Dorf (2009) is short for “dead, old, retro or foreign”. Jody Rosen at Slate.com came up with the term to get a handle on what it is about the black music that NPR plays. You find the same sort of black music at Starbucks and the New York Times Magazine.
If you have ever noticed that out-of-date black music is respectable among well-to-do whites while the current stuff never is, that is dorf.
On occasion NPR will have a Jill Scott or a Santigold, but by and large their black artists are dorf:
- dead: Michael Jackson (now that he is dead), Mahalia Jackson, Bobby Short, Albert Ayler, Sam Rivers.
- old: black vaudeville, jazz, blues, Motown, old school hip hop, Booker T. (still alive), Smokey Robinson, Living Colour, Death (1970s), Run DMC, Solomon Burke.
- retro: soul revivals, Little Jackie, Ryan Shaw, Brown Bag AllStars, Lenny Kravitz.
- foreign: anything African or anyone with the last name of Marley, Oumou Sangare, Rokia Traore, BLK JKS, Staff Benda Bilili, Amadou and Miriam, Blick Bassy, Cesaria Evora, Andy Palacio.
You might say, “Well, it is not like NPR plays Britney Spears either.” In fact many NPR stations spend much of the day playing utterly dorf music like classical and jazz.
True enough, but they also push plenty of white indie rock: current stuff by living, breathing American artists working in a current style. None of it dorf, but nearly all of it white.
To assume that NPR is not being racist at some level you have to assume that the quality of black music sank like a rock sometime in the early 1990s and never recovered, at least not up to the levels of indie rock, African music and Little Jackie.
One could argue that, but I doubt that is what is going on here. Because dorf is not just an NPR thing or even a current upper-middle-class white thing. I first noticed dorf in the 1980s:
- The opening credits of “The Big Chill” (1983). It has an all-white cast but it starts with Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” (1968), a black song from 15 years before.
- In “Pretty in Pink” (1986) Duckie, who plays a white teenager, knows all the words to Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” (1966), a black song from 20 years before.
But meanwhile old school hip hop was at its height at the time. Back then it was dismissed by whites (and many blacks) as being “too ghetto”, but now it has become respectable in the very same circles.
And jazz went through the same thing too: at first it was just music that poor blacks listened to. Not only did whites look down on it, so did middle-class blacks. But now the very same songs, in their dorfitude, are utterly respectable. Why is that? It is not like the music has changed.
Angela Davis noticed this dorf thing too among white people: if she spoke with a foreign accent, whites would be way nicer to her.
See also:
- Slate: Jody Rosen: The DORF Matrix: Towards a Theory of NPR’s Taste in Black Music
- SWPL #116: Black Music that Black People Don’t Listen to Anymore
- Little Jackie: The World Should Revolve Around Me
- The girlhood of Angela Davis
- hip hop
- acceptable blackness
- white guilt
- How white people think
- White American music
Abagond 
Wow, I never looked at in that way. Wow, interesting perception.
I think that there is truth in this idea however, it has always seemed to me that white people, in general, have a greater appreciation for black music that’s classic, obscure, wordly and/or experimental. Way more than blacks do.
Look at any R&B act or black artist who doesn’t perform mainstream R&B/rap. Most of their fanbase is white.
Whites, the world over, have always had a strong appreciation and love for progressive black music. Wayyyy more than blacks do.
Some of the examples used above are misguided. Michael Jackson was transcendant. Everyone loved him. They just starting loving him even more after his sudden passing. Also, whites were always the biggest supporters of rap music from day one. Remember, most blacks in the industry thought of rap as uncouth, ignorant and lowly. It was the white Jewish hipsters and moneymakers who helped elevate the genre and artform to the height that it enjoys now.
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Also,
Why don’t blacks support progressive or classic black music?
Why is the audience at every jazz, blues, reggae, Afro-beat”, black rock or future-minded rap/R&B show that I’ve attended ALL WHITE? Why don’t black Americans support these artists and keep the tradition going?
Before criticizing whites, maybe some people need to take a look at themselves.
Also, to answer the the topic’s original topic: Many whites are more receptive to a black person who doesn’t remind them of other black people. Ask Obama or Kanye West.
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Right: for many genres of black music, the audience is largely white.
Agreed about Michael Jackson. He is in his own category.
Keep in mind that record sales among the white masses is not the same thing as cultural respectability among the NPR set.
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I don’t think this has anything to do with race. Modern pop music made by white artists isn’t respected either.
NPR caters to “intellectual” types and music that fall into this DORF category is foolishly considered high class and intellectual among pretentious music snobs.
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Then why play indie rock? That is not dorf.
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“Why don’t blacks support progressive or classic black music?”
i like dorf, i know plenty of bp who appreciate the old school, jazz, motown stuff and support new and upcoming/upstanding artist. coem to the jazz fest in baltimore. How about the black arts fest in ATL? you know i’m getting really sick and tired of people acting like bp dont’ appreciate our culture and trying to make it out that whites support the “True,” black culture more than blacks do. we lie in the damn culture, we breathe it and eat it.
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prime example: i remember watching these white kids dancing to lindy hop, you know lindy hop and they were pretty damn good, it was clear they had lessons, it was a competition, but they were good. at 1st i was kinda like damn, its a shame bp don’t appreciate this stuff, its a shame other people are appreciating our artform, but then that same nite, i was watching this step dancing/ club dancing people to hip hop (baltimore stuff) and i was looking at them and I thought to myself wow alot of the stuff these club dancing kids are doing is like an offshoot of the stuff the white kids were doing w/ the lindy hop, but modernized. But I talk to the kids who do the stuff and they’ll tell you, that’s just how they dance and i felt better and that’s when i realized that our culture comes from within, its in our blood and no one can take that away from us or beat it out of us. How would these kids know to dance the way they were and they were doing difficult dances akin to the lindy hop stuff w/ no real training. so no we do appreciate our culture, we breathe it daily and its in our blood.
