Don't Hate the Player, Hate the Game
Occasionally on this blog I will discuss matters of concern to the hip-hop community. I don't usually drop names, but this site has received plenty of "hits" from, among others, The Game and C-Murder (aka C-Miller), so I know the people are listening.
Tonight at the Merriweather Post Pavilion, Wilco's opening act was Philadelphia's favorite sons, The Roots. They spent much of their set trying to get the audience to dance and/or participate, but to little avail. Even more mainstream fare, like covers of "Jump On It" and "Rapper's Delight," did not impel the audience to "get down." Eventually they gave up, with visible frustration.
I wish they'd asked me first; they could have saved their breath. See, Wilco's fan base is as lily-white as the Heritage Foundation, and is only capable of head-nodding or, if whipped into a true frenzy, toe-tapping. I've seen the good intentions of Mos Def and Jurassic 5 dashed on similar rocks of apathy by mostly Caucasian crowds in Seattle. It may be genetic, but most Anglos cannot help but care when they are asked to put their hands up in the air and wave them. I don't want Black Thought and The Mighty, Mighty ?uestlove to feel down about this, but unless the margaritas they serve at the venue are made a helluva lot stronger, ain't no way Whitey's gonna dance.
posted by EB at 12:27 AM
3 Comments:
I take exception to the notion that white people can't dance. While you may be right that they probably won't dance to hip-hop, especially the crowd at a Wilco concert, caucasians have been dancing to electronica for decades. Once again, you've revealed your bias against a wonderful genre that has been progressing at a much faster and more interesting rate than any other currently in rotation.
1:03 AM
Electronica sucks.
1:05 AM
After my recent Sleater-Kinney concert experience, I've also noted that white people no longer like to dance at rock/punk shows. My diagnosis of the problem is not so much the race -- it's the fact that geeky, hipster music fans of bands such as Wilco & Sleater-Kinney have taken over and they are too goddamn self-conscious and enamored with seeming cool and "above all that dancing stuff" to shake a leg. Little do they know, the musicians they so revere think they're a waste of space for not getting into the act.
1:26 PM
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