New York City
Going to elementary school
every morning in New York
City, I would always look out the
train window hoping to catch
a glimpse of something I could
never quite forget. Painted on the
wall about midway between the
103 and 96 St. stops on the 1 train
line in Manhattan, there were
two
vividly-depicted
life-sized
rats schemingly grimacing at one
another. An assortment of wildly-
written words, profanities and
codenames I didn’t understand
surrounded them.
This kind of experience has
characterized
countless
other
childhoods in the city since the
’70s. While back then street art
was the sign of a generation, it’s
since fully incorporated itself
into the subconscious of children
born in the ’90s onward. In that
time, it’s hybridized in unforeseen
ways in response both to its urban
context and, increasingly so, the
decontextualizing force of the
internet.
For 21-year-old street artist
August
Quinn
(@bozo_207),
inspiration comes just as much
from the toy store he grew up
around the corner from, Kidrobot
in Soho, as it does from the graffiti
he grew up around.
“Whenever I would take the
train I remember, even as a little
kid, looking out the window and
seeing all the tags in the tunnels,”
Quinn said. As I replied that the
exact same thing had happened to
me, he said “I know, it happens to
so many people, and it gets in your
head. I fucking love it.”
For Quinn and so many others
from the city, it seemed natural,
almost a foregone conclusion, that
he would paint. Starting a little
over a year ago, he began setting
out alone at night to find spots. He
had plenty of ideas from years of
filling sketchbooks, but this was a
different medium entirely.
“It took me almost six months
just to figure out how to get control
of the drip,” he told me when I
asked if he had trouble with the
paint itself. Even with a better
grasp on the medium, paranoia
can dominate when the canvas is
the city. No matter where you go,
there are eyes on the street. And
even if you can bank on passerby
not to tell, any one of 38,000 cops
can pull up on you while painting.
It can be advantageous, then,
to go out with friends. “That’s the
difference between doing street
art and painting in the studio is
that street art you’re interacting
with the world … going out and
meeting people. It’s just more
social,” Quinn said.
Quinn met his friend George
when he noticed him painting one
night during a visit to London last
year. They painted together several
times during the remainder of his
stay. More recently, he met a guy
in Vancouver who’s been tagging
the word “work” for over ten years
now. It’s interesting, though, that
a Google search for “work graffiti
Vancouver” yields no results.
Such is the transient nature of
street art. Even the work of those
held highest in the community —
people like Zexor — can be almost
entirely painted over citywide
within weeks of its completion.
Other artists can be to blame, but
most of it can be put on buffing,
a rage against street art that has
been just as fervent an effort as the
art itself since the ’80s.
This summer in the city, along
with upticks in illegal fireworks
and gun violence, graffiti also made
a resurgence. Trends like these
lead some conservative media
outlets like the New York Post to
allege a one-for-one relationship
between graffiti and acts of violent
crime. While graffiti does increase
when police are distracted by other
issues, in reality, most graffiti is
arguably harmless posturing and
is disconnected from other crimes
or infractions.
Despite many wins for the
graffiti art form, it is met by
constant resistance in the form
of
institutionalized
removal
efforts that cost city agencies
thousands. Not to mention that
all the while, these artists could
face felony charges for their work.
I’m not saying graffiti should
be universally legalized — there
are other aspects of street life to
cherish — but felony-sentencing is
too harsh of a punishment for the
offense, and its mass appeal should
be accounted for in the law. As a
kid, two rats painted on a moldy
concrete
wall
illuminated
by
sparks from the tracks was one of
the most poignant things I’ve ever
seen. People like Quinn should
be given more freedom to create
these affecting works for the next
generation of artists.
— Ben Vassar, Daily Arts Writer
Detroit
Full disclosure: I am not a graffiti
artist. I am not a street artist. In
fact, my ability to draw or paint in
any medium is at best mediocre. In
my parents’ living room at home,
they have a self-portrait hung on
the wall that I drew when I was
seven. The painting has earned
a number of exclamations of
surprise and disgust. “What is
that??” is common, but I’ve also
heard a “That’s horrifying,” and a
“Why is your face melting?”