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also its mostly wp who support the “trashy,” stuff they put out today soulja boy aka coonery in action. When tupac and the real stuff was out, they wanted him jail, same w/ ray charles, so what are you talking about?
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Yup. This is nothing new. Black folks create a music form and then immediately drop it to race off to the next new thing. Whites tend to have a more classical approach. Buddy Guy, BB King or many other blues or jazz musicians would starve if they could only rely on the black audience.
Also music is more intimate to people. Blacks don’t like to attend music shows in which they are the minority and neither do whites. Some whites may like black music but they aren’t overly fond of black people. (Ted Nugent is probably the poster child for this stance)
There’s an excellent book by Charles Shaar Murray titled “Crosstown Traffic” in which Eric Burdon tells of discussing black music stars with a white female fan who knows as much about soul and blues as he does. He asked her if she had caught a recent Otis Redding show and she said “Are you crazy? The place was full of n*****s!”
Not much has changed.
But I do think that music in general and black music in particular has lost something since about the seventies.
Why aren’t black audiences out there supporting The Meters or Ben Harper or Burnt Sugar or Otis Taylor or even P-Funk? There’s a very limited range of modern black music that’s commercially viable for black audiences and that’s a shame.
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Shady Grady says:
There’s an excellent book by Charles Shaar Murray titled “Crosstown Traffic” in which Eric Burdon tells of discussing black music stars with a white female fan who knows as much about soul and blues as he does. He asked her if she had caught a recent Otis Redding show and she said “Are you crazy? The place was full of n*****s!”
LOL. I remember reading that too!
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mynameismyname Says:
Why don’t blacks support progressive or classic black music? Why is the audience at every jazz, blues, reggae, Afro-beat”, black rock or future-minded rap/R&B show that I’ve attended ALL WHITE? Why don’t black Americans support these artists and keep the tradition going?
The crazy thing is that they do! My mom and dad travel far and wide to some of the best Jazz festivals and are greeted by many people of color along the way.
But my mom is not buying Bobby Buble! She and other family members are hunting down the rare shit that the average white jazz listeners skipped over because they’re still jamming to Miles Davis.
I discovered this white phenomena and the attraction to “old school” when I moved to California and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I went to a jazz festival in San Francisco with my roomate from New Orleans- it was offensive. It wasn’t even jazz, it was an outdoor party for white people to drink beer.
What I find funny is even though I’m not the largest supportive of “old school”, I have the privilege of actually being “there” when the videos first aired on BET, and the excitement of hearing the music when it first hit the radio. Not to mention whites tend to hit the surface stuff and miss alot of the craze that was Frankie Beverly and Maze and Anita Baker. They find Usher but can’t quite place Telvin Campbell. They may listen to Ice Cube now, but they can’t recall the craze that was watching Boyz in the Hood, or recite lines from Juice, and New Jack City. In fact most of my white friends didn’t listen to Sade until after they were able to squeeze it into their lounge mix. It’s pretty telling when white people are late to the game and I don’t mind a bit. I ask them if they remember that year so-and-so performed on BET and they look confused or simply out of place.
But how often do I have to sit through people’s speeches about how “black music/hip hop has lost that certain something, how it’s not the same”, and you just know they have no idea about the early sounds of Blues and songs like “She’s got a good Pussy,” and female blues singers talking about their “cabbage”. Black music continues to evolve and in my opinion most white people just can’t keep up, and consider the change to be for the worst because they can’t seem to admit that they just don’t get it.
I agree with Peanut when he says “it’s in our blood, we breath it daily”. Our standards of beauty, celebrities, our films, are wrapped up in the music. You can’t take a crash course and catch up. There are no Cliff’s Notes for Black music and culture.
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Again, nothing intelligent or introspective to say, but this is funny and sad at the same time.
Note: There is a historical pattern of white appropriating elements of black culture, especially artistic forms. Once they’ve picked apart black culture and selected what they feel is not too black, it is then declared “cool” or “sophisticated,” marketed, and favored among well-to-do whites and those who aspire to be this way.
~*~ Pretty Star
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Abagond says:
And jazz went through the same thing too: at first it was just music that poor blacks listened to. Not only did whites look down on it, so did middle-class blacks.
All of the black musical genres went through this process. The music was looked down upon as ‘race’ music at their inceptions. When white artists started to adopt these genres($), and discarded much of the ‘racial’ aspects, the music became more palatable for the general white population. A good example of this would be Pat Boone doing ‘cleaned’ up versions of Little Richard songs. Rock and Roll also started out as a black music genre. It was when these ‘cleaned’ up versions became popular that the original renditions were heard more widely and became popular as a result. The whites listening to these genres before the rest of the white populace were usually ‘hipsters’, beatniks etc, much like the ‘wiggers’ of today. It will be interesting to see if the ‘wiggers’ of today, follow in the footsteps of current NPR listeners, years from now. Of course when most of the current artists are off the national scene or dead, and their music is referred to as ‘classic’. As to why they listen to mostly white indie bands? Take a look at the history of black music and the criticisms they garnered at the each era they came out and you’ll know why. A similar trend can be seen in popular dance styles throughout different eras as well. In order to become ‘legitimate'(look at syncopated music for example), it appears the black music at any time in American history, had, has to validated by white society at large in order to become ‘popular’ and mainstream.
Black music continues to evolve and in my opinion most white people just can’t keep up, and consider the change to be for the worst because they can’t seem to admit that they just don’t get it
Bingo!
