Civil Rights Music

by Reiland Rabaka

  The truth of the matter is that Motown’s music and its entrepreneurial acumen were culled from urban African American communities that had longstanding traditions of asserting their “implicit politics” through black popular culture, black popular music, and successful black businesses. By eventually becoming one of Detroit and the country’s most successful producers of black popular music and most successful black businesses in the midst of a racially segregated American society, Motown was indeed perceived as “political,” and that is regardless of whether or not we have consensus on whether Berry Gordy, Motown, or its individual artists comprehended it as such. As is the case in white America, black America has its own unique interpretive communities, customs of cultural appropriation, and political practices, which do not cater to the whims and wishes of megastars, music industry moguls, musicologists, sociologists, political analysts, or cultural critics. Speaking directly and eloquently to this issue in Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit (1999), Suzanne Smith offered remarkable insight:

  Motown’s role as a producer of black culture and its ambitions in the business world did not coexist without conflict and contradiction. At Hitsville, U.S.A., commercial concerns about the marketability of a recording often stalled and sometimes canceled projects that management deemed too politically controversial. The political climate at Motown Records was highly variable. Throughout the civil rights era the company wavered between willingness and caution when asked to produce recordings—musical or spoken-word—that involved overt political or racial messages. Sometimes an atmosphere of race consciousness prevailed, and other times a politically conservative ethos dominated.

  Motown’s internal ambivalence about its relationship to the Civil Rights Movement was, however, only one side of the story. On the other side were popular music audiences, local artists, and national civil rights leaders, who had their own ideas and disagreements about the meanings of Motown’s music and commercial success for the movement. At the national level debates about Motown’s role in the struggle for racial justice mirrored larger divisions within the movement itself. From 1963 to 1973 . . . the national civil rights campaign shifted from the unified fight for integration—exemplified by the March on Washington—to a more fractious battle for Black Power. Given these transitions, Motown could not avoid becoming a contested symbol of racial progress. Motown’s music symbolized the possibility of amicable racial integration through popular culture. But as a company, Motown represented the possibilities of black economic independence, one of the most important tenets of black nationalism. (18)

  All of this means that the connections between classic Motown as a metaphor and soundtrack for the Civil Rights Movement and contemporary rap as a metaphor and soundtrack for the Hip Hop Movement are many. First, mention should be made of Smith’s emphasis on the conflicts and contradictions surrounding Motown as “a producer of black culture and its ambitions in the business world.” Motown’s dilemma in the 1960s seems to prefigure the commercial rap vs. conscious rap debates that have been an integral part of the Hip Hop Movement since its inception. Many of the more critical members of the Civil Rights Movement believed that the “Motown sound” was not the soundtrack to the Civil Rights Movement, but the soundtrack to “selling-out,” black pop music that more or less encouraged African Americans to abandon the core principles and practices of the Civil Rights Movement. When rap music crossed out of the ghetto and into mainstream America in the mid-1980s it was denounced by old school rap purists. Supposedly “real” rap music could not be understood by wealthy and white America in general, and sheltered white suburban youth in specific.

  Similar to Motown’s brand of classic rhythm & blues, at its earliest stages rap was increasingly censored and sanitized for a wider and whiter audience. Which is to say, as with Motown in the 1960s, “commercial concerns about the marketability” of many early rap recordings “often stalled and sometimes canceled projects” 1980s music industry executives “deemed too politically controversial,” too racially-charged, or too ghetto-centered. Reflecting the panorama of the cultural, social, and political views and values of the post-Civil Rights Movement generation, from the mid-1980s onward rap music’s politics have been “highly variable,” sometimes culturally conscious, politically progressive and extremely critical of racism, and at other times rap music has been extremely “politically conservative” and supportive of the status quo, especially on issues revolving around women’s rights and sexual orientation.

