Art And Survival: Issues & Action

On Combating the Cultural and Economic Triage of African American Recorded Music- Series Article #1

1. UNDERSTANDING THE TIMES

oli-gopo-ly -- control of a commodity or service in a given market by a small number of companies or suppliers.
Webster's New World College Dictionary 4th Edition (Macmillan, 1999)

By KEITH R. McKINLEY

Today, as in our past, a lot of African American recorded music will not be advanced in our society simply because many African American recording artists and their advisors fail to develop and maintain independently owned entrepreneurial platforms to operate from. This failure is precisely why prior generations of African American recording artists and music entrepreneurs now concede that African Americans have very little influence over most of the cultural products that are marketed to the rest of the world as "music derived from the African American cultural experience."

Non-African American business owners in alliance with non-African American owned mainstream media, earn enormous profits by telling the rest of the world what African American music is or is not. With their "pay for play" alliances (the buying and selling of public access and favorable media treatment), non-African American business owners and non-African American mainstream media set the standard in the public imagination for what music content and which recording artists are deemed worthy of public attention.

The non-African American business owners I am referring to are an oligopoly of five global corporations. Some economists and media analysts have estimated that this oligopoly of five corporations control almost 90% of the market share for recorded music. According to the media scholars, Edward S. Herman and Robert W. McChesney in their collaborative book, The Global Media (1997), "recorded music is the most concentrated media market in the world."1

This is the market driven world we have inherited at the dawn of the 21st Century. It is a world where, in the minds of many, the margin of profit determines the importance and value of everything. In doing so, the margin of profit preys upon the lowest common denominator in our society and it celebrates mediocrity, homogeneity, hedonism, rugged individualism and the blanket acceptance of materialism, among many other social ills.

Too many African American recording artists and music entrepreneurs (along with their advisors) continue to make peace with this world by equating "the acquisition of capital" (getting paid) with "self-determination" (freedom to choose one's own course of action and way of being in the world).2 As a consequence, many African American recording artists and music entrepreneurs have contributed to socializing the mindset of generations of African Americans to be predisposed to sell away everything they create pursuant to mainstream America's idealized notion of "making it".

Viewing recent history and present day reality with a critical eye, it is painfully apparent that over the last thirty years or more, the concept of self-determination seems to have escaped the mindset of many African American recording artists and music entrepreneurs. In saying this, I am in no way trying to avoid acknowledging the historical effects that racial inequality and the persistence of white supremacy has upon African American entrepreneurial initiatives in the so-called free market. Without question, in order for most of the music I have heard in my lifetime, to have had even a chance of being heard by me, generations of African American recording artists and music entrepreneurs had no option other than to enter into business with non-African American business people. Conversely, when the African American recording artist and music entrepreneur did not, for whatever reason, enter into business with non-African Americans, they were faced with the harsh economic reality of being denied mainstream access to American consumers of all demographics. This reality remains just as prevalent in the economic life of African Americans today as it did in the past.3

For this reason, I believe we have now arrived at a time in our shared history, where the African American recorded music cultural and economic initiatives that remain outside of the control of global oligopolies are vulnerable to predatory elimination by the very nature of how a global oligopoly perpetuates itself.

On some levels it's all really very simple. In a nutshell: If the global oligopolies can create a world where they can control all of the viable mechanisms for the distribution and consumption of all cultural information and products, nothing will be able to exist in the world that is outside of their commercial web of influence.4

Do not let the mass media fool you with these stereotypical images of African American success stories in the music industry. Check to see who "really" owns and controls the mechanisms for how music product is distributed and then you will always understand who has the real power. African Americans are often just an image on a product used to deliver desired consumer bases to corporate bank accounts. This point was made clearer to me in a music industry article published in the December 1994 edition of Black Enterprise magazine which noted that: "despite black music's sizable contribution to the industry's economic health ($10 billion in 1993) African Americans remain largely excluded from the profit centers -- production and marketing, packaging and distribution -- of the business."5

At ArtandSurvival.com, one of our on-going editorial missions will be to critically examine what the consequences are to African American people as a result of the concentration of market power in the media and culture industries. From the onset of our discourse, it is imperative that we acknowledge, that although a few African Americans have been included into the corporate boardrooms of the global media, generally, the decisions about what music will be viably marketed and distributed is decided by an economic elite of non-African Americans. In the book, Race in the Global Era: African Americans at the Millennium, author Clarence Lusane characterizes the situation like this:

"The near monopolization and concentration of the production and distribution of cultural commodities by forces far removed from the black community or its authority means that a small, unaccountable, and generally white elite is making decisions about the content of music and where it will ultimately end up."6

For this reason, I submit that any serious attempt to examine the plight of African American recorded music as a form of cultural reproduction, must also include a critical examination of the market practices of the few global corporations who control the market for recorded music by oligopoly power.

With the enormous market power of the recorded music oligopoly and other concentrated media corporations, we are living in an age where controlling ideas in the form of cultural commodities is one of the primary methods by which most human beings are socialized.

And what are we being socialized into? -- Consumers. We live in a society where being a citizen in a democracy is now equated with having the means to be a passive consumer of homogenized products.

