"Come on, Steve.... Anglo-Saxons everywhere are counting on you!" The drummer, a verbose, expansive black man, made sure we all knew what was at stake here: "Can the white man dance?" Here on a slow weeknight at Kingston Mines, a classic blues bar somehow stuck in the middle of our yuppie neighborhood, we had become the unwitting guinea pigs in a social experiment designed, presumably, to determine once and for all the answer to the nature versus nurture debate.
On the one hand, we had Charlie Love and his band, a group of seasoned showmen adorned in loose-fitting black leather, gaudy jewelry, and, in the case of the sweaty white saxophonist, a dark blue bandanna that looked as if it had seen better days. Then there was the rest of us, a smattering of businessmen, young professionals, and couples sharing a few drinks. Thus, a troubling dichotomy: the band playing like it's supposed to, all hand claps and shouted stories, and most of us sitting nuzzling our beers, vaguely considering tapping our feet. Given the choice of going about his business as usual, or shaking things up, Charlie Love (being, well, Charlie Love) chose the latter, political correctness be damned.
During a particularly thumping groove, Charlie eased his way to center stage and proceeded to execute some rather perturbing dance steps. The band chuckled, we chuckled. But then it became serious; he wanted someone to come up and join him in his gyrations. I exhaled only after he cast his searchlight on Steve, another mostly-motionless white man sitting alone behind us.
The moves were simple, actually, nothing more than a few steps and shoulder shakes. I've done far more after a few shots of Jager, although perhaps not with a crowd watching, waiting for me to make a fool of myself. As passable an imitation as Steve was able to pull off, there was one moment where his unmistakable whiteness got the best of him. Writhing to the beat, Charlie popped his collar up, gesturing for Steve to do the same. In a moment of realization, Steve stopped his dance, saying, "oh, let me unbutton it first." The palpable awkwardness of the moment was surpassed only by the absurd hilarity of the picture in front of us. Steve had become the poster child for incurable whiteness, and we had essentially paid $15 to sit and revel in our own lack of rhythm.
Though our increased energy eventually subsided, Charlie and his cohorts doubled their efforts to make clear that though we might not be the typical blues crowd, they weren't going to let that stop them from being the typical blues band. They attempted to mold us into the audience they wanted, even if it meant making us uncomfortable. Partway through the raucous James Brown cover they were playing, the band stopped. "We're not gonna play anymore", Charlie's drummer cried, "unless we get someone out here on the dance floor. This is the GODFATHER of SOUL!" No one budged an inch. The gauntlet had been thrown down, and we were failures, once again. That is, until the night's (white) emcee sauntered out to the floor, moving with the agility of an ailing buffalo, to perform an ironic, modified version of the twist.
As the band's last notes faded away before the break, I wondered what might have happened had we not been saved. Sure, the band's threat was an empty one, but their continued jests undoubtedly reflected their disappointment in our response. Their barbs focused on our most visible disparity -- our race -- but there was clearly more to the situation. They lauded the white saxophonist as he dove into his solos with suitable fire, and all but accepted the emcee as a member of their fraternity. Belonging to this select group, then, depended upon desire and/or chops -- neither of which we displayed with much zeal, save for Steve. The band made every attempt to welcome us into their world, and to overtly discuss the underlying factors that contributed to our division, saying, essentially, that these social rules could easily be torn down despite their truth. Even if we couldn't dance, that didn't mean we shouldn't.
Preceded by our beloved emcee performing a misguided cover of Eminem's "Lose Yourself", the Charlie Love band returned to the stage later that night to provide musical accompaniment to my blackened catfish sandwich. They promptly invited a member of the audience, a young-looking white kid who told us he was from Michigan, to join them on the stage. This time, the experiment brought results that no one expected. The kid pulled out his guitar and proceeded to blow everyone away with his best Stevie Ray Vaughan impression, leaving even Charlie himself fanning the flames from the monstrous licks. The band seemed a little shocked at first, then proceeded to join the young upstart in bringing the house down. The remaining crowd knew we had witnessed something great, and savored every last minute. It was perhaps a testament to the value of challenging the status quo, even if there is the possibility of discomfort and even embarrassment.
This explicit acknowledgment of differences is the reason I am wary of attending many hip-hop shows. As much as I enjoy the unbridled flouting of what is expected and polite, sometimes I'd rather just be left alone. I feel out of place and self-conscious when going to see my favorite MC's, mostly because I don't see myself as the fan the artist aims to please. Whether the need for my actions is real or perceived, I often mask my own uncertainties by attempting to blend into the crowd. While I might head to the blues club in a button-down (keeping the collar unbuttoned) and black shoes, for example, my attire for hip-hop shows is as casual as possible. Somehow, I think that wearing a black hooded sweatshirt will help me to feel more kinship with a crowd that is often different from me in both racial and social respects.
