After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs.
"Do I Do" by Stevie Wonder
If you're looking for a single song that encompasses nearly everything Stevie Wonder is about, I'd suggest "Do I Do," a bouncy number that's light in spirit and infectiously catchy, delivering the strong shot of unfettered joy that's always been an essential part of The Wonder Method. Not only that, but the song's impromptu rap and Dizzy Gillespie guest appearance extend Wonder's career-long effort to articulate a coherent vision of black culture, encompassing the history of jazz, blues and soul along with his community's roots in Africa, Latin America and the islands. In his heyday, Wonder sang about ghetto hardship and racism, but he also sang about romantic bliss, having children, and the pure pleasure of making music. Along with The Cosby Show, Roots, the early films of Spike Lee, and the '80s records by Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions, the '70s output of Stevie Wonder sought to broaden White America's understanding of Black America, emphasizing history, philosophy, political engagement, and a formidable artistic legacy.
As I entered college, armed with my copy of Innervisions and my Lee/P.E. fandom, I made the embrace of African-American culture an essential part of who I intended to become. My college roommates and I listened to jazz and hip-hop and Fishbone as much as we listened to New Order and Nirvana. We watched Richard Pryor movies and Boyz N The Hood. We even put up a big Malcolm X poster in our apartment about two years before Lee's movie came out. But were we as fully engaged with all these cultural artifacts as we thought we were, or were we just associating ourselves with them in a feeble attempt at cool? And if it was the latter, were we inadvertently insulting the ideals of the artists we thought we loved?
I started contemplating this in earnest one day shortly after I graduated from college, when I had dinner at my grandparents' house. I was wearing my usual early '90s outfit of a flannel shirt over a music-themed T, and at some point my grandmother—hardly the most politically correct woman in the world—asked, "Who's the black man on your shirt?" It was Thelonious Monk. And as I tried to explain to her who Monk was and why I was wearing a big picture of his face on my chest, I flashed back to a time back in high school when my AP history teacher gently chastised me for wearing a Buckwheat button on my jacket. I only bought the Buckwheat button because of Eddie Murphy's SNL sketches, and my teacher understood that, so she was very nice about the whole affair. But she still let me know in no uncertain terms that the Buckwheat image was racist. The Thelonious Monk picture on my T-shirt was hardly racist, but nevertheless, I started to feel silly about wearing it, because I began to wonder if I was promoting Monk, promoting my fandom of Monk, or promoting something else entirely.
Throughout this project, I've had moments where I started to write something about the racial politics of rock criticism, but aside from a few offhand comments here and there, I've backed away from having the big discussion, for a couple of reasons. First off, it's hard to write about race without coming off as some combination of condescending, defensive and self-congratulatory. I already do plenty in these pieces to make myself sound like an asshole; how much worse would it be if I took pains to point out that the oft-mentioned high school friend who loaned me Dead Kennedys and Sex Pistols records was black? (But hey, isn't in clever how I snuck that fact in the backdoor?) And there's an even trickier problem: If I do talk about "one of my black friends" or about my relationship with certain black artists, the language I use can become unintentionally exclusionary all too easily. There's a presumption built into a lot of conversations about race in the media, and that presumption is this: I'm white, so I assume you're white too. Now let's talk about "them."*
It's because of this persistent quandary of how a white guy writes about black musicians without sounding like a total tool that I get irritated at some of my fellow critics' self-righteousness over matters of race. Indie-rock bands like The Arcade Fire have been slammed for being essentially funkless, while Robert Christgau used to make it his mission in life to spend a portion of each year's Village Voice "Pazz 'n' Jop" opening essay complaining about young whippersnapper critics and their Afrobeat-free ballots. And the blogosphere went nuts a couple of years ago when a few critics blasted The Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt for rarely having anything positive to say about rap or contemporary R&B.
Generally speaking, I think it's a fine thing when people point out the under-representation of minorities in the public sphere. There's such a tradition of collegiality to the way business gets done in this country that until someone comes along and points out that, for example, a vast majority of NFL players are black but only a tiny percentage of coaches are, then the situation is unlikely to correct itself. I don't even have a problem with readers or peers noting that a critic doesn't seem to write about a broad enough range of music—though in the latter case, when you're talking about an individual as opposed to an institution, I'm not sure that shame is the answer. Institutions might be motivated to change based on the will of the people, but individuals tend to get kind of pissy.