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Dorf is just a sun tan for the ears, its cool because it makes one seem open, sophisticated and in the know.
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Peanut and Mia,
Why do black Americans get so defensive when you call out their behavior? Not too different from white Americans.
Ask any “progressive” black musician, of any era, and they will repeat what I said. Remember, I’m in the industry. So, this isn’t just mere outsider opinion. I witness it all the time; I hear it all the time.
Yes, many older blacks, will have a better appreciation for black music since they were fortunate enough to live in an era where the quality of music was far superior. But for the most part, black Americans tend to extremely trendy and “off the moment” when it comes to black arts.
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Abagond,
Most indie rock comes from a very “high brow” aesthetic. (That’s part of the reason why it’s not mainstream!) Hence, it’s frequently played on a station like NPR.
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From what i can see here in europe (belgium and france) white people (middle age) are mostly into dorf. But in fact, its not even “dorf” it is those music but replayed by white people.
Most of the radio where i can hear some jazz or some other type of music that is originally black are replayed and have now their own white artist performing it.
In europe when you say the term “Jazz” and “Rythm and Blues” it looks more like some white music trend, all main artist are white, they make concerts, huge selling cds etc.
It even seems to me that the most ignorant of them think that these music style have been originated by white people as they think it is the case for Rock with Elvis Presley.
Its like if in 50 years, white people will tell that Eminem invented rap music. Same thing here.
Also, I think that black people are no more into those old and retro styles because we tend to invent new style, we sometime use the past styles, but we keep on inventing new trends. This is my point of view. It seems to me that we need to come up with something new beside rap music and nowadays r&b.
Once more it will be taken by white people in 20 years and we will again need to come up with something new. That is how things goes: We invent, they take, we drop it, we reinvent…
Something else : I’m African from congo, and here also the music from my country well known among africa is some kind of dorf but i rarely see white people playing it. So not african-foreign music is dorf. Sometimes it is too black for them.
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I haven’t listened to them so I don’t know how good they are but the band Antibalas is mostly white and play music derived mostly from Afrobeat-primarily Fela though I’ve heard they attempt some Congolese stuff as well.
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mynameismyname Says:
Why do black Americans get so defensive when you call out their behavior? Not too different from white Americans.
Because most of the time it’s simply poorly informed, false, or is wrapped up in some statement or agenda to further encourage racism. The statement that we’re not listening to earlier mentioned artist comes from the fact that you don’t know what’s in black people’s private collections. That same level of racism seems to get recycled in the industry as well, so it doesn’t surprise me that you might hold these viewpoints on black behavior.
“Ask any ‘progressive’…” I’m sure you have a list of who’s progressive and who isn’t, right? I’m not sure what qualifies as appreciation for you – but it’s just not new for us. POC capable of doing two things at once – picking up on new artist and moving forward, and occasionally ripping out that old album and reminiscing.
I’m pretty certain it’s not just you that feels that way. I find it interesting that most white people at work don’t care to share their new found love of “old school” with black people in a public way because they assume we wouldn’t be into it, or they think it will lead to hip hop domination of the station. So white people can jam “old school” all they want, but the new stuff, the up-to-date stuff, is usually off limits.
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I think the problem is this, as a fan of NPR I was exposed to non mainstream black acts like Santogold or Television on the Radio through NPR. They are not old, dead, or retro. Saul Williams will get media attention there as well, were as mainstream music stations don’t play these artists, they are too white to be on the black station, too black to be on the white stations.
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Mia,
My line of thinking doesn’t come from blind assumptions. It comes from repeated experiences as a person of color in a wide range of black environments. Experiences from an individual who is an insider in the music world, mind you. I’m not on the outside looking in; I’m square in the middle of the inside.
Yes, there are some blacks who may have knowledge and interest in some of the less mainstream forms of “black” music (or music in general since music has no color or race.) But you know damn well that they are the exception. Not the majority, by far. That’s nothing to argue about. When I stated this fact, I didn’t even to mean to state it as a negative. It’s not good or bad. It just is.
Siddity,
Saul Williams and TV On The Radio don’t make music for the radio. Hence, why it’s not played on modern rock or “urban” formats. Plus, most of the songs that the public is bombarbed with are played courtesy of payola, record company favors and well…use your imagination.
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mynameismyname Says:
Thu 22 Oct 2009 at 17:49:02
Mia,
My line of thinking doesn’t come from blind assumptions. It comes from repeated experiences as a person of color in a wide range of black environments. Experiences from an individual who is an insider in the music world, mind you. I’m not on the outside looking in; I’m square in the middle of the inside.
Yes, there are some blacks who may have knowledge and interest in some of the less mainstream forms of “black” music (or music in general since music has no color or race.) But you know damn well that they are the exception. Not the majority, by far. That’s nothing to argue about. When I stated this fact, I didn’t even to mean to state it as a negative. It’s not good or bad. It just is.
And yet you’re still on the outside. I’m sorry but what’s the exception for you happens to be the rule for me. Your experiences happen to fall in line with who you’ve interacted with in your time in this industry and I’m telling you, “you need to get out more.”
Not all white people listen to “black” music. Sometimes when they do, it’s falls in line with artist they feel most comfortable with – “old school”. In the same token not all black people leave out the oldies in their quest for new artist. You’d be surprised to find we can still throw on a tune when the mood suits us.
But I don’t expect every white person knows Kiss or Jefferson Airplane, so I guess I’m just missing your point. Some people just don’t know a lot about music – white or black.
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Mia,
You’re diverting and now your commentary isn’t making much sense.
Again, when I stated some well-known facts about the disparity of black and white appreciation of all realms of black music, I wasn’t saying it in a critical manner.
