My letter to Weekend Edition
Dear Weekend Edition,
I've often joked with public radio colleagues about the way NPR's newsmagazines cover hip-hop. Usually the joke is that rap only gets coverage when it's happening in a foreign language. After all, if it's in another language, then it's not rap -- it's world beats.
There's another form of coverage that crops up occaisionally, too. It's a sort of paternalistic, exoticist, "what is this 'rapping' music?" story that belongs in 1977, not 2007. Jon Kalish's story on the topic of subway car cyphers, which I just heard on Weekend Edition, was a perfect (and perfectly offensive) example of this genre.
This is the 21st century. Hip-hop's been around for 30 years. To get a picture of how inane Mr. Kalish's story was, imagine a piece about how kids are picking up guitars and drums and starting "rocking and rolling" bands. Then imagine that story running in 1983. Mr. Kalish's vague liberalisms about generation gaps don't dampen the problem -- if this is a personal story, then make it a personal story, about a man who doesn't understand an important cultural phenomenon of long standing. If it isn't a personal story, hire someone who understands what he's covering.
The philosopher Antonio Gramsci defined hegemony as power plus consent. National Public Radio, by virtue of being one of the most listened-to media organizations in this country, has plenty of the former, but I won't provide the latter. It is unnaceptable to me that after fifteen years at the top of the charts and thirty years on the cultural scene, hip-hop should continue to be marginalized not only by the so-called mainstream media, but also by public media. One of the reasons that I work in public radio myself is our mandate to represent the under-represented and shine light in the corners of our world that aren't illuminated by commercial media. Are we living up to that mandate when it comes to hip-hop? Absolutely not.
I understand that many people in National Public Radio's audience are older than I am, and didn't grow up with hip-hop as I did. But do we really live in a world where a report on the dominant form of popular music should have more of a "gee-whiz" tone than the report which immediately followed... on Carolina string band music?
Which reminds me... I both enjoyed and was horrified by that story, by Karen Michel. I was delighted when the Chocolate Drops' lead instrumentalist simultaneously defended her group against two classic NPR tropes by saying, "If there's a hip-hop song that we like, we'll cover it -- [but] we don't want to be one of those bands that's like, 'Carolina Chocolate Drops does hip-hop.'" (For those keeping score, those tropes she anticipated and defended her band against are, "hip-hop mixed with something else makes it acceptable to cover" and "black people who reject hip-hop"). I was appalled when Ms. Michel followed that comment with "For now, not to worry. The closest the Carolina Chocolate Drops get to beats is blowing on a ceramic jug." Can you imagine NPR covering a story in which a contemporary musican said he was going to cover a Bob Dylan song and the reporter followed that comment up by saying "For now, not to worry. The closest he'll get to a nasal whine is the snare on his MPC-3000 sampler?" You get the picture.
I want to clarify here that my dispute is not with Mr. Kalish or Ms. Michel. Both offered well-reported stories. I'm upset with the editorial practice that allows (maybe even encourages) the sort of pieces that normalize ignorance about one of the most significant American art forms of the past 50 years.
Jesse Thorn
The Sound of Young America
Edit:
Jon Kalish wrote a pretty vociferous response to my criticisms on the email list of the Association of Independents in Radio, and I've reposted it here.
Like this post? Click here to subscribe to the blog.
I've often joked with public radio colleagues about the way NPR's newsmagazines cover hip-hop. Usually the joke is that rap only gets coverage when it's happening in a foreign language. After all, if it's in another language, then it's not rap -- it's world beats.
There's another form of coverage that crops up occaisionally, too. It's a sort of paternalistic, exoticist, "what is this 'rapping' music?" story that belongs in 1977, not 2007. Jon Kalish's story on the topic of subway car cyphers, which I just heard on Weekend Edition, was a perfect (and perfectly offensive) example of this genre.
This is the 21st century. Hip-hop's been around for 30 years. To get a picture of how inane Mr. Kalish's story was, imagine a piece about how kids are picking up guitars and drums and starting "rocking and rolling" bands. Then imagine that story running in 1983. Mr. Kalish's vague liberalisms about generation gaps don't dampen the problem -- if this is a personal story, then make it a personal story, about a man who doesn't understand an important cultural phenomenon of long standing. If it isn't a personal story, hire someone who understands what he's covering.
The philosopher Antonio Gramsci defined hegemony as power plus consent. National Public Radio, by virtue of being one of the most listened-to media organizations in this country, has plenty of the former, but I won't provide the latter. It is unnaceptable to me that after fifteen years at the top of the charts and thirty years on the cultural scene, hip-hop should continue to be marginalized not only by the so-called mainstream media, but also by public media. One of the reasons that I work in public radio myself is our mandate to represent the under-represented and shine light in the corners of our world that aren't illuminated by commercial media. Are we living up to that mandate when it comes to hip-hop? Absolutely not.
