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