You know, let’s just drop the ideas and use a real live incident from last night:
I attended a concert that saw three major-label “urban” acts perform for a virtually all-black audience. (Age demo was maybe, 18-30). One of the opening acts was a rock-ish black band that wasn’t half-bad if I had to say so myself.
You could hear crickets from the audience during said band’s performance. You should have seen the quizzical looks when the saw the bandmembers come out with guitars.
These black folks didn’t want the “old”. They didn’t want the “future”. They wanted the familiar. The “what’s hot RIGHT NOW”. Story of my life.
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Caroline said:
NPR caters to “intellectual” types and music that fall into this DORF category is foolishly considered high class and intellectual among pretentious music snobs.
Gen said:
Dorf is just a sun tan for the ears, its cool because it makes one seem open, sophisticated and in the know.
These two statements sums up my feelings about NPR lol.
I think some people need to rephrase their blantant statements in here. I think some of you need to say “Why very few Blacks support the non-mainstream non-urban Black artist?” That statement would probably go over well then to say “Black people don’t support non-mainstream, non-urban Black artist only white people do”.
As far as DORF, I don’t want to undermine people’s experiences but where they hell do some of you guys live? Black people in Chicago support DORF to the wheels fall off lol Black people in the fall and summer sponsor alot of festivals where they have non-mainstream and sometimes non-urban artist that perform at these events. I was at the African festival this year and had a great time they had the Ohio Players come out and perform and people had a blast (even though some of the orginal members were not there lol) For the commentator that said that Black people don’t support P-Funk you better hope you playing because the Black people in Chicago would be there ASAP if they were scheduled to perform here lol
Now some of you guys are giving NPR too much credit. I heard about Santigold through a popular Black gossip blog and also heard more of music through a site I assume is owned by some Black people from Chicago called “BlindIForTheKids” they support and feature alot of underground music that NPR plays. Janelle Monae I heard about through Vibe in 2006 and went on her myspace page and loved her music. NPR was late at playing her music because she came out way before her video “Many Moons” aired and way before she got on the NY hipster scene. Not only that she got alot of support from Black people in ATL in the underground scnenes. j*DaVey is starting to come up too. However, I heard about them through word of mouth in 2006 from a Black dude who lived on the west coast. Loved their music and now their starting to catch on. I think some of you guys complain too much about Black people not supporting these artist. Truth be told, many don’t know. I spread the word and guess what? some of these Black hipster artist gain new fans that way.
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@dani:
I noticed this when I was in Chicago, mostly in the summer mind you. In fact I attended a Zydeco festival, there was a Jazz festival which was upcoming and, dozens more. Hell even neighbourhoods have their local musical/arts&craft festival which I attended. I am going back on Sunday for a couple of weeks. Are these festivals year round or just in the summer? I must say I really enjoyed the ones I attended!
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Dani,
I love J*Davey too! They’re more on the underground “new groove” tip though. This scene is dominated by black bohos. Again, they are not the norm.
Again, I wasn’t being critical when I made my observations. I never said that “all” blacks don’t respond to non-mainstream “urban” music. I said “most” don’t. I just meant the greatest number of people. Not all. I know better than that. Many black folks are very electic and free-spirited in their tastes and aesethic. But they’re not the norm.
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As mentioned part of the issue is also that white people tend to want to support their own. In the current magazine “Guitar Legends”, which is put out by Guitar World, there is an interview with Steve Vai and Joe Satriani.
Both guitarists are asked about blues influences and are somewhat dismissive. Satriani speaks of trying to play along with John Lee Hooker records but finding the rhythms and spacings too challenging.
Vai says that most of the blues he was listening to was blues-rock. Vai tells of being told by Zappa that his feeling was too “white” but Vai says that he wasn’t really feeling any blues artists until he heard Stevie Ray Vaughn, who he says was the best and most influential to him, including Hendrix.
So there’s serious commercial challenges to any black musician trying to sell music that’s off the beaten path, because most whites (hipsters aside) won’t support it if there’s a white alternative. And most black people REALLY won’t support it. Better to stay in the confines of whatever happens to be currently popular in the Black community.
There are of course free-minded people of all races who don’t care and just listen to what they think is good music regardless of race. But I think those folks are a definite minority.
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^^^
Exactly what I’ve been (trying to?) emphasizing all along.
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herneith said:
@dani:
I noticed this when I was in Chicago, mostly in the summer mind you. In fact I attended a Zydeco festival, there was a Jazz festival which was upcoming and, dozens more. Hell even neighbourhoods have their local musical/arts&craft festival which I attended. I am going back on Sunday for a couple of weeks. Are these festivals year round or just in the summer? I must say I really enjoyed the ones I attended!
Girl, I do not know what’s going on right now. Usually they have alot festivals during the times you went. I don’t know if they still have any now because it’s getting cold in Chicago and the weather gets atrocious here lol. I’m glad you had fun. The African and Carribbean festivals here in Chicago are great!
@ mynameismyname said:
Dani,
I love J*Davey too! They’re more on the underground “new groove” tip though. This scene is dominated by black bohos. Again, they are not the norm.
Again, I wasn’t being critical when I made my observations. I never said that “all” blacks don’t respond to non-mainstream “urban” music. I said “most” don’t. I just meant the greatest number of people. Not all. I know better than that. Many black folks are very electic and free-spirited in their tastes and aesethic. But they’re not the norm.