I understand that many people in National Public Radio's audience are older than I am, and didn't grow up with hip-hop as I did. But do we really live in a world where a report on the dominant form of popular music should have more of a "gee-whiz" tone than the report which immediately followed... on Carolina string band music?
Which reminds me... I both enjoyed and was horrified by that story, by Karen Michel. I was delighted when the Chocolate Drops' lead instrumentalist simultaneously defended her group against two classic NPR tropes by saying, "If there's a hip-hop song that we like, we'll cover it -- [but] we don't want to be one of those bands that's like, 'Carolina Chocolate Drops does hip-hop.'" (For those keeping score, those tropes she anticipated and defended her band against are, "hip-hop mixed with something else makes it acceptable to cover" and "black people who reject hip-hop"). I was appalled when Ms. Michel followed that comment with "For now, not to worry. The closest the Carolina Chocolate Drops get to beats is blowing on a ceramic jug." Can you imagine NPR covering a story in which a contemporary musican said he was going to cover a Bob Dylan song and the reporter followed that comment up by saying "For now, not to worry. The closest he'll get to a nasal whine is the snare on his MPC-3000 sampler?" You get the picture.
I want to clarify here that my dispute is not with Mr. Kalish or Ms. Michel. Both offered well-reported stories. I'm upset with the editorial practice that allows (maybe even encourages) the sort of pieces that normalize ignorance about one of the most significant American art forms of the past 50 years.
Jesse Thorn
The Sound of Young America
Edit:
Jon Kalish wrote a pretty vociferous response to my criticisms on the email list of the Association of Independents in Radio, and I've reposted it here.
Like this post? Click here to subscribe to the blog.
posted by Jesse Thorn at Sunday, January 28, 2007
15 Comments:
The sad thing is listening to the introduction to the story how Kalish recontextualizes what the cyphers are doing to the generation gap of the 1960's it seems the point of the story was to get an older guy unfamiliar with hip-hop to try and report on "these nutty kids." Perhaps that was to make the piece comfortable listening to most of Weekend Edition's audience. It's cynical but they probably aren't wrong.
I've listened to public radio since the days of my junior high carpool. I enjoyed it because it made me feel older than I really was. While everyone else at my school debated whether N'Synch or Backstreet Boys were the better boy band I knew when the latest Gore Vidal book was coming out. I think it's great that there's this intelligent alternative to the mainstream media but now at 23 I realize that most of public radio doesn't count me as an audience. That's sad because the mainstream media is dying to get the dollars of a young white male. I don't want most of what it offers, though. I want an alternative, an alternative that public radio could provide for me. I find that alternative in TSOYA, This American Life and occasionally in The Treatment. I wish there were more.
I also hope if public radio does try to "skew younger" it won't be an 45-year-old's idea of being hip. Just let intelligent young people do good work. That's why TSOYA works. Hell, It would be okay if public radio didn't try to go after people my age as long as they don't alienate people my age with reports such as the two Jesse noted.
Maybe NPR's target audience on that piece was Phineas T. McGillicuddy...
I don't understand why they can't get someone who knows what they are talking about to illuminate the older audience. I think they're also talking down to their audience. They assume that if they told them straight up about what was going on that they wouldn't get it. Or maybe I'm giving the listeners of NPR too much credit.
Jesse - I agree with you 100 percentage. Also, Chaz Kangas is the man. I saw him at an open mic last time I was nyc, he does it live.
As a public radio producer, I agree 100 percent. Hear hear. -Jo
As a another public radio producer (37 years of age), I think Jesse's comments were spot on. Sadly, I do think that the reason in part is the nature of Liane Hansen's show - which for me is barely listenable. I pray they recruit a new host and managing editor soon. Time for new blood. I agree with Ian - the intro is terrible. But once the piece started, I hoped the producer would make a real point about WHY the rappers were taking to the subways. Is it because it's a different brand of hip-hop? Or because they're reacting to something in the business? Or is it a protest of some other nature? Because the story didn't go into any depth about WHY, it was just: gee whiz, rappers on the subway. And as a native new Yorker, I can tell you I see subway musicians every day. Nothing extraordinary about this story. Just that it could have benefitted from the producer/editor asking the question, "what is the point of this story?" and focusing the piece.
I just played this for my students and man, did it ever get a reaction, a bad one. This piece is exactly why I have such a hard time convincing them to come into the public radio fold. They can't relate to it. Plus, they come away thinking public radio is just a bunch of old stuck up white people. Can I blame them? No.
