12. Present day

The rich history in the subject of black music leads to an important question for the present day: “Is the term still used?”. The answer to this appears to be yes, although not everywhere, not by everybody and not in all contexts. Black music scholars will always use the term because it holds a gravitas within academia because of the term’s historical heritage. In the US, the terms “urban contemporary” and “African-American music” have generally replaced “black music” amongst the people and media publications, but the story is different in Europe. Reporting for blog The Root, Cord Jefferson explained his shock at seeing a photo of a ”black music” section in a German music shop, particularly because groups featuring white musicians also featured on the shelves. He claimed that “the picture raised questions about racial politics and the reach of history”, but the most important question was “if three white Jewish guys [Beastie Boys] making speed-punk can fit under the umbrella of ‘black music’, then isn't that umbrella too big?” (Jefferson, 2009). As expressed throughout the previous chapters, “black music” as a moniker for stylistic innovation has been used as a marketing tool for decades. Embedded within that is the implicit notion of natural talent or a “natural rhythm”, which some white musicians have appropriated, Eric Clapton’s racial diatribe about Jimi Hendrix being a classic example

In 1996, the Music Of Black Origin Awards (or MOBOs for short) were established Kanya King MBE to “recognise the outstanding achievements of artists who perform music in genres ranging from Gospel, Jazz, RnB, Soul, Reggae to Hip Hop”. Since inception, the MOBOs have been the most influential movement for black music heritage in Britain, a place that doesn’t have the same sort of historical longevity in the subject. Nevertheless, over the past few years, with many white musicians received nominations and going on to win awards, questions have been asked about the name “Music Of Black Origin” if a white artist can win it. Interestingly, on the MOBO website, the terms “urban music” and “black music” are used together but in slightly different contexts: MOBO being “Europe’s leading urban music brand” while it has also “played an instrumental role in elevating black music and culture to mainstream popular status in the UK”. The term black music is only used once on the website in relation to its status in the UK while “urban music” is used seven times, to describe its reputation in Europe and the rest of the world, which may appease some of those questioning the brand’s multiracial contradictions

A genre currently under racial scrutiny by some black musicians is jazz. In 2000, a jazz trumpeter called Nicholas Payton went on a lengthy but scattered poetic rant on his blog about “why jazz wasn’t cool anymore”. One of the key points he discussed was how jazz had died in 1959 and it was now just a marketing ploy. Just last year, pianist Orrin Evans no longer described his music as jazz but instead “Black American Music”. He had featured at a Black American Music conference and while his input was minimal, the general tone of the event was that of jazz being a racist term. Willard Jenkins went a step further by concluding that there was still an issue of racism within jazz (Jenkins, 2003). Unfortunately, the stigma towards the word and the racism imposed upon both the name and genre wasn’t misguided. Jazz did not have a good reputation amongst white critics as they deemed it plagiarism and mutilation of classical white composers (Anderson, 2004, p.135) but this has since changed as more white jazz composers became prominent within the genre. In the early days, jazz was often called “devil music”, possibly attributed to the deep-seated links with classical music and religious context (consonance relating to God, dissonance to the devil). In spite of this, African American music, has come to represent liberation, emotional depth, and sensuality (Monson, 1995, p.405)