Cool cool. I see your point. I’m not saying I totally disagree, I just think that people like Jody Rosen tends to make blantant statements without using much research. The Black people in Chicago sponsor alot of African and Carribbean festivals that supports the DORFS so him trying to give White people all this damn credit is beyond me condescending. Janelle Monae was heard of in the underground scene in Atlanta with a small black hipster scene that was so major for her that she got signed to Bad Boy in started to perform in NY. NPR didn’t start playing her sh*t until she got known in the underground scene in NY with a bunch of White hispters. NPR pats themselves on the back of being so damn eccentric and so damn exclusive, when they forget that they didn’t really make some of these artist (especially some of the Blacks ones like Janelle Monae and j*daVey they were already known in the black hobo circuit). NPR is nothing but a mainstream-underground radio stations lol. I know it’s an oxy moron but that’s how I feel. I just can’t stand music elitist. That’s why I choose not to listen to NPR.
Yes! I love j*daVey my fav song is “Hi-Sun” I would play that song to death! and “Lazydaze”, “Venus to Mars” “This One!” “TopsyTurvy” “Cowboys & Indians” of course “Mister Mister” ahh just most of their original sh*t lol
Shady_Grady said:
Vai says that most of the blues he was listening to was blues-rock. Vai tells of being told by Zappa that his feeling was too “white” but Vai says that he wasn’t really feeling any blues artists until he heard Stevie Ray Vaughn, who he says was the best and most influential to him, including Hendrix.
So there’s serious commercial challenges to any black musician trying to sell music that’s off the beaten path, because most whites (hipsters aside) won’t support it if there’s a white alternative. And most black people REALLY won’t support it. Better to stay in the confines of whatever happens to be currently popular in the Black community.
Now this I agree with. I do think that Black non-urban artist have it very hard because of those reasons you said it. They categorized Santigold as an Hip-Hop artist. I was like what?? No she is not. It was definitely steterotypical. I don’t see them half-step on Robin Thicke being a named a alternative artist because he is White lol. It’s a trip. I listen to Santigold’s songs “L.E.S. Artises” and think that if she was alot younger and White that song would be huge lol.
Mainstream is very racialize because Whites dominate Rock while Blacks dominate Hip-Hop and R&B. Music in the 70’s was more intergrated so alot of Blacks then did know some of the 70’s rock bands and their songs. Elton John was one of the rock artist in the 70’s that was transendent. Sh*t my mom loves Elton. “Benny and the Jetts” and “Rocket Man” is the stuff. “Goodbye Yellowbrick Road” is a classic album. Music started to become more segregated in the 80’s when you had the “New Wave/Punk” movement surfaced. (AKA Disco sucks lol). Since then, I think that’s why you see more racialized genres that has not undergone a social paradigm shift yet. It’s just staganant now. So yeah I agree that it is a minority of people that will listen and support artist regardless of race.
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I heard about Santigold through a popular Black gossip blog and also heard more of music through a site I assume is owned by some Black people from Chicago called “BlindIForTheKids” they support and feature alot of underground music that NPR plays. Janelle Monae I heard about through Vibe in 2006 and went on her myspace page and loved her music. NPR was late at playing her music because she came out way before her video “Many Moons” aired and way before she got on the NY hipster scene.
Santigold and TV on the Radio were often times be featured in Stereogum and Pitchfork, but I didn’t see a lot of black sites supporting them until they had videos come out.
In terms of Janelle Monae, I don’t know how I found her, but I bought her stuff like two years before Many Moons, I had completely fallen in love with Violent Stars Happy Hunting! I might have found her on myspace way back then. I got an autographed copy of it she was selling on a website.
Alice Smith is another person I find most stations won’t play, even pop stations and she has a pretty mainstream sound, she’s just black. I think actually discovered her on Okayplayer.com, which I guess is a “urban”/hip hop website.
I live in Dallas and our selection of music is piss poor, which is why I have satellite radio.
I don’t think a lot of black artists outside R&B and hip hop get screwed and don’t get support, which explains why organizations like the Black Rock Coalition exist. It was founded by Vernon Reid of In Living Color, one of the few black rock groups that mainstreamed somewhat because of heavy rotation on MTV.
But I don’t see Bad Brains or Michael Franti getting much respect in the black community.
I really didn’t realize what I was listening to was “hipster” music. I am old and I am not too much into “hipsters”. I grew up as what was called a “new waver” but mind you I am 33 now.
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Forgot to add, no one ever talks about Fishbone either. 🙂
Janelle Monae was heard of in the underground scene in Atlanta with a small black hipster scene that was so major for her that she got signed to Bad Boy in started to perform in NY.
Prior to being signed by Bad Boy, she was heavily marketed by Big Boi of Outkast when she was with the Wonderland Arts Society, she wasn’t signed to Bad Boy when I discovered her, and she would be bigger in my opinion if she wasn’t a “black artist”
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Siditty said:
Prior to being signed by Bad Boy, she was heavily marketed by Big Boi of Outkast when she was with the Wonderland Arts Society, she wasn’t signed to Bad Boy when I discovered her, and she would be bigger in my opinion if she wasn’t a “black artist”
Very true! I do think that if Janelle Monee was White she would be huge. Same with Santigold.
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Alice Smith is another person I find most stations won’t play, even pop stations and she has a pretty mainstream sound, she’s just black. I think actually discovered her on Okayplayer.com, which I guess is a “urban”/hip hop website.
OMG I love Alice Smith! Not too many people know her neither White or Black she is awesome.
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Siddity,
33 is not old! A lot of “hipster” types are that age or older.
I don’t care for Alice Smith, based on what I’ve heard but I believe that she’s too hard for the “pop scene” to figure out. She’s R&B-orientated, yes, but her sound is very ecletic. It’s not something that is as simplistic and linear as the radio candy Beyonce/Alicia Keys throw out to the masses.