Despite
my
below-average
ability to draw or paint (or spray)
any sort of visual, I have an
affection for graffiti. There is more
to graffiti than an edgy image
on an otherwise crumbling wall.
It has the paradoxical effect of
blending into the fabric of a city,
yet also being something that
draws the attention of a passerby.
You can get as good a measure as
any of what a city is like and what it
means to the people in it by looking
at its graffiti. Detroit, a city that has
gone through so much, is a prime
example of this, especially the
Dequindre Cut.
The
Dequindre
Cut
is
a
walkway on the eastside of Detroit.
It was initially a railroad line. In
1998, after the rail was no longer
in use, The Cut was sold. In the
years of abandonment between its
use as a walkway and its use as a
railroad, graffiti artists flocked to
The Cut; it was turned into an oasis
of creativity. When the walkway
was commissioned in 2003, it was
decided that the murals would stay
up, and to this day The Cut is filled
head to toe with graffiti that has
only grown in the years since its
redevelopment.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
the b-side
Wednesday, September 16, 2020 — 11
THE B-SIDE: CITIES
On the value of graffiti
Has 2020 country music
all moved into the city?
Such is the
transient nature
of street art.
Even the work
of those held
highest in the
community...
can be almost
entirely painted
over citywide
within weeks of
its completion
Unlike the clear geographical
divides that segregate the rich and
the poor in most American cities,
London is a city where “council
tower blocks (roughly, housing
projects) are mingled in with the
multimillion-pound
mansions,”
writes Dan Hancox in “Inner City
Pressure: The Story of Grime.”
In the center of the city lie its
central business districts: the City
of London and Canary Wharf,
symbols of extreme privatized
wealth and decadence, not unlike
similar projects undertaken in
New York City and other world
cities in which high finance has
taken over. Just a few miles away lie
“the boroughs of Hackney, Tower
Hamlets and Newham,” arguably
the creative centers of the book’s
eponymous genre, grime. Notably,
these boroughs also constitute
some of the “most deprived local
authorities in the entire country.”
Despite the interconnectedness
of the city that Hancox describes,
even
those
only
somewhat
familiar with London’s history
might recognize the position of
East London in comparison with
the rest of the city. From “Mary
Poppins” to “West End Girls,” East
London has always been seen as the
more deprived area of the greater
metro area, with a large working-
class population, and recently,
an especially large immigrant
working class population. After
widespread
changes
in
the
shipping industry decimated the
London docklands, then-Prime
Minister
Margaret
Thatcher
ushered in a new age of capitalism,
one in which developers and the
financial sector could retake the
abandoned docklands under an
environment of “no questions
asked” deregulation, all with public
financial support. This sealed
off what is now Canary Wharf
from
the
“disproportionately
sick,
unhappy,
overcrowded,
addicted, jobless and impoverished
neighbours.” Grime MCs such
as Dizzee Rascal note how when
growing up, the skyscrapers of the
new financialized London were
ever-visible and ever-present as
a reminder of the city they were
never a part of, their own green
light in the harbor.
On the other side of the Atlantic,
similar events played out in the
1970s and ’80s, the era when post-
New Deal America crumbled
and when the foundations of
Reaganism,
Clintonism
and
everything beyond rose from its
ashes. In “Black Noise,” Tricia
Rose explains that by the middle
of the 1970s, New York City was
“virtually bankrupt and in a
critical state of disrepair” after the
refusal of the federal government
to provide any more public funds,
as well as widespread changes in
America’s economy. In response,
city officials negotiated a federal
loan which was to be accompanied
with crushing austerity measures
such as the removal of federal jobs.
According to Rose, these conditions
had an outsized impact on Black
and Hispanic communities in the
city, with homes being destroyed
by the hundreds of thousands to
facilitate city planning projects
designed not to support the city’s
most vulnerable, but rather to
attract wealthier, whiter, more
technocratic new residents. This
had the effect of shifting large
Black and Hispanic populations
from all over the city into the South
Bronx: a cultural mélange where
native New Yorkers, immigrants
from Africa and the Caribbean and
a crushing environment of poverty
and desperation all gave rise to the
genre of hip-hop.
