You imagine what my motivation could be
. Let me know if you think of anything. I'm sure it will be original. Could it be that I'm a giant racist, perchance? A colossal one?
The question was whether it's possible to make rock music without having black influences, my assertion is that it is possible and has been done countless times. Also, just because you've listened to something doesn't mean you're thereafter "influenced" by it. Quentin Tarantino could watch a Michael Crichton adaptation but it doesn't make Inglorious Basterds influenced by Jurassic Park.
Some Beatles music was influenced by black music because they chose to be influenced by it, like they later chose to incorporate Indian sitar-based music into their songs. But then there's 'Blackbird', 'Norwegian Wood', 'Eleanor Rigby'. A lot of the Sgt. Peppers album looks back to Music Hall for inspiration; what black blues act do you think 'A Day In the Life' can be traced back to? Or 'Waterloo Sunset' by The Kinks. 'The Village Green Preservation Society' is distinctively English. I've never listened to The Beach Boys later chamber pop music and thought "this owes so much to black musicians!", either. Elvis was influenced by Arthur Cruddup but then there are songs like 'Wooden Heart' which display no blues influences.
Morrissey heard plenty of black music but consciously chose not to use its influence in The Smiths, the same goes for his attitude toward non-white sleeve stars and literary references. He was making white music for white people (something Billy Corgan later stated he was also doing), even if Johnny Marr wasn't fully aware of it. It was part of the appeal of The Smiths, you and Ketamine Sun wouldn't be here otherwise. 'Back to the Old House' has nothing in common with negro spirituals, and 'Suffer Little Children' doesn't use Son House as a reference point.
There's also Tin Pan Alley where many white people and Jews wrote the songs which filled the airwaves for the first half of the 20th century. Like you alluded to, much of heavy metal has few black influences, and the same goes for electronic music which can be traced to white pioneers of the genre in the early 1900s.
But to pick up a guitar and write songs is not to automatically be influenced by Bukka White or Blind Lemon Jefferson. Outside of the USA, many musicians hadn't heard of them. And many of those old blues guys had been nearly forgotten until white people brought them out of obscurity in the 1950s/60s and got them to make new recordings.
I wouldn't consider a lot of Bluegrass or even some Skiffle music to have black roots either. Working class guys constructing their own instruments and battering out songs on them --there was more English folk influence there than Delta Blues. So Ketamine Sun's most recent "
all music is black music" claim is seeming even less coherent with each passing second.
All it amounts to is 'white people have no music of their own', something she'd never say about acts from the Arab world or South-East Asia. She's perhaps the most confused person on this forum. On the one hand she defends Morrissey through thick and thin, no matter what he says. On the other she comes out with these Afrocentric utterances, sounding like Sinead O'Connor after she changed her name and converted to Islam. I don't have time to deal with that!
Anyway my point is that Ketamine Sun's claim is too simplistic and holistic to be correct. Unless she thinks Richard Wagner was somehow influenced by black musicians too? Or Gracie Fields?
