EMP WRAP-UP
I spent the week at the EMP Conference up in Seattle, now in its 4th year. For those who don't know much about it (which I'll assume is all of you, except those who've actually been), the EMP Conference was begun to bring together pop music writers, scholars and artists together for three days in order to present papers and dialogue about a diverse range of issues. The New Yorker's Alex Ross wrote up a somewhat snarky review of the 2003 Conference, though now that SF/J is on the conference committee, I think it's safe to assume we won't see a repeat of that same, semi-dismissive attitude. Moreover, the Conference has improved immeasurably in the last two years, especially as more women and people of color have been in visible attendence, thereby shaking up its image as being the provincial bastion of white male critic/scholardom (though, in reality, pop music writing and study is still largely dominated by white men). (1)
For me, what I've gotten out of the conference, especially this year, is just a renewed vigor for ideas. That may sound odd, but when you make your living from intellectual work, ideas are your lifeblood...so when you hit spots where you feel uninspired and cynical, you're basically choking off your own career. EMP reinvigorates my passion for thinking and writing about music in all its myriad complexity and beauty.
Equally important, this is a great opportunity to just hang out with superbly smart and stoopid cool people that I only get to see at events like these. On Friday night, I waited over 90 minutes for a table at a Seattle soul food restaurant but I hardly minded since it gave me a chance to hang out and talk with folks like Ann Powers, Daphne Brooks and Sonnet Retman . (It's funny too - Sonnet, Ann and now I, all have young daughters and I realize that having kids suddenly means you belong to this club where most everyone is happy to have you as a fellow member.)
Not to mention, I got to spend some quality time with folks that I converse with regularly but rarely get to see because of geographic distance: Jay, Hua, Jon, Joe, Julianne, etc. Bloggas unite! (Well, ok, Joe still needs to get a blog. Hop to it!)
Enough name-dropping though. Here's a few presentations that stood out to me (good or otherwise).
TO CONTINUE READING...
1) Ernest Hardy, a writer at the LA Weekly whom I have always had tremendous admiration for, spoke on, "Un(w)rapping the Faggotry in Hip-Hop," which examines how even a culture as overly heteronormative and conventionally masculine as hip-hop hides many layers of queerness beneath its frame. My favorite comment from him came during the Q&A session when someone asked why albums covers for recent CDs by 50 Cent and The Game are so homoerotic. To paraphrase Hardy's response: "what's funny is that all these super-macho, homophobic rappers show up to their photo shoots where they're styled by the most flaming queens out there. They end up being dressed up and made over to resemble these queens' fantasy images of them." Hate it or love it.
2) NYU's Jaylyah Burrell gave a fantastic paper on the figure of the "bourgie broad" in hip-hop songs, i.e. middle class women who become targets of scorn by rappers like Jay-Z and Kanye West (think Jay's "So Ghetto" or Kanye's "All Falls Down" video). What's so great about Burrell's paper is that it taps into a rich set of discourses around not just class, but gender, race, male/female relationships, etc. What I also thought was interesting is that it's not cool to be a bourgie broad but these rappers will brag about how bourgie they've become - I mean, Jay is rapping about his Evisu jeans, okaaaay? I think the key difference is that rappers rap about heir self-made upward mobility whereas the bourgie broad is assumed to be either a trustafarian or attained her status through a man's money, but almost never her own struggle.
3) Joe Schloss gave a kick ass presentation on b-boy anthems such as the Incredible Bongo Band's "Apache," and Jimmy Castor's "It's Just Begun." What was particularly spectacular was the fact that Schloss - who's been studying and practicing b-boying the last two years - gave a presentation to illustrate how the anthems work. However, even without having to see Joe pull off some nice handstands (I suspect Jay Smooth will bust out the digi pics very soon), his presentation was excellent in its ability to explain the role of these b-boy classic songs withing the larger history and community of b-boys. Joe is probably the sharpest new scholar on hip-hop that I know out there and it's amazing to me that no forward-looking university has given him a tenure track position yet. He's a remarkable teacher and scholar. NYU - holla at my boy.
4) UCLA's Robert Fink gave an incredible paper at last year's conference, a breakdown of the history of the ORCH 5 chord - which you have ALL heard even when you didn't know it (two words: "Trans-Europe Express" or, if you prefer, "Planet Rock"). This year, Fink tackled the question of how and why certain rappers sample from classical music, specifically breaking down how Xzibit and Dr. Dre flipped on Bach for "Symphony in X Major" and Rza and Ghostface chopped up more Bach on "Soul Controller."
Keep in mind - as Joe and I have often lamented, there are many scholars who present on hip-hop when it's instantly clear that they have relatively little knowledge (let alone personal investment) in the music/culture, etc. I'm not trying to play gatekeeper - I'm just being real about this. Hip-hop is hot in the academy and scholars (myself included) are known to bandwagon just as much as journalists and other culture-watchers do.
I don't know if Fink spends his off-time listening to DJ Whoo Kid tapes or polishing a complete set of ATCQ vinyl - what I do know is that he does his homework. In his paper presentation, he clearly demonstrated that musicology can contribute something to our understanding of hip-hop and vice versa and that Fink represents both spheres responsibly. At one point, he was describing how Rza chopped up a Bach concerto and remarked, "as it's well known, Rza doesn't quantize," which is common knowledge among "heads" but it's rare that I've seen a professional musicologist seem as comfortable with explaining how Rza's production techniques work while simultaneously arguing that Ghostface's romanticizing of death is reminiscent of Wagnerian operatics. I might not have understood all the Italian terms Fink was using but his paper was compelling in its depth and scope.
I'll have more to add in a part two, later this week.
1. Speaking on this issue, I found Bob Christgau's comments in a recent Seattle Weekly interview with Michaelangelo Matos to be a bit confusing. From what I recall, Xgau actually raised a concern about the conference's lack of diversity during the first (or maybe it was the second) year. In the interview, unless I'm reading him wrong, he seems dismissive of that complaint. It's not a big deal or anything, but I was struck at how odd that read.
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