These
days,
geographical
boundaries are almost obsolete
in delineating musical genres.
A teenage boy in Sweden can
make hip-hop that recalls the
washed-out sounds of Houston,
a Californian can make Jersey
Club and a Nigerian can make
shoegaze without a blink of the
eye. Labels such as Artetetra can
set up shop in Bologna, yet sign
artists from Moscow to make
extremely cosmopolitan pop. Not
to say that this couldn’t or didn’t
happen before the advent of mp3s
and SoundCloud. After all, we did
see rock take an impressive hold in
some countries in South America
as well as the migration of jazz to
Africa and East Asia. However,
this process often unfolded over
much longer time periods than
today. Traditionally, supporting
a burgeoning scene takes work.
It would require the cooperation
and enterprising spirit of label
managers, record shop owners,
A&R
personnel,
promoters,
concert hall owners and of course,
the musicians themselves. Due
to this, the development of these
“scenes” more often than not took
place in cities.
Allan Watson, a professor at
Loughborough University who
studies the interaction between
geography
and
music,
wrote
that “The local infrastructure of
production, including recording
studios and live music venue,
helps to solidify diverse musical
scenes in space, through the ways
in which musicians, audiences,
and music industry professionals
make use of the infrastructure.”
He further noted that “Even at
their most intimate moments
of birth, creative moments and
episodes connect with concrete
social conditions. Therefore, it is
important to give attention to the
social and physical environments
in which creativity happens,” and
that cities, especially in certain
“bohemian” quarters inside them,
facilitate these social connections
and
develop
the
professional
networks that beget the rise of
scenes.
In isolation, none of this
information
is
particularly
insightful.
In
a
sense,
this
phenomenon applies to many
sectors of the arts and other
endeavors. Cities host networks of
successful individuals and attract
those who want to share part of that
success. However, it is important
to note that music is one of the
arts that is (or at least historically
has been) the most dependent on
some form of collective experience
and enjoyment. Musicians of all
levels of popularity have depended
on
live
performances
and
merchandise sales that come along
with them to make up the majority
of their income. Moreover, it is
undeniable that the city’s material
conditions, geography and history
all shape the sounds of the music
that comes from it. While it may
be overzealous to claim genre A or
B could not be created anywhere
other than the place that it came
from, perhaps such a claim is not
too far from the truth. It also begs
the question: How much of this is
relevant anymore? In the age of
Spotify, SoundCloud, TikTok, etc.,
how much do local scenes matter
in the development of a sound or
new genre? Does this get rid of an
intrinsic part of music culture or
does it break down barriers and
create new revolutionary methods
of creative ideation?
Returning
to
London
in
particular,
how
do
these
geographical
factors
affect
the sound of grime? Hancox
suggested one element of its
sound is a form of Afrofuturism:
“The African diasporic aesthetic
that takes science fiction as a tool
for discussing oppression and
freedom–where spaceships might
be a metaphor for slave ships,
subverting the journey to make
it one of escape, not damnation.”
These ideas are prevalent in
grime’s instrumentals. Hancox
argued that this could all be traced
back to the gleaming skyline of
Canary Wharf, constantly visible
from some of the poorest, most
forgotten council flats in the city,
where refugees and immigrants
from some of the poorest countries
in the world could see the symbols
of 21st century London as both a
menace and a sort of inspiration.
The philosophy that places like
Canary Wharf represent is that of
“privately owned public spaces:
where security guards can ask you
to leave just based on looking at
you,” writes Hancox.