Thank goodness there are alternatives to the cash cow newsmagazine shows of NPR. As a producer, I gave up on Morning Edition, WESAT and WESUN a long time ago. I still hold out hope for Day to Day, ATC and WATC though. Plus, I do
believe that certain member stations do "get it" and are providing more creative and progressive programming: WBEZ, WNYC, and KUOW, for instance.
So I say, why even pitch to NPR? Let it die. It's audience is.
Thanks to all who have weighed in on my story from Weekend Edition Sunday about rappers performing on NYC subways. It was quite an experience tagging along with the hiphoppers those two nights I went out with them. Much to the chagrin of Mrs. Kalish, I have taken to wearing my jeans so low that my boxers show.
I'm glad my editor at NPR let me handle the story in both a featury and slightly personal way. One of my regrets is that I didn’t get to use any sound of a rapper known as Zeps. He was partial to gangsta rap but had a day job at a law firm.
Zeps was one of the rappers who used words such as “bitch,” “fuck” and “nigger” in front of children and elderly people in the trains and in a ferry terminal. He was one of about three dozen 20-somethings who were either rapping or “dancing on the seats” while the train was making its way downtown one Sunday evening. Maybe you had to be there but I think the scene certainly warranted a “gee whiz” approach to this story. I guess it could have been done any number of ways. But for this piece, to get at the issues involved, and considering that it was for a weekend show, I decided to bend over backwards to bring as many listeners as possible into the story.
Whether NPR does that too much isn't for me to say, though I am aware that the Arts Desk, for which I toil, has generated pieces recently about the rapper Juvenile and the rise of reggaeton in the Bronx.
The assertion that I don’t understand what I’m covering strikes me as a rash judgement that ignores my 27-year track record with NPR. I know, I know, the record doesn’t always count for much in the blogosphere. But please know that I started doing stories about hiphop culture when this young podcasting lad was still in diapers. I've done pieces about graffiti artists, rappers participating in an anti-apartheid recording project, Ice Cube’s endorsement of a Nation of Islam “scholarly work” and mixtapes, to name a few.
I happen to free-lance for NPR, so the suggestion by my little podcasting friend that “it's OK to hire someone who gets it,” or as he later puts it “hire someone who understands what he's covering,” doesn’t really apply. NPR acquires free-lance pieces from many people, so I would invite those who think my tone or approach to this hiphop story was wrong to try your hand at reporting for NPR. Hey, they’ll even work with free-lancers who are still in their teens, but that usually invovles some adult supervision.
jk
Manhattan-based newspaper/radio reporter Jon Kalish...
woah, Jon. easy does it. I do stories for NPR too and I think anynomous above has a point about the 'why' behind the story. none of us are ever to old to learn. or in this case, to be critiqued. separate yourself from the work.
"a report on the dominant form of popular music "
"dominant form"
Boy, there's a statement that deserves debate.
Craig -- while country music might sell a bit more than hip-hop, I'd say that most of what's called "pop" music is so heavily influenced by hip-hop as to be an offshoot of the genre (despite, with some exceptions, a lack of rapping). That's why I called it the dominant form.
Jesse,
I don't think there is a dominant form anymore. I could make your argument about influences from a number of genres.
I am amused that current.org has a link to your comments on the same page where there's a story about Bryan Hurt's film Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes a critique of the some of the destructive aspects of hip-hop.
BTW, I am about to be out of email range, so if I don't respond to any reply right away, that's why.
I agree with Jesse. And almost as bad as the hip-hop coverage is their internet coverage. All their talk about YouTube and how weird it is that a rock group could make it big with nothing but the internet and a music video with nifty treadmill moves...hard to listen to. But to be fair, Terry Gross did a pretty good interview with Andre3000 recently, and I remember the fresh air music critic talking about how great Ghostface's new album is. Don't give up on them. They're trying.
One of the things that I've always really admired about Terry Gross is that when she doesn't get it, she knows that she's an interviewer -- she can ask. It isn't always perfect, but it's a very good approach in my opinion.
great letter.
i'm 31, and it bothers me a lot that people think they can still ignore rap and it will go away. even my 27-year-old boyfriend, who got through a really liberal liberal arts education, won't listen to a single rap song without complaining. his mind is as shut tight to it as my 50-year-old mother's.
reporting like this ("not to worry") on npr makes even educated people think it's still the done thing to dismiss a huge and long-standing part of our culture as, to use my mother's very clever phrase, "rap crap."
dismissing rap is not the done thing, old people and sheltered youngsters. when you do it, it makes your pants look like they're up over your belly button, all protestations to the contrary aside.
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