With the notion of a "homogenized product" in mind, the very nature of the concentrated recording industry comes into focus. Their economic practices result in the reproduction of sameness and the elimination of diversity. On the point of reproducing "sameness," in the book, Communication and Race, University of Pennsylvania, Professor of Communications, Oscar H. Gandy, Jr., offers the following assessment:

"The incentive within communications markets is to produce a commodity that the largest possible audience would like to consume and then deliver it to them at the lowest possible cost. . . This economic reality generates the tendency towards sameness rather than diversity within network-based media systems."7

{Note: Professor Oscar H. Gandy, Jr. will be In Dialogue at our next edition of ArtandSurvival.com}

The last thirty years of corporate America's commodification of African American music styles has resulted in the present day situation where the only utility African American music creativity serves in the market place is to be a resource for selective cultural fragments to be extracted and marketed to larger white consumer bases. This is especially the case after so many African Americans have allowed themselves (and their children) to participate in "crossover marketing schemes" which operate to systematically transfer African American cultural identity and economic potential over to white recording artists and white consumer bases.8

With respect to the commercial exploitation of selective cultural fragments," Herbert I. Schiller, University of California, San Diego, Professor Emeritus of Communication offers this insightful analysis:

"Speech, dance, drama (ritual), music, and plastic arts have been vital, indeed necessary, features of human experience from earliest times. What distinguishes their situation in the industrial-capitalist era, and especially in its most recent development, are the relentless and successful efforts to separate these elemental expressions of human creativity from their group and community origins for the purpose of selling them to those who can pay for them." 9

To put it as simple as I can: Maintaining the cultural integrity of art is simply not in the global corporate equation. The global corporate agenda is all about the manipulation of culture and cultural identity to maximize corporate profits. Recent history confirms that the political and economic practices of the global oligopoly is inherently opposed to any "viable"effort on the part of African American recording artists and music entrepreneurs to exercise their self-determination.

There are no simple solutions to these complex problems. In analyzing the complexity of these issues, I am cognizant of the fact that the problems confronting African American recording artists (and diverse cultures in general) are part of a much larger global reality in which millions of people of various races and cultures are viewed as surplus people by "other people" with more resources.10 For this reason, I am acutely aware that the global predicament of people being viewed as surplus people strikes at the root of the economic and cultural disenfranchisement experienced by African American recording artists and music entrepreneurs.

It is all interrelated. And therefore, thoroughly understanding the times we are living in is the first step we must take in order for us to be able to figure out how to reconstruct our lives in ways that will give us a real chance at reclaiming our future.

1. Edward S. Herman and Robert W. McChesney, The Global Media (London: Cassell, 1997, p. 43). return to article

2. My embracement and use of the language, "equating the acquisition of capital with the acquisition of self-determination" comes from my reading of cultural critic, bell hooks in her book, Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (New York: Routledge, 1994, p. 48). In this book, as in some of her other works, Ms. hooks uses the following language: "equation of black capitalism with black self-determination." return to article

3. For a discussion of the basis for the point expressed here, see Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality (New York: Routledge, 1997, pp. 46-47): "Barred from the most lucrative markets and attempting to provide high level goods and services under the constraints of segregation and discrimination, blacks remain the only group who have been required to take what Merah Stuart in 1940 called an 'economic detour' . . . The African American, by contrast . . . 'must turn to a detour that leads he knows not where'. What he knows is that he must seek his customers or clients 'from within his own race,' no matter the business. And in doing so, he must compete for those customers with others who simultaneously enjoy access to greater and more lucrative markets". See also, Roger E. Weems, Jr., Desegregating The Dollar: African American Consumerism In The Twentieth Century (New York: New York University Press, 1998, p. 116): In a chapter titled appropriately, "A Tale of Two markets," Weems states, "As the 1980s drew to a close, notions of substantive African American economic progress had been all but dashed. Although the number of blacks who possessed upper-class status stood at an all time high, a significant number of African Americans still found themselves at the bottom of the U. S. economic totem pole. Moreover, while collective black spending power had increased, the primary beneficiaries of this phenomenon were not African American consumers but the corporations that sought their relatively limited dollars." return to article

4. For an insightful discussion which supports my notion of "controlling consumption," see Jeremy Rifkin, The Age of Access: The New Culture Of Hypercapitalism Where All Of Life Is A Paid For Experience (New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 2000, pp. 102-103): "Controlling the customer is the final stage in a long commercial journey marked by the increasing wresting away of both ownership and control of economic life from the hands of the masses and into the arms of corporate institutions . . . In the new century, organizing consumption becomes as important as organizing production was in the last century . . . Controlling the customer means exactly that: being able to hold and direct his or her attention and manage the miniscule details of each person's life experiences." return to article

5. Music Industry Overview, Black Enterprise (December 1994 : 84). (Since the publication of this particular article in 1994, in recent years published reports in other sources have listed the annual revenue in the recording industry at between 30 to 40 billion dollars). return to article

6. Clarence Lusane, Race In The Global Era: African Americans At The Millennium (Boston: South End Press 1997, p. 91) return to article

7. Oscar H. Gandy, Jr., Communication And Race (London: Arnold Publishers 1998, p. 131). return to article

8. For an insightful historical and sociological reading of how the concept and practice of "crossover" adversely effected the cultural and economic development of black music, see, Nelson George, The Death Of Rhythm And Blues (New York: Plume/Penguin, 1988, Introduction & Epilogue, p. 200): In the introduction George defines 'crossover' "as the industry term for shifting the sales base of black performers to larger white audiences." In his Epilogue, George concludes "that black America's assimilationist obsession was heading it straight toward cultural suicide." return to article

9. Herbert I. Schiller, Culture Inc.: The Corporate Takeover Of Public Expression (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 31). return to article

10. My use and political understanding of the terms "triage" (used in the title to this series article) and "surplus people" (used in the conclusion of this article) is based upon my reading of Richard L. Rubenstein's, The Age of Triage: Fear And Hope In An Overcrowded World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983). return to article

The next installment of this series article will discuss the concept of self-determination as it applies to recorded music. The article will also critically examine how the concept of "crossover music" works to destroy African American self-determination.