  Harking back to the jump blues era, a lot of early rap downplayed the tragedy of black life during the Reagan and Bush presidencies (between 1980 and 1992) in favor of playing up the comedy of black life. Just as dance, comedy, and novelty songs helped to popularize rhythm & blues amongst a wider and whiter audience between 1945 and 1965 (e.g., Louis Jordan, Clarence “Bull Moose” Jackson, Robert “H-Bomb” Ferguson, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Napoleon “Nappy Brown” Culp, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and, of course, Chubby Checker), after old school rap helped to establish the genre and announce that it was more than a novelty between 1979 and 1983, by 1984 the Fat Boys’ comedy rap came into vogue, paving the way for comedy rap artists and groups such as the Beastie Boys, Heavy D & the Boyz, Biz Markie, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Kid ‘N’ Play, Chubb Rock, Sir Mix-A-Lot, and Fu-Schnickens. Before gangsta rap arguably eclipsed all other forms of rap in the 1990s, comedy rap demonstrated that rap was not merely about dancing, romancing, and the hardships of ghetto life, but that it could also be light, tell funny stories, and make listeners laugh. Similar to classic rhythm & blues, the topical and lyrical range of rap music is a lot broader than many of its erstwhile critics realize, which is one of the reasons their criticisms frequently cause fury-filled and vitriolic responses from hip hoppers and their elder allies.

  By bringing so many diverse groups together, at least in terms of a shared aural experience, classic Motown music foreshadowed and laid a foundation for every major form of black popular music that followed, including rap. Motown music in the 1960s, to put it poorly, was the rap music of its time. It captured the comedy and tragedy, and sonically signified the dancing and romancing of 1960s segregated black America in the process of desegregating and integrating into mainstream America. Moreover, Motown also symbolized black powerbrokers and black businesses in the process of desegregating and integrating into corporate America. With its increasingly young white clientele, in the 1960s Motown was both a metaphor for, and one of the major black popular music soundtracks of the Civil Rights Movement. Its challenge to America’s musical segregation mirrored African Americans’ social and political challenges to America’s racial segregation. Touching on this point in his classic essay “Crossing Over: 1939–1989” (1990), Reebee Garofalo importantly observed:

  In its early stages, the Civil Rights Movement, as embodied by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had two predominant themes: non-violence and integration. As other, more militant tendencies developed in the black community, such a stance would soon appear to be quite moderate by comparison. At the time, however, it seemed to many that the primary task facing black people was to become integrated into the mainstream of American life. It was in this context that Motown developed and defined itself. . . . Gordy once commented that any successful Motown hit sold at least 70 percent to white audiences. Working closely with Smokey Robinson on the label’s early releases, he laid rich gospel harmonies over extravagant studio work with strong bass lines and came up with the perfect popular formula for the early civil rights era: upbeat black pop, that was acceptable to a white audience, and irresistibly danceable. This was the “Motown sound.” (90)

  Similar to a lot of commercial or pop rap, in spite of classic Motown’s more or less apolitical lyrics, many of its songs contained metaphors and came to have alternative meanings within the cultural, social, and political context of the Civil Rights Movement. Even the most apolitical lyrics can take on new meanings unf
athomed by songwriters, singers, musicians, and record companies when the lyrics resonate with the cultural conventions, social sensibilities, and political praxes of a brutally oppressed people determined to rescue and reclaim their human, civil, and voting rights. For instance, a short list of classic Motown’s songs that took on special socio-political meanings within the context of the Civil Rights Movement would most certainly include: Martha Reeves & the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street,” “Heat Wave,” “Quicksand,” and “Nowhere to Run”; Smokey Robinson & the Miracles’ “I Gotta Dance To Keep From Crying,” “The Tracks of My Tears,” “Going to a Go-Go,” “Abraham, Martin, and John,” “Whose Gonna Take the Blame?,” and “Tears of a Clown”; Marvin Gaye’s “Can I Get a Witness?,” “I’ll Be Doggone,” “Ain’t That Peculiar?,” and “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”; the Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go?,” “Stop in the Name of Love,” “Love Child,” “I’m Livin’ in Shame,” and “The Young Folks”; the Temptations’ “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” “Beauty is Only Skin Deep,” and “Ball of Confusion (That’s What the World is Today)”; and, finally, the Four Tops “It’s the Same Old Song,” and “Reach Out I’ll Be There.”