Dani,
My favorite J*Davey joints are “Private Parts”, “No More”, “Camera (Gangster)”, “Might As Well”, “Slooww”, and ah..damn, the whole double-EP! I must add that Brianna Cartwright AKA “Jack Davey” is sexy as I don’t know what. She’s my lone celebrity crush! LOL.
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High brow/elitist types, the educated upper middle class types I think that’s who they are trying to appeal to. I could be wrong though.
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And the hipsters they fall in this demographic.
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There is a radio station that i listen to that is the sister station of KERA which is the NPR station in my city. The different genre’s of music is just refreshing from the urban station dreck that is on the air today. Plus i love that it’s commercial free.
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This station is where i have just learned to appreciate John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters and Taj Mahal. I they play lots of Valerie June and Laura Mvula.
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The fickle minds of white Americans if they aren’t trying to high jack the music, they are criticizing it as too low brow/ghetto, and as stated in the post a large population of black people are to narrow and to be open to other genre’s of music, it is just a catch 22 for black artist that try to go outside the box. Sighing a huge *SIGH*
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@ George Ryder: You are limited in your views of black and white issues, I can see this from your past comments on this blog. You know nothing about racial dynamics.
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@ main post
“they also push plenty of white indie rock: current stuff by living, breathing American artists working in a current style.”
@ Abagond’s comment:
“Then why play indie rock? That is not dorf.”
I remember reading this a few years ago and thinking you have got no idea what you’re talking about. 🙂
Indie is the dorf-iest genre of ‘white music’. Most (90%?) of contemporary indie music is stuff that sounds like a remastered version of something that already had been popular at least 20 years ago. It may not seem so to the readers of this blog, but you guys aren’t exactly experts when it comes to ‘white music’. This is the kind of place where one can say that a 20-year-old style of ‘white music’ is a new thing and nobody notices(*). Here, a band like Tool is seen as heavy and inaccessible.
Dorf-y radio stations, magazines, sites and youtube channels are not an ‘American thing’. It seems they all work in similar ways. Their target audience are mainly middle-aged white people who like to listen to stuff that sounds like the music of their youth, and younger people who believe music used to be better in the (insert-decade-here), because they’ve only heard of the artists/bands from that period that survived the test of time.
The idea that dorf lovers like contemporary ‘white music’ is ludicrous. They mainly like retro. They rarely like stuff that’s actually somewhat edgy, but when they do, they pick they most polished and accessible representatives of obscure/alternative music. The kind of stuff that can get Pitchfork’s seal of approval.
I do think they have some racial bias, but IMO it’s mainly about the waiting periods – the time that needs to pass before they accept something relatively new and consider it retro enough. I think ‘white music’ needs to wait about 5 years less, but if somebody thinks the difference is closer to 10 years I’m not going to argue with that.
*) I’m referencing what Abagond said about metalcore in that post:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2013/05/14/millennials/
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George Ryder
“all the white people i know absolutely love black music. white people have always loved black music, that’s why there’s so many white artists in history who “high jack” it.”
**************
Are you aware that there is a huge segment of “religious fundamentalists” white people in the USA that actually believe that BLACK music, rhythms, beats, tempos, body movements (dance) are actually spawned from Lucifer (the devil) and is thereby inherently satanic, evil and dark?
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@Matari
those people are lunatics. are you sure it’s a huge segment?
************
I didn’t refer to them as lunatics …. BUT..
How else would you describe the white people that subscribe to and uphold the tenets of racism/white superiority in America, even if it’s on a subconscious level?
In my opinion, these folks make up a “huge” part of WHITE culture!
Sunday mornings are in fact among the MOST SEGREGATED hours in the US. If whites love black music as much as you say, why are the styles of worship, praise and singing so totally different amongst the two groups? Why don’t white churches “copy” (enjoy, incorporate) black singing/worship/praise styles in their church service?
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@ George Ryder: Look George, I am sure you mean well, but you really are naive about race dynamics in America, for the love of God please take of the rose colored glasses. No George Ryder, all white people don’t like black music, that is just dumb. Please man just get a clue.
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*off*^^^^^^ typo.
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@Matari: Yes you are correct that Sunday mornings in America is the most segregated hours in America. I even sat in church with a white pastor telling the black congregation that black gospel music was just too emotional, that we really were not having a true and realistic connection to God, Damn! that was crazy. A white man being bold enough to tell black people they were too emotional and that they are no really connecting to God. That guy had some balls. And his wife said that our (black congregation) music was too loud and boisterous. So George is just naive and just wearing rose colored glasses.
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*not*^^^
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“A white man being bold enough to tell black people they were too emotional and that they are no really connecting to God. That guy had some balls. And his wife said that our (black congregation) music was too loud and boisterous.”
**********
Nothing new there…
Whites have been saying these things about black people for centuries! It’s a shame that they don’t analyze their own pathologies and Christian ineptitude with as much gusto. They might see that their own connection to God is very questionable/suspect.
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” i think i prefer my rose colored glasses thank you.”
*******
Why? Is the truth of the matter of reality too hard for you to grasp, take in?
Therein lies much of the problem. White people would rather grasp those rosy glasses with all of their might rather than listen to and believe what black people tell them. It doesn’t make whites lunatics …it’s more like it makes them DELUSIONAL and full of DENIAL. …and, virtually impossible to communicate with.
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@ George Ryder: It’s ok George, carry on dude.
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Mary , absolutly revealing about that pastor and that type of mentality. Frightening…good points , Matari
This whole DORF thing is strange …I mean there is no doubt black Afro diasporic culture , music, dance , is five steps ahead of other cultures , and it rubs up against these other cultures and gets dissmissed , buried and destroyed and the next generation , embaraces it , abherates it and comercialises it.
