Is "rock" a bad four-letter word for Black folks?

Maybe.  Here are some observations.

I mean, we easily disrespect our each other, and the N-word word seems to roll off our tongues.  But we can't say rock?

What sparked this was seeing the following event, that saluted the State of Black music.  Take a look:

Evite_StateoftheBlackMusic

Or this one:

Honors screen grab

What was wild was this was a program that featured Vernon Reid and Corey Glover, two people clearly linked to "rock" via their association with Living Colour.

What I'm finding is that despite the growing audience for Black rock music and all of its incarnations, there are still huge sections of our community for whom "rock" in any form simply doesn't figure.  Not even on their radar.  

Some thoughts:

  • There's a lot of work to do in terms of educating Black folks on this thing I'm calling Black rock.
  • Opportunities for music discovery will be critical going forward.
  • But a bigger consideration: Is "rock" a relevant term to African Americans? 

I ask this last question because it's hard to solve a problem if you're not asking the right questions.  For a long time, "rock" has been something that's been off-limits to African Americans, so it's not surprising that the term doesn't come up in most discussions of "Black music".  So how do we change that?   What's it going to take?

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