What do people mean when they call music "white" or "black"?

[Pendraflare]

I've heard that term get thrown around quite a bit to describe a handful of songs out there - for instance, a certain music critic called Meghan Trainor's Title "one of the whitest albums he had ever heard - defiantly uncool, aggressively chipper, and completely without any sort of edge, far closer to easy listening than adult alternative". Likewise, i've seen many people call Hey Soul Sister by Train "perhaps the whitest song ever written". And similarly, Honey I'm Good by Andy Grammer has been dropped in similar vein.

On the counterpart, some people say that rap music is mostly a black genre, and I tend to think it's because, well, you can probably name several different black rap artists out there (Drake, Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, Wiz Khalifa, Snoop Dogg, Flo Rida, Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West...the list goes on and on). I also get a "black" vibe from Cee Lo Green's Fuck You, notably because of how few white people there are in the video for that song.

In short...what exactly is "white" music or "black" music? It's not supposed to have anything to do with race, is it? I guess it has to do with the "easy listening" thing. And don't use this thread to bash those acts (or me, for that matter)... Anyway, discuss.

 

[maccrash]

by "white" music, at least in my experience, people are talking about either when a white person futilely attempts to, like, give a Soulful performance or some such and it just comes across as very square or stiff. alternatively, it's just when something is aggressively folksy or easy to listen to. it's kind of hard to explain, but I use it pejoratively a lot, which is ironic because I listen to a lot of incredibly white music, so.

as far as ""black music"" goes, or at least when people are trying to describe what ""black music"" is, it's usually used to define genres that are predominantly made up of black artists -- hip hop, soul, jazz, etc. not too hard.

 

[Her]

just for the record
the only category hey soul sister belongs in is supreme ultimate final level shite

edit: but yeah it's pretty much as matt said
black music per se is described as music which either has its root in the black community/black history or is mostly populated by black artists, usually there being a crossover between both examples
rock & roll being an interesting specimen of more or less being started by black artists but being a mostly white genre by the mid 60s

 

[Esper]

White music is sanitized music. It that kind of music that a yuppie would listen to without anything expecting them to get offended: classical, "smooth" jazz, "light" rock, etc. Lots of pop music, too, but then I think there are some grey areas like, for instance, with Adele who seems to be a whole lot more soulful than most any white person is, but is still liked by really white-bread white people.

 

[OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire]

I see it being based on old racial divides of which group tended to perform which genre and the associated stereotypes that have arisen from said divide. Black music being soulful compared to stale white music is one such stereotype. I wonder where Latino, Asian, Arabian, etc. styles of music fit in the stereotype...

 

[Poki]

Know your stereotypes.

 

[noahr94]

Music is part of culture.

There is black culture.

So there is black music.

 

[Kanzler]

Black music is what white people are too afraid of listening to, or what they refer to things they listen to because they're too afraid to listen to other songs too inaccessible for them. Kanye West is black music, right? :(

 

[CoffeeDrink]

It's all just sound that helps us get down. Dig?

I don't think of music as white or black or brown or yellow or red. I hear music and base it more in the contours of either young or old, and girl or guy music (and there is the everyone's music). So I suppose that sounds sexist, but I don't suppose you should be worried about the 46 year old jamming it to One Direction?