But , jazz is only less than 2 percent record sales , you cant make that a white demographic , its a non demographic . And npr is really only representing record company corporate releases and hype , and they dont show real jazz, as someone above mentioned , but they are wrong about Miles..Miles just has some jazz that is relaxed enough to be accepted.
The truth is , the exact same dynamic that Mary said with the pastor is playing out, this uptightness with the real cultural expresion of the Afro diaspora. This is really the crux of the problem , this cultural racism, I mean that goes all the way back to the desicians of the Aráb. and Atlantic slave trades , why they deemed it valid to put a certain kind of people in massive slavery and make sure to destroy their culture…today, people can be accepted in an upward mobilising system , if they give up there cultural essence
I dont agree with the notion that black Americans invent new things so they move on from the old..they are independent from each other.people can invent new things and still get treasure from what went down before, and you can beleive , many of the great innovators in the past were steeped in the history that went down before…the general public are the people who arnt interested in mining the richness from the past..across the board…who ever came up with this DORF analisys, Rosen , or whatever her name, are just intellectualy tripping when speaking on jazz…two percent record , or below is a reflection on over all cultural American ignorance…I mean where on this earth can a young black American get any real exposure to real jazz and its real history? The deck is stacked against that from the start
The truth is , deep treasure is buried, but out there to find to who ever is willing to go the extra mile to find it….thinking two percent record sales in jazz reflects white taste is absurd
And npr jazz isnt the jazz I listen to….jazz is huge , also, and the real black American essence of jazz gets lost in the shuffle with watered down jazz, or jazz that white critics say is important but breais away from black Afro diasporic essences
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@ B.R. : Good points.
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Does NPR play The Roots?
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I have not slurred them.
The question remains open: Does NPR play The Roots?
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^ Thanks. It doesn’t surprise me that they have an NPR presence. How did I know without even checking? Stations like NPR are all about being ‘ecclectic’ when it comes to their art selection but they want to be ‘cool’ too. The Roots satisfy that whole cool/eclectic vibe.
The dorf thing is being presented as more race centric than it is.
Eco is right, i think, when he pointed out that white indie music is super dorfy as well.
If a kid sees me in my Unknown Pleasures t-shirt, they like to tell me how Joy Division is their favorite band. Why the fuck is Joy Division their favorite band? I have no idea. Sometimes I see kids (20 yrs old) in Cure t shirts. They can do what they want but it looks slightly odd sometimes to see this, says the guy with the Joy Division t-shirt.
In the end the ‘dorf’ thing was just another journalist trying to write something noticeable for that months assignment, we need to have some limits with how much credence we give it. If I took ‘dorf’ too seriously, I’d have to cheapen my discovery of Billie Holiday and Jazz as a young man. If out of touch white suburbanites also like Lady Day and Charlie Parker, there’s not too much I can do about that, nor do I need to feel embarrassed or resort to stupidity.
Stupidity?
^ Why do I say that? Short anecdote:
In my youth, I once went on a semi chaperoned date with a girl, not by choice it sort of just happened. Anyway, I had the distinct displeasure of speaking to her uncle who turned out to be a dedicated simpleton. This was back in my hardcore jazz days. He was asking the usual detective questions, to figure out if his niece would make it through the date safe and sound, so he eventually found out about my tastes and my love of jazz came up. This man, told me with a straight face and a proud look that “That’s white people music and I don’t listen to that.” His implication at my lack of blackness was pretty hard to miss.
I can not begin to explain just how much I pitied him in that moment. It was like he had told me, “all these people that no longer believe the Earth is flat are dumbest shits you will ever meet.” Stupid, stupid man.
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not really chaperoned, i just had to meet some of the family for a bit
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@ Legion
No one is saying dorf music is bad. Billie Holiday is great no matter who likes her. She was great when she was alive. She is great in her dorfitude. The fault lies not in her or her music, hardly, but in the approach that certain upper-middle-class Whites take towards it.
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^ You are totally right.
Sometimes commenters advise others to think BEFORE they post, it’s a good idea, of course. I notice sometimes one might need to post first and think second. I thought about my post after I posted and I realized a few things.
I noticed very early that the way I listened to Jazz was different than the way some high brow whites listened to it. A white acquaintnace of mine years ago was really surprised when he heard me singing a Billie Holiday song quietly to myself lyric for lyric. He looked at me, kind of stunned. I was confused, he and I were sharing a public space, but I wasn’t singing loudly or causing any spectacle by my singing. Then he says to me, “Man, you really know the words.” This guy was also a Jazz listener and a listener of Billie in particular. I looked at him sort of dumbfounded, I don’t think I was singing an obscure song, I think it was one any fan would know, like Trav’lin’ All Alone, say.
I couldn’t think of what to say to him. I just said something like, “well, yeah … you listen to the song, you like the song, eventually you know the words.”
It’s true that not everyone listens from the same place, in fact that’s a trivial thing for me to say. But plenty of people, don’t listen to Jazz with any real feeling, I wonder how many listen to it just as a prop or an art status symbol.
Something else that accompanied my first listening to Billie was finding out about her life, I did the same with Parker. So, it was inseparable, for me, that when I listened to them, I didn’t also think about their struggles in life. So Jazz was never just pretty music or just art or something to impress cocktail guests; for me, it was also very earthy and real.
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@ Legion
I should know that from a common sense PoV, but that has never occurred to me.
I find music talking about music, verbalizing it, tough going, because it’s so internal and emotional.
So, when I first heard Billie Holiday… I can’t express the nearly distressing but deeply pleasurable interiority of the her voice in the words she sang.
I simply could not listen to her as “wallpaper” because the involvement takes me away from here. I can’t imagine the experience just in my head; that is another country.
