Hi! It’s been a while, but hey, it’s my blog; I can neglect it as much as I please.
Things have been… pretty good overall. Wow, it feels so weird to say that, I’m so used to feeling whiny and sad. There have been a lot of revelations: the “It’s ok to be who you are. Duh.” revelation, the “Do things for yourself” revelation, and the “Maybe you should stop scaring boys away” revelation, to name but a few. But the one I want ottalk about today, is the “Why the f*ck do people say I act white just because I listen to rock?” revelation. Well, it’s not really a revelation, more an observation.
Still, it pisses me off.
When I was a kid, I loved teenpop. It was a good era for teen pop, we got pre-crazy Britney, N*Sync, The Backstreet Boys… Aaaah, those were the days. Insipid lyrics? Check. Matching outfits? Check. Killer dance moves? CHECK. Good times all around.
As I got older though, I didn’t go for Hip Hop and RnB like most of my black friends. I very slowly started listening to more alternative stuff, namely The Strokes, Maroon 5 (I think it’s pop, but people seem to classify it as alt. rock, so whatever), Coldplay. I just became really disenchanted by other music. Mostly, I think it was their music videos. Seriously. Can you say “objectification of women”? Because, have you seen those vidoes? It’s like lite-porn. In some cases, it’s like ACTUAL-porn. It makes me sick to my stomach when I see some woman gyrating across my screen in hotpants and matching bra. I’m not going to rant about it, because god knows that there are enough of those floationg around. The point is, I wasn’t having it. I preferred rock and alt. rock videos because they seemed to have (a little more) substance. Well, at least they had less scantily clad women. (I must note, however, that half naked women seem to be spreading into all genres. Sigh.)
I don’t know, the rap industry seems to be made up of a whole lot of smack talk, trashing woman and sexism. Please, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. It just seems that way to me.
Luckily though, I found music that spoke to me. Right now, I guess I would list my favorite bands as the following: My Chemical Romance, Panic At The Disco, Death Cab For Cutie, Gym Class Heroes, Taking Back Sunday, Fall Out Boy, Cobra Starship, The Hush Sound and The Academy Is… And that’s just the mainstream stuff (there’s a whole other list involving classical music and jazz, even the ocassional folk tune), but I don’t have hours to sit here and make a list. Another time, perhaps.
The point is, my music is pretty different from most black people that I know. I suspect that things would be different for me if I lived somewhere else, but Southern Africa is still pretty… well, I guess racially-turbulent is a good way to phrase it. People have this misconception that music is divided into different categories, and if you’re a certain colour, you fall into a certain category. Unfortunately, I seem to have fallen headfirstinto the “white” category. And really, that doesn’t bother me. It seems to bother a lot of other people though. Since I don’t like 90% of our local music, I have been labelled as “unpatriotic” and “a sellout”. Hold up people. I never said that it wasn’t GOOD music, or even that you shouldn’t listen to it. All I said was I didn’t like it. Sheesh.
The question I get asked the most is some variation of “you know you’re like a white person, right?”. No. I wasn’t aware of that. I thought that I was just a person who liked more rock that Hip Hop. I guess I was wrong. People tend not to take me seriously. They think that I’m pretending to be someone that I’m not, or that I think that white people are better than black people. But all I know, is that rock speaks to me more than Hip Hop. 50 Cent never gave me hope, Gerard Way did. And if people don’t get that, it’s cool. But don’t you dare judge me becasue I’m notjust like you. (Hey! I found my revelation! I shall call it the “People who think like this are pretty dumb” revelation. I think it’s catchy.)
