to help with a solution.
“women were screaming with fear”… of course they were. when will this women are helpless thing stop? if it was that bad of a fight, men should have been screaming with fear too!
Irony only works when the two concepts are similar.
2 men fighting in a balcony of The Pops can hardly be compared to the nearly countless rappers who have been gunned down.
I agree with Sailorman: why do we have to assume that because we’re admitting that these problems existed before hip hop/rap (and would exist if those genres disappeared tomorrow), that hip hop/rap automatically have no influence on them?
I believe that the piggish attitudes towards women displayed by hair metal bands in the 80s have a lot to do with normalising and promoting the absolutely shit attitudes towards women that predominate mainstream culture today. Did they “cause” those attitudes? Of course not, they were merely reflecting attitudes that existed before the first guitar was ever electrified. But those bands and their music sure as hell did their part to make woman-hating look attractive, “fun” and desirable to a whole new generation.
Not the primary cause, but sure as fuck a contributing factor.
What Dylan said. I recall my dad writing a letter to the city many years back, to protest a situation that threatened “women and children”, and wondering why women got lumped in with children all the time… And last time I was anywhere and a fight broke out, there was no screaming but a lot of folks just made themselves scarce…
There is a saying that when the rich catch a cold, the poor get pneumonia. So when popular culture glorifies a variety of unedifying activities or attitudes, the rich get a little tipsy while the poor go on a self-destructive bender. This, as far as I can tell, is how studies are characterizing the influence of hip hop on groups — whites take it in good fun, blacks self-identify to the point of excluding other, more edifying activities.
I have always doubted this could be a complete or even a primary explanation for social deviancy (for lack of a better term). Unlike some of the articles I’ve read, I do think that many different groups have glorified the worst or most criminal “bad boy” elements in their midst. Like the mafia. But if hip hop has such a disparate and devastating impact on blacks compared to what the mafia had on Italians, let’s say, it’s no doubt because, like the aforementioned pneumonia germ, it finds extremely favorable conditions to thrive.
But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t spread its own level of pain or that those who make money purveying it don’t bear some responsibility.
Name 10.
Just a footnote, at least from what I have read, I think that many people are so upset because the influence of hip hop is seen as stretching beyond those segments of the population that are usually written off and who might naturally identify with it or even see it as providing a valid and sometimes better choice than available alternatives. No, the stories I’ve read all quote people who claim that hip hop is affecting those who are higher on the ladder — kids in stable families with stable income, who are in schools that provide resources for high achievement. So to give a comparison: it would be like a brilliant Italian-American student in a middle class family with a cabdriver father decided to drop out of high school and become a mafioso hanger on, instead of going to MIT and then Harvard Medical School. I’m still skeptical, but it’s not like I’m on the groundfloor watching everyone walking by either.
Barbara:
That is excatly what’s going on! As long it rap/hip-hop stayed within the Black community, nobody cared. But when “Billy” and “Suzy” in the suburbs learned how to drop it like it’s hot, suddenly it became a menace that needed to be stopped.
“Countless” is an exaggeration, but here’s a list of at least 15 (several others are described as having been murdered in an unspecified manner).
Let’s see what the Fundamental Baptist Information Service has to say (Thanks for the link, Brandon!):
No where does it say how it he was murdered or if it was connected to his music or lifestyle. FYI: It was a suspected robbery attempt.
And how is this connected to his music?
Again, how is this connected to the music?
Do I even have to say it?
It’s not the music that’s violent. It’s the cars.
Now let’s name how many white rock stars have died of drug overdoses.
The real question for me is this: Why does it transfer to the fans?
When the Red Sox win the championships and people riot, nobody blames the Sox. When people rush a soccer game, or get into bar fights over soccer, nobody blames Beckham. If you replaced “world cup Red Sox” with “rap group” and “Dead girl” with “dead black guy” would they still blame the police for the death? I can’t be so sure they would, i’m sorry to say.
I think it’s because the media has overpublicized hiphop violence (sells lots of papers). The problem as I see it is that the public rivalries and occasional shootings focus attention on the genre. And then selective perception takes over–just like increased traffic stops lead to increased convictions.
But it’s worth admitting that the “stars” of rap and hip hop have been more openly violent than the stars of other types of music. See, e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hip_hop_rivalries
That is like feeding cum to the media sharks. As a result, I don’t see the focus coming off any time soon, unless there’s a radical change.
The real question for me is this: Why does it transfer to the fans?
When the Red Sox win the championships and people riot, nobody blames the Sox. When people rush a soccer game, or get into bar fights over soccer, nobody blames Beckham. If you replaced “world cup Red Sox” with “rap group” and “Dead girl” with “dead black guy” would they still blame the police for the death? I can’t be so sure they would, I’m sorry to say.
I think it’s because the media has overpublicized hiphop violence (sells lots of papers). The problem as I see it is that the public rivalries and occasional shootings focus attention on the genre. And then selective perception takes over–just like increased traffic stops lead to increased convictions.
But it’s worth admitting that the “stars” of rap and hip hop have been more openly violent than the stars of other types of music. See, e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hip_hop_rivalries
That is like feeding [chum] to the media sharks. As a result, I don’t see the focus coming off any time soon, unless there’s a radical change.
duplicate post? It doesn’t seem to be going through.
that was supposed to be “feeding CHUM to the media sharks.”
[Fixed in the name of good taste. –Mandolin ;) ]
Angel:
To clarify, the list to which I linked has 30 items. 15 is the number who were explicitly listed as having been shot to death. I don’t know why the accidents were listed. Accidental deaths are often associated with irresponsible behavior (e.g. intoxicant abuse and/or reckless driving), but some cursory googling fails to turn up evidence that that was the case with any of these people. I linked to that page more for the data than for the analysis (in fact, the analysis made me kind of reluctant to link to it at all).
When the Red Sox win the championships and people riot, nobody blames the Sox.
The Red Sox don’t sing songs and make statements glorifying violence and misoginy (sp?) and encouraging their fans to not get the police involved when crimes are committed. At least, as long as the MFY are not involved.
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Looks like someone doesn’t like hair bands…
As usual, hair bands that don’t cop that attitude get ignored, much like hip-hop. I wonder why?