Starr and Waterman Chapter 2

Bland

The music that was played and distributed by the mass of white Americans, dance was stuck in a rut where it was merely a display of superior properness, and linear movements in geometric shapes. For this culture The Waltz was almost too crude for their superior scruples. The Waltz, a dance that featured precise steps and (deep breath) holding hands! The strict dancing could be seen as a result of the music coming out at the time. The dance that was “focused more on uniformity and restraint that improvisation or the expression of emotion” (26 American Popular Music, Starr Waterman). That’s the waltz. Definitely not an embodiment of cool like the black styles of music and art were at the time. Music in the new industry eventually became stealing what was hip, and making it not. Or seen in this quote, “a new genre of music arises within a marginalized community and then moves into the mainstream of mass popular culture, in the process losing much of the rebellious energy that gave rise to it in the first place”—bland (22 American Popular Music, Starr Waterman).  The musical style at the time reflected the structure of American culture, brass bands, made up of former war musicians. The bands promoted nationalism, structure, and the American army, while this was happening, African music promoted dancing, syncopation, and differentiating rhythmic structures through improvisation.

Bland

Coincidentally, the name of the African-American who wanted to enter the ranks of the white music business. Bland was a black man trying to enter a business ruled by white songwriters stealing black’s music. Bland was raised in a middle-class home and dreamed of having the same level of success as his white counterparts. Sacrificing his cool—bland, he was.

Bland is not the word for what was happening to black communities while minstrels entertained fellow whites by what they fantasized as black culture: stupid, uncivilized, unworthy. Disgraceful is a much more fitting word. Blacks were treated unworthy of whites respect or their recognition of them as humans and not just animals. But really they were tired of being so bland and didn’t want their era of rigidness to come to a stop. They did the best they could to suppress black people and their communities, but we know that eventually their indignation would not succeed in holding down a proud community. Their wits matched, the ultimate irony is the cakewalk dance. While whites thought they were ridiculing black dance they were only further popularizing the dance propagated by blacks to make fun of white people’s prude dancing. Not only is that bland, that’s embarrassing.