Sarah Vaughn and Nina, for instance, thrill and own me in the same way.
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ah recent comments and abagond’s now vast and continually growing content,
DORF or How Racism Effects American Musical Preferences Over Time.
“Angela Davis noticed this dorf thing too among white people: if she spoke with a foreign accent, whites would be way nicer to her.”
Really ,maybe I should try this out if I want spite people to be nicer to me, naa reminds me of the fake “white” voice some african americans use around spite people,on the phone with them to get that interview ,service etc
another way to be a coward with people that deserve only the brutal truth.
(wouldn’t be surprised if abagond already did a post or that subject as well)
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I heard something really dorfy right after Valerie June’s “Pushing Against A Stone” they played “History Repeating” Propellerheads and Shirley Bassey. That is dorf to me. It got a 60’s vintage feel. It sounds like something from London from a James Bond film. It reminds me of a swanky party and everybody dressed in 60’s mod. That song has a very retro feeling to it.
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Shirley Bassey singing “History Repeating” is dorf to me. My above comments are in moderation. Don’t know why. That moderation business is annoying.
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Anthony Braxton doing his level best to tear the fabric of space/time.
(http://youtu.be/0o0AYFRFX7g)
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great one…I know this one
The connection with Miles Davis is huge…Impresions, by John Coltrane, is the same modal chord progresion as So What, the tune he played with MIles, its in the modal style, which means the scales are dictating the direction with very simple chords that can be super imposed as the melodies are expanded on, but the basic structure is super simple for maximum expresion so its not tied in by many chord progresions..but there is still form, with a very simple chord layout
The drummer and piano player, Jack Dejonnette and Chick Correa, played with Miles close to this time…Mirislov Vitous is the bass player, who played with Weather Report, the group that Wayne Shorter formed when he left Miles , with Joe Zawinul..Vitous would leave them after a couple of years…
these are some pretty high leval musicians
Im not sure if Anthony Braxton would ever get played on Dorf radio, but, there is a lot of confusion about this dorf thing, I dont like it..I could absolutly rip it to shreds
but, Im hesitant to lay into Angela Davis, who, if you remove the red threads from her agenda, she sais and means a lot to black women and black men in the struggle and sais things that make sence in that context
but, these political agendas , the mandates, the judgements of, the pshycing and pegging up, fall really short when it comes to culture and individual sex choices …in my humble opinion…culture gets plopped up on the cold chopping bloc of political agendising and always gets slaughtered and then frowned upon , criticised, excluded or banned
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@ B.R. @ Legion
Cool. Thanks!
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@ B.R.
Please, feel free to rip the died thing to pieces.
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Abagond said: Cool. Thanks!
No problem. You never heard of Braxton before? I was surprised to see Albert Ayler mentioned in the post. It surprised me that NPR could actually be known for playing Ayler, it amused me actually. I can see them playing Ornette Coleman because Ornette is a good white middle class device for demonstrating how ‘cool’ and ‘open’ a white person is. I figured if you know Ayler, you’d know Braxton too. None of that is meant as a slight against Ornette, though, who was an important developer of the free jazz idiom.
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the scales are dictating the direction with very simple chords that can be super imposed as the melodies are expanded on, but the basic structure is super simple for maximum expresion so its not tied in by many chord progresions..but there is still form, with a very simple chord layout
To add to what was said:
When you have less chords, in the case of So What? and Impressions there are just two chords, the music becomes very static. As a listener you do not get a feeling of forward motion or much momentum in the music. So the imperative with Miles and his band at the time (‘Trane, Adderly, Evans, et al.) was to fill the music with glorious scalar patterns, glorious melodies. On the one hand, there was space to do this because the chords are so few, on the other hand you had better do this unless you want to slip into a dulling static sound.
Lift to the Scaffold a Miles album which, if memory serves, is the immediate precurser to Kind of Blue is incredibly static. It’s impossible to listen to it and not view it as a bit of a trial run for the next great album that was to come, namely Kind of Blue I love Lift to the Scaffold and so I don’t mean to say or imply that static music is bad or undesirable.
Hammering a final point: Listen to Gregorian Chant. It’s mostly or totally choral–no chords at all. Listen to the sound and feeling of it, pretty static.
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I recently picked up some Turkish music. Spiritual music, I believe, because the subtitle mentions The Sufis. The whole thing is one guy on some type of woodwind, no other instruments but still very interesting to listen to. You can hear that the guy is doing something very different than Western music. He has to be using scales that are constructed with a different series of whole tones and semitones from the Major scale in the West that we (Westerners anyway) are used to.
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to fill the music with glorious scalar patterns, glorious melodies.
I was thinking more about Coltrane’s approach on Kind of Blue. If one listens to Blue in Green (a track on Kind of Blue) You probably won’t use the adjective “glorious”. Searching and reaching are more what come to mind as I think on that particular piece of music …
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yeah, I still don’t like this dorf term.
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Hipsters. May or may not be racist, but it’s definitely smug! They are (were?) making themselves to seem like music history experts by avoiding what is currently mainstream and playing stuff that’s not well-known but that they know about. Oh, you don’t know about___? I guess I’m just a little more informed…
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[…] of Love”). In 2002 she won a Nammy (Native American music award) for Debut Artist. As maybe you can imagine, she has been […]
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[…] was almost completely overlooked by white audiences during the sixties blues revival as he was not DORF. Unlike many other black blues artists Little Milton retained a solid, though declining popularity […]
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T-Pain sings for NPR:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RROtdQUpTK4)
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Indie rock is very DORF. Specifically, it’s very retro, based mostly on the rock music of the 20th century and not on 21st century music.
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