On the lyrical side of grime,
it is impossible to escape the
overwhelming
influence
of
Jamaican reggae culture and
music. Jamaican, and West Indian
immigrants in general, have a long
history in London. Notably, it in
part stems from a 1948 journey
by the HMT Empire Windrush
which brought hundreds to begin
their lives in the city, mainly to
work as laborers. When Jamaican
immigrants first arrive, many live
in the very council flats which later
become host to the pirate radio
shows and bootleg production
studios giving rise to iconic British
genres such as jungle, garage,
dubstep and grime. Per Hancox,
“It’s not just a family connection,
or an abstract component of the
musical bloodline: grime echoes
its Jamaican reggae heritage in its
structure, in its tropes, in its slang,
in the way it’s performed, and
stylistically: particularly harking
back to the ‘fast chat’ reggae style
of the likes of Smiley Culture.”
Even more so than the music itself,
grime borrows from this heritage
through the likes of its methods
of distribution as well as the
structure of its live performances.
In New York City in the
1970s and ’80s, in the midst
of its transformation into the
center of global commerce (what
economist Yanis Varoufakis dubs
the “Minotaur”), a similar set of
events played out, producing one
of modern music’s most globally
dominant genres. Like grime, hip-
hop owes much of its early sounds
to Jamaican immigrants and the
music culture they imported.
According to Rose, one of the most
important figures in early hip-
hop history was a Jamaican man
named DJ Kool Herc, who helped
import Jamaica’s sound-system
culture, which involved playing
music out of impressively large
towers of speakers and a whole
range of activities surrounding
them. In particular, Kool Herc
was known for “his practice of
extending obscure instrumental
breaks that created an endless
collage of peak dance beats named
b-beats or break-beats,” writes
Rose, with sources ranging from
Isaac Hayes to European groups
like
Kraftwerk.
Rival
crews
established
their
own
sound
systems and competed for territory
and
attention,
simultaneously
developing
innovative
DJing
techniques such as backspinning
to create complex new collages
of music from different samples.
Around the same time, MCs and
rappers started coming into play,
at first as a way to keep the crowd
focused on the center stage. Hip-
hop culture in general resulted as a
combination of these West Indian
influences, and its interaction with
the culture of the South Bronx and
surrounding areas. From the very
beginning, Black and Hispanic
women and men developed the
arts of graffiti and breakdancing
alongside rapping and beatmaking.
Looking back at these decades,
it is remarkable to note the
proliferation of new genres and
styles popping up by the month.
But these movements weren’t only
occurring in the megalopolises of
the two countries we’re focusing
on. In the interiors of the countries,
less “glamorous” cities such as
Detroit, Cleveland, Manchester
and Sheffield were also hotspots
of musical creativity. In a suburb
of Detroit called Belleville, three
Black
teenagers
found
each
other in their mostly white town.
Through their love of a wide
range of music from Parliament-
Funkadelic to Kraftwerk and
Yellow Magic Orchestra, they
created what is now known all over
as Detroit techno. The “Belleville
Three:” Juan Atkins, Derrick
May
and
Kevin
Saunderson
“belonged to a new generation
of Detroit-area black youth who
grew up accustomed to affluence,
thanks in part to the racially
integrated United Auto Workers
union,” wrote Simon Reynolds
in Generation Ecstasy: Into the
World of Techno and Rave Culture.
According to Reynolds, their tastes
were also influenced by WGPR
radio DJ Charles Johnson, who
would spin “Kraftwerk’s ‘Tour de
France’ and other electro-pop”
alongside American artists such as
Prince. The music they developed
through constant experimentation
spinning records and working with
drum machines and synthesizers
combined the funkiness of their
influences Parliament-Funkadelic
with
the
cold,
programmed
rhythms of the oft-mentioned
Kraftwerk. Like grime, this new
genre they developed was future-
looking from day one. Later artists
such as the legendary Detroit
duo Drexciya developed a whole
Afrofuturist mythology around
their nautical electro. Per Reynolds,
“But for all their futuristic mise-
en-scène, the vision underlying
Cybotron (Atkins’s original group)
was Detroit-specific, capturing a
city in transition: from industrial
boomtown
to
post-Fordist
wasteland, from US capital of auto
manufacturing to US capital of
homicide.”