  Given the social and political situation during the early 1960s, Gordy’s idea to create crossover “upbeat black pop” that was “irresistibly danceable” was yet another mark of his managerial and musical genius. Motown’s predominantly white consumer base eventually made it one of the most influential record companies of the 1960s. When viewed from the “implicit politics” of black popular culture perspective we witness that as it increasingly exerted its influence on mainstream American popular music and popular culture Motown was transformed into a glowing symbol of the unprecedented economic and cultural opportunities available to African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement years. In this sense, Motown stars were understandably appropriated by most members of the Civil Rights Movement, who viewed them as more than musicians but, even more, as strategic cultural, social, and political icons. The fact that megastars such as Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Eddie Kendrick, and Mary Wells were all working-class and working-poor black youth raised in the brutal Brewster-Douglass housing projects prior to their Motown fame and fortune made them, for all intents and purposes, icons of integration. However, the success stories of the handful of African American ghetto youth that Motown took from rags to riches were frequently redeployed by white America in its efforts to quell legitimate critiques coming from the Civil Rights Movement concerning the mistreatment that the black masses continued to experience throughout the 1960s.

  This means that America’s culture wars are not new, and the utilization of black popular music and black popular culture as a political football, as it were, is not new either. Culture wars were a major part of the Civil Rights Movement, and they have been and remain at the heart of the Hip Hop Movement. The initial backlash against rhythm & blues in the 1950s and 1960s foreshadowed almost identical attacks on early rap music and hip hop culture in the 1980s. However, by the time of rap’s emergence America was a much more integrated society, and early rappers benefitted from the struggles and gains of both the Civil Rights Movement and classic rhythm & blues.

  Conclusion: Rhythm & Blues, Sonic Integration, Social Integration, and their Aftermath

  Rap music in the 1980s reflected the Hip Hop Generation’s simultaneous acceptance and rejection of certain aspects of the Civil Rights Movement. On the one hand, early hip hoppers seemed to accept and sometimes openly celebrate the legal and psychological gains of the Civil Rights Movement: Brown vs. the Board of Education; the Montgomery Bus Boycott Movement; the March on Washington; Martin Luther King’s Nobel Peace Prize; the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, etc. On the other hand, coming of age in the aftermath of the radical rhetoric and militantism of the Black Power Movement, early hip hoppers also registered the Hip Hop Generation’s frustrations with post-Civil Rights Movement racism and classism, among a host of other inimical issues. Particularly frustrating for early hip hoppers was the growing nostalgia concerning the Civil Rights Movement and the 1960s in general, which frequently omitted the insidious elements of desegregation and integration.

  Indeed, African Americans struggled for, and were legally granted their civil and voting rights in the 1960s. However, in the 1980s the U.S. remained segregated to a certain extent, and as racially and economically divided as ever. Rap in the 1980s not only unveiled America’s increasing decadence, but it also revealed that for many African American youth Martin Luther King’s dream was a dream that had little or no bearing on the non-stop nightmare of their daily lives. Hence, a lot of 1980s rap was not so much a rejection of the Civil Rights Movement as much as it was a refutation of wholesale African American (among other non-whites’) assimilation under the guise of integration. Rap music’s increasingly in-your-face aesthetics was a far cry from the innocuousness and piousness presented in 1960s Motown music. But, no mistake should be made about it, both 1960s Motown music and 1980s rap are linked because they served a similar function for black folk during intense periods of cultural development and social struggle: they implicitly expressed via black popular music the explicit politics of black popular movements.

  After gospel and rhythm & blues the final major form of black popular music that served as a soundtrack for the Civil Rights Movement was rock & roll. Indeed, the origins and evolution of rock & roll reveal what I am wont to call the “black roots of what ultimately became white rock.” With the emergence of rock & roll black popular music did not merely “cross-over” à la Motown. It inspired widespread white youth imitation and emulation, and ultimately the desegregation and integration—even more, the African Americanization—of white youth, their popular culture and popular music. Consequently, in our efforts to further understand the ways in which the unsung singing civil rights soldiers put into play the “we can implicitly sing what we cannot explicitly say” aesthetic, in the next chapter we turn our attention to the genesis and formative phase of rock & roll and its relationship with the Civil Rights Movement.