Worse, if you skewer a person for matters of personal taste, you often do the artists you're championing a disservice. Unless you're speaking as an enthusiast, wanting to share something you love with fellow music fans, then you can easily come off as an ideological bully, and thereby inadvertently imply that rappers and R&B artists don't have any intrinsic value beyond the credibility they bestow. Before long, it all turns into an insidious game of fine distinctions, where critics pick through each others' Top 10 lists and bicker over whether the black artists on them are black enough. Since there's no way to win that game, some critics—me, for example—quickly give up trying.
One of the most astute contemporary commentators on race and popular culture over the past decade has been musician Mark Stewart, known professionally as Stew. On his records, Stew rides the same waves as Brian Wilson, Arthur Lee, Mark Oliver Everett and Elliot Smith, in that he likes subtle melodies, colorful lyrics, and inventive arrangements, both in his adventurous full-band recordings and in his mellower solo work. His music ranges from the airy and angelic to the jaunty and theatrical, and throughout he returns repeatedly to the question of what it means to be an individual in a society that wants to typify him or exoticize him. Sometimes Stew makes this theme the centerpiece of his work, as in the Tony-winning musical Passing Strange, and sometimes it's just embedded and inextricable, as in the romantic character sketch "North Bronx French Marie."
"North Bronx French Marie" by Stew
From his initial entry into the music scene—with the provocatively titled band The Negro Problem—Stew has acknowledged that liking his music is bound to create some difficulties. Does embracing Stew make white rock fans better-rounded, able to appreciate the infinite varieties of the African-American experience, or does it say something negative about those fans that they're drawn to a black musician whose music sounds so white-friendly? More to the point, is everybody as fed up with these kind of quibbles as I am, or are they still a vital part of our ongoing healing process in this country?
Put yet another way: Will I ever be able to wear a Stew T-shirt and not feel self-conscious?
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(*For an especially egregious example of what I mean, check out this video, in particular the comments around the 35-second mark.)
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Pieces Of The Puzzle
Stevie Wonder
Years Of Operation 1961-present
Fits Between Bobby Womack and Prince
"Too High" by Stevie Wonder
Personal Correspondence I thought I knew Stevie Wonder, just from hearing his hits on the radio—and on TV, and movies, and in commercials—practically since birth. But when I made Innervisions my first Wonder LP purchase prior to my freshman year of college, and heard the springy synths and stairstep melody of "Too High" bouncing out of my Walkman headphones, I realized I knew nothing. Suddenly, so much made sense: from the upbeat ghetto vibe of Fat Albert cartoons to Prince's entire career. I may have the details wrong, but I recall reading that back in 1973 Wonder gave a preview party for Innervisions that required music critics to be blindfolded and bused up to his offices, where they listened to the record with their blindfolds still on. He wanted to give the writers a feeling for what it was like to live in his world, and I can only imagine what it was like was to undergo that kind of sensory deprivation and then be exposed to the beating heart and universal scope of Innervisions. (Or Fullfillingness' First Finale, or Songs In The Key Of Life, or whatever record this anecdote actually applies to.) Wonder's been known to overestimate how long his songs need to run, and he's got an unfortunate addiction to sap, but the explosion of creativity he experienced from 1970 to 1982 is one of those miraculous runs that you shouldn't scrutinize too much; you should just enjoy. If you treat those records like the immersive experience Wonder intended them to be, you may start to understand what "in the key of life" means. This is music that describes the intermingled pain and celebration of daily existence.
Enduring presence? Wonder's unassailable '70s catalog has become a staple of American Idol contestants, who tend to miss the relaxed tunefulness of his songs in their rush to show off their scales. And it's because of AI that some of my former favorite Wonder tunes have fallen off my iPod playlist. (Sorry, "Overjoyed." Later, "I Wish.") Wonder also hasn't done his reputation any favors with his last couple of albums, which stagger saccharine ballads, inane up-with-people social commentary, and straining-to-sound-contemporary funk. Ultimately though, I'm not too worried about Wonder's long-term legacy, in the culture at large or in my record collection. I know I can always spin Innervisions, and be transported back to the vivid, playful, informative, multi-cultural '70s I grew up in—or that I least saw every afternoon on Sesame Street. Wonder didn't just win Grammys, sell records and inspire legions of one-man-band musicians; he offered a take on life and music that was downright utopian.
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