The grounding of music
THE B-SIDE: CITIES
Read more online at
michigandaily.com
BEN VASSAR & PETER HUM-
MER
Daily Arts Writers
SAYAN GHOSH
Daily Arts Writer
Read more online at
michigandaily.com
KATIE BEEKMAN
Daily Arts Writer
“God’s
Country,”
“How
Country Feels” and more recently
“UNAPOLOGETICALLY
COUNTRY AS HELL” are but a
few examples of country music’s
allegiance to its bucolic namesake.
Not to mention the scores of songs
about small towns, dirt roads and
that one spot by the river no one
else knows about. Sometimes, this
devotion can turn hostile. Jason
Aldean disparages the “guys in
first class” who don’t appreciate
the heartland in “Fly Over States.”
Luke Bryan shakes his head at the
unknowing city weatherman on
“Rain is a Good Thing.”
But just how “country” is
mainstream country music in
2020? Jason Aldean, for example,
is probably riding first class
himself. What does Luke Bryan
care if it rains or not? He’s not a
farmer. Additionally, for some,
contemporary
country
music’s
glossy
production
and
heavy
pop
and
hip-hop
influences
have rendered its rural roots
unrecognizable, roots that several
stars no longer make an effort
to even nod to when they brand
themselves. As of late, many plaid
shirts and cowboy boots have
been ditched for crisp, firm-fitting
T-shirts and sneakers.
Nothing better encapsulates the
country-turned-city trend than
Thomas Rhett’s career. When he
first found success in 2012, he was
scruffy. Adorned in jeans and a
baseball cap and armed with an
acoustic guitar, his image and sound
were firmly planted in the fields
of his bro-country predecessors.
By 2015 though, Rhett was better
groomed and more style savvy and
popular than ever. Hit songs like
“Crash and Burn” and “T-Shirt”
found Rhett sonically uprooted and
crafting a style reliant on infectious,
dance-ready drums, synths and
clean-cut lyrics while leaving the
thought of fiddles, steel guitar or
corn fields behind him.
Despite Rhett’s success in the
city, tons of country songs continue
to belittle it — often in a way
that’s gendered. Sometimes, the
sentiment manifests in little digs.
In “Singles You Up,” Jordan Davis is
flirting with a girl who’s taken and
taunts “does he want you to be just
a little more city?” But other times,
moving to the city as something
unconscionable, even for love, is the
premise of the song itself. Morgan
Wallen gushes about a girl on
“More Than My Hometown” but
ultimately has to wish her well. He
loves her, but not enough to follow
her and her dreams away from
home.
As strange as it might seem, this
country/city dichotomy narrows
how women are able to participate
in country music. Not only are
women most often portrayed as
the ones who want to leave the
small town, which is decidedly
uncountry of them, but they also
face the universal pressure to have
a more glamorous image than
their male counterparts. Luke
Combs will wear a tee and jeans,
but that isn’t considered acceptable
stage attire for artists like Carrie
Underwood. This kind of double
standard expands into how artists’
songs are judged sonically as well.
Rhett hasn’t attracted nearly as
much pushback based on the sound
of his music as Maren Morris or
Kelsea Ballerini for their similarly
pop-inspired work and branding.
Ultimately,
worrying
about
where the genre’s heart resides is
pointless. Country music never
left where it came from — the
city, that is. With beginnings in
Atlanta, Nashville and Chicago,
even the genre’s earliest recordings
are not entirely “country.” And
with
a
long,
well-established
history in Nashville, neither was
its in-between. Even the images
we associate with country music
have somewhat urbane origins.
Country singers used to get dressed
up in their finest clothes to play
on country radio. That is, until the
city-based radio executives thought
that having the musicians dress
up like farmers would sell their
music better. Whether one likes it
or not, country music, in its many
evolutions, has thrived in part
because of the city, not in spite of it.
Daily Arts Writer Katie Beekman
can be reached at beekmank@
umich.edu.
THE B-SIDE: CITIES