Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Why don't black kids like punk?


Why don't black kids like punk and alternative rock? I don't know. Maybe it's because they have been excluded from so much in white society that they just want to connect more with the music that speaks to their culture ie. rap. Why did I connect so well with alternative rock and punk? One explanation was that it was the immediate voice of my generation. I was always more interested in the melody and the song structure more than the lyrics though. That's not to say that I don't know or was not interested in the lyrics of songs I just paid more attention to the music itself. Anyhow, I connected well with aggressive and faster music like NOFX, Nirvana and Weezer because I was a hyper kid with lots of energy. Also, I identified well with more experimental rock like Pavement, Ween and Erics Trip because I was also interested in more artistically slanted composition. However, I was never interested in rap. A lot of my friends were interested in rap when we were younger but I just never identified with it at all and I hadn't ever liked anything I heard. I thought it was repetitive and boring and slow. I identified with a bigger and faster sound. However I can see now why a lot of kids in Kingston were interested in it: Because we had no black culture to learn from or connect with at all. Rap was distant and strange and new and white suburban kids were interested in that. A lot of kids loved to mimic the identity of rappers because they seemed dangerous and different and although everyone wants to fit in when they're young they also want to be different and unique. To be honest it was a very hard line to balance on and I always sucked at trying to be different and comfortable with myself. This was because I was different than most kids I knew when I was young and I didn't know how to fit in because I didn't know what I was interested in. And I wasn't interested in sports which is what EVERYONE was interested in. When I found music I realized what I was interested in finally and I started feeling more comfortable and confident. But I'm getting off topic.
Now as I have mentioned before their were very little visible minorities in Kingston. The minorities who were present wanted to fit in or just grew up with white music like everyone else and were obviously going to be interested in it. My friend Ali Kadeer was a Muslim who was into hardcore music so loud and fast it was incomprehensible. Johnny Manicat a Pilipino kid from the burbs who was the leader of a skate punk band. Mike Butler was a jazz saxophone player and although he tried he was still the whitest black kid I have ever met. So, instead of having actual black people in our city white kids created their own division of ethnic diversity through music. Punk kids who would skate out front of the church on Princess st. would have to endure white kids who thought they were black cruising by in Honda Civic's with obnoxious sound systems and blasting Puff Daddy so loud out of their subs they would set off parked car alarms. It's kind of like in Jurassic Park when their are only female dinosaurs and they spontaneously changed sexes in order to breed, such was a really white town lacking black culture. Some kids had to take it upon themselves to listen to rap and call each other "niggaz" and wear big white jeans from Stitches. God Bless Styles and Flo aka Chris Stebans and Andrew Wagger the original gangsters of Bayridge.

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