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Black Rock Coalition Review
This fall marks the 10th anniversary of the Black Rock Coalition (BRC), founded on Friday the 13th of September 1985 by Vernon Reid and a horde of artistic radicals, including Blue Note producer Craig Street, film producer Konda Mason, bassist Melvin Gibbs (currently with the Henry Rollins Band), and yours truly.
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What originally began as a four-hour-long bitching session has grown into a multifaceted support network for musicians working in what is sometimes euphemistically called "alternative black music." People ask, If rock 'n' roll is black music, isn't it redundant to call it the Black Rock Coalition? Some, like me, cringe at the term "alternative black music." Labels have their uses in music-even when they misrepresent an idiom. But some, like "black rock" and "alternative black music," lack a certain dignity-possibly because they seem to be reactive rather than proactive, conceding too much power to the opposition. |
From the BRC perspective, the opposition has always been record company executives and radio programmers. In other words, there's more closet racism lurking behind an A&R man's fake grin than can be found in a stadium full of Van Halen fans. This, however, doesn't just point at white folks in power, but to black radio and record executives as well. For example, Charles Neville once told me of a black radio programmer who broke it down for him: Not only was the Neville Brothers' music not considered black music anymore; B.B. King's and Ruth Brown's weren't either! And this right after the Nevilles had released "Sister Rosa," a tribute to Rosa Parks.
For many of the people who founded the BRC, the extreme forms of segregation that persist in today's music business are at odds with the way we as black people listen to music. The very existence of black charts harkens back to the day when recordings by black artists were sold almost as contraband under the rubric "race music." Strangely enough, things were better in the '70s. So-called rock radio was broad enough to include Stevie Wonder, B.B. King, and Santana alongside Led Zeppelin, James Taylor, and Brian Eno. And on the black stations, it wasn't unusual to hear Funkadelic and the O'Jays back-to-back with Hall and Oates, David Bowie ("Fame," anyone?), or even Elton John, whose "Bennie & the Jets" was a big hit among black folks in my hometown of Washington, D.C., a.k.a. Chocolate City.
We didn't have MTV, but aside from radio we found out about new music via word of mouth, magazines, and attending concerts on the regular. Back in the day, you'd see a bill with two known headliners like Bobby Womack and Weather Report, and the supporting acts would be, maybe, the Last Poets and Malo (the band of Carlos Santana's brother, Jorge). When you went out to hear live music, you were expecting to hear original and personal conceptions of melody, harmony, rhythm, and improvisation.