If I felt uneasy at being asked to dance to the blues, imagine the effects of an MC's exhortations to throw my fist in the air and sway from side to side. Live hip-hop thrives on crowd participation, as evidenced by the inevitable call-and-response sessions that punctuate every performance. While I cringe sometimes at the lack of energy at some shows I've been to, I'm not about to be the one to resolve the tension that such situations produce. My response at such times is to shrink to the back of the room, nodding my head to the beat and jamming my hands deep in my pockets.
My feelings of displacement were less intense when I attended Chicago Rocks, a recent showcase of independent Chicago hip-hop. Instead of feeling targeted for my race, I felt oddly embraced, or, better yet, unnoticed. More than half the crowd was white, and while the predominance of white faces might have subdued the rappers and the show in general in the past, somehow a perpetual enthusiasm permeated the venue.
When female rapper Psalm One burst on the stage and told the crowd to wave lighters in the air and chant "burn the city", she said it like she expected everyone to comply, instead of delivering her orders while smirking at the hopeless whiteness of the crowd. Of course, I didn't participate, and not just because I was without a lighter. But it wouldn't have felt all that weird.
Maybe my own comfort level with hip-hop and its culture is increasing, or perhaps there is an actual shift in how the artists relate to their undeniably changing audience. But several moments in the show indicated to me that the music no longer has to be a dirty little secret for its white listeners to savor in isolation. One of the first acts, Mic One, openly obliterated the gap between rock and rap, not through a vapid Linkin Park impression, but by actually paying homage to the music. His band whipped out such classics as CSNY's "Chicago" and, in a moment of tenderness, Radiohead's "Creep" for an appreciative crowd, alternating its legitimate show of respect with self-styled raps.
Their set ended in a clash of cultures, with Mic One taking a page from the hair-band handbook and smashing a perfectly good guitar into the ground. My friend nearly wept at the sight of such instrumental waste, but the significance of the action was not lost on me. By smashing that guitar, the rapper also laid to waste the notion that there are separate kinds of cool, and that that separation is necessary and permanent. He included the crowd in his show by nodding at influences he thought we might relate to, and made it clear, without saying it, that this acknowledgement did not require compromising his music's authenticity.
For the most part, Chicago Rocks focused on the audience's commonalities, rather than our disparities. Whether it was a simple mention that we all hailed from the same city (transplants like myself could only chant halfheartedly), or a derisive dig at governmental evil, the rappers made sure the audience was in it together. Immortal Technique, who actually comes from Peru, contributed an a-cappella verse covering every injustice known to man, building off the political rants he disguises as raps on his albums. By the time he rhymed "Haitians" with "enslavement", he had everyone's ear, and undoubtedly made us all forget what we might or might not have in common with our neighbors. Better to focus on Bush's oppression and its relation to larger international problems.
ven though the energetic raps by the members of Qualo involved a little too much shouting for my taste, they unified the crowd with shots at Kobe and the electric company ("fuck ComEd, for turning my lights off"). It didn't hurt that the night was filled with multiracial acts and nontraditional values, proving that we all possess characteristics that could limit our experiences, if we let them.
The artists who impressed me the most were the ones who thrived despite their differences, a good lesson for this uncertain fan. Perhaps I'm reading too much into what was simply an enjoyable concert, but it was such a contrast to the discontent I normally feel after leaving a hip-hop show. Chicago Rocks was certainly no dissolver of the racial and social tensions that continue to plague hip-hop, but at least for one night, they didn't seem to matter to me.
Unlike at Kingston Mines, where Charlie Love and company exposed and ultimately eradicated our undeniable differences, I felt at once accepted and ignored as I enjoyed Chicago Rocks. As fans, we all might prefer to be an invisible presence within the greater context of an artistic expression, to belong without explanation or even acknowledgement as a legitimate part of any movement or genre. But if this is what we expect at a concert, we might as well just stay at home and listen to a live album with the volume cranked up to eleven. The whole point of negotiating with music in a live environment is confronting the unexpected, engaging in the delight of something that has never quite happened before and may never happen again. As part of this deal, you have to be prepared to be held accountable for your presence, as it contributes mightily to the experience at hand. Without this agreement, whether spoken or left unsaid, the show suffers, and you might never get to witness an MC doing his best Graham Nash impression, or watch in awe as a little white boy masters the blues.