  Notes

  1. For further discussion of Thomas Dorsey’s life and legacy, and for the most noteworthy works which influenced my interpretation here, see Boyer (1995), Darden (2004), De Lerma (1973), Heilbut (1997), J.A. Jackson (1995, 2004), I.L. Johnson (2009), Kalil (1993, 2000), Kemp (2011, 2015), G.P. Lee (2008), Marovich (2015), Reagon (1992, 2001), M.C. Reed (2008), and R.L. Taylor (2013).

  2. The black ghetto youth-centered or “ghettocentric” nature of black popular culture and black popular music, essentially from the blues to rap, has been expertly explored by Back (2000), M.P. Brown (1994), Dyson (1997, 2002), M. Ellison (1985), L. Ford (1971), Forman (2000), N. Kelley (2002), R.D.G. Kelley (1994, 1997), Maultsby (2001), Maultsby and Burnim (1987), M.A. Neal (1997), and Rosenthal (1988).

  3. In The Hip Hop Generation Fights Back!: Youth, Activism, and Post-Civil Rights Politics (2012), Andreana Clay contended that “[s]ocial movement representations of youth suggest that young people have always been at the center of political activism and social change. Youth have been characterized as the backbone of the Civil Rights, Feminist, Anti-War, and Gay & Lesbian Liberation Movements” (3). However, “[l]ittle research has been conducted on adolescence as a significant identity from which to frame social justice organizing,” even though “[n]ew social movement scholars have long focused on the importance of identity to social movement activism” (3). For further discussion of black ghetto youth’s contributions to past and present African American political culture and social movements, and for the most noteworthy works which influenced my interpretation here, see Bynoe (2004), Bynum (2013), Chong (1991), de Schweinitz (2009), S.M. Franklin (2014), Gellman (2012), Ginwright (2006), Ginwright and James (2002), Joseph (2006a, 2006b), Kinchen (2015), E.S. Levine (1993), A.B. Lewis (2009), Morris (1981, 1984), Ogbar (2004, 2007), Ransby (2003), Van Deburg (1992), and Williamson (2003).
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br />   4. My interpretation of the ghetto, and more specifically the black ghetto, has been informed by Geschwender (1971), Glasgow (1981), Hannerz (1969), Hilfiker (2002), N. Jones (2010), Kusmer (1976), Lightfoot (1968), McCord (1969), Meister (1972), Osofsky (1996), Owens (2007), Polikoff (2005), Rainwater (2006), H.M. Rose (1971, 1972), Schulz (1969), Spear (1967), Tabb (1970), Venkatesh (2000, 2006), Vergara (1995), R.L. Warren (2008), and D. Wilson (2007).

  5. My interpretation of working-class and poor African Americans’ lives and culture has been informed by E. Anderson (1981, 1990, 1999, 2008), Halpern (1997), Halpern and Horowitz (1996), Huntley and Montgomery (2004), Jaynes (1986), B. Kelly (2001), R.D.G. Kelley (1994, 1997), Lewis and Looney (1983), Lewis-Colman (2008), K.L. Phillips (1999), Roll (2010), and W.J. Wilson (1987, 1997, 1999, 2009).

  6. My contention that black popular music has consistently served as the bridge between black political culture and black popular culture, as well as a crude kind of social, political, and cultural barometer allowing us to measure the atmospheric pressure in black America, has been indelibly influenced by Abbott and Seroff (2002), Baraka (1963, 1969, 1987, 1994, 2009), Burnim and Maultsby (2006, 2015), R. Ellison (1964, 1995a, 1995b, 2001), Ellison and Murray (2000), A.C. Jones (1993), Jones and Jones (2001), Lornell (2010), A. Murray (1973, 1976, 1996, 1997), M.A. Neal (1998, 2002, 2003), Peretti (2009), Ramey (2008), and C. Small (1998a, 1998b).