Right To Rock: The Black Rock Coalition And The Cultural Politics Of Race

by Maureen Mahon

The original architects of rock ’n’ roll were black musicians including Little Richard, Etta James, and Chuck Berry. Jimi Hendrix electrified rock with his explosive guitar in the late 1960s. Yet by the 1980s, rock music produced by African Americans no longer seemed to be “authentically black.” Particularly within the music industry, the prevailing view was that no one—not black audiences, not white audiences, and not black musicians—had an interest in black rock. In 1985 New York-based black musicians and writers formed the Black Rock Coalition (brc) to challenge that notion and create outlets for black rock music. A second branch of the coalition started in Los Angeles in 1989. Under the auspices of the brc, musicians organized performances and produced recordings and radio and television shows featuring black rock. The first book to focus on the brc, Right to Rock is, like the coalition itself, about the connections between race and music, identity and authenticity, art and politics, and power and change. Maureen Mahon observed and participated in brc activities in New York and Los Angeles, and she conducted interviews with more than two dozen brc members. In Right to Rock she offers an in-depth account of how, for nearly twenty years, members of the brc have broadened understandings of black identity and black culture through rock music.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Race, Politics, African American

336 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2004

Reviews

[Gina · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I'm reminded of the physicality of live rock; it fills your body, reverberates inside you and entrances you."

This is very academic -- an anthropology dissertation -- and yet it is about rock, and about race, and fills in some things that I did not know that are very interesting to know, including how class and economic levels correlate with musical taste, and the experience of being a musician, trying to make it, and how much the capitalism/racism combination in the music industry mess that up.

Glad I read it.

[Ingrid Grant]

I started this book thinking it was in line with my personal experiences of being Black and into rock music. This is about that, but it focuses more on the Black Rock Coalition members and the author's anthropological study. Also, she says that she focuses on the generation just after integration and I'm several years after that one.

[Wes Freeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of the NYC-based Black Rock Coalition (BRC) that helped foster (among many others) the career of guitarist Vernon Reid. Gives an interesting look at a music scene of African-American rockers that has existed since the mid-80s, where Tackhead are a household name and cultural politics get more nuanced than an Ingmar Bergman marathon. Living Colour, Me'Shell Ndegéocello, they've all been part of the contentious BRC, where talented musicians and writers gather to check out each other's bands and discuss the music industry that won't recognize their right to rock. Informative, and kinda inspiring. Actually gave it a fourth star just now.