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Unfamiliar
Aug. 16th, 2013 12:53 amIn 1998 I hated rap, with all the white-hot contempt in my racist-by-default teenage heart.
Today I caught a reference to Ice-9 in a hip-hop track and caught myself thinking "hey, I wonder if this guy has a show in my area any time soon?" (No. Last week.)
What happened in the interim? A roommate who really liked rap. She introduced me to her favorites, pointing out the joy, the honor, the intricate rhythms, the cunning and transformative use of sampling, and the sometimes unlikely rhymes and wordplay.
She found the best to show me, and shared her love.
Is it my favorite genre now? No. But familiarity has rendered me not a complete asshat on the topic. I went from listening to my roommate's choices and accepting that an authority (someone who liked rap) said that they were good, coming to enjoy them myself, and then gradually feeling the confidence to say "I'm not an expert on the genre, but I enjoyed this." I doubt I'll ever have the expertise to say "I see what this artist was attempting to do, and I admire the attempt, but I feel they fell short in the following ways", in the way that you can sit me down near a violinist playing from the first few Suzuki violin books and I'm likely to be able to tell which notes they got wrong, and whether it was sharp, flat, long, short, or some other issue. I'm all right with that; there are many things in the world, and I have a limited time to develop expertise. I can still enjoy things though!
I am still, and will always be, running headlong into things in the world and in my head and saying to myself, "oh holy fuck that's racist." And, I hope, having the ever-loving self-awareness to not actually act on any horrible things my head is saying. But just not saying actively racist shit doesn't mean I'm not doing racist things. Every time I randomized the radio and stumbled in to rap music and my reaction was "that music is not for people like me" and moved on without bothering to listen to see if I actually had opinions of my own, that was racism. Hard for me to realize at the time, but unmistakably racist.
The internet is quietly helping me learn appreciation for things I never knew before, and with any good luck I can develop a taste for the good bits without revealing my previous shameful attitudes.
Today I caught a reference to Ice-9 in a hip-hop track and caught myself thinking "hey, I wonder if this guy has a show in my area any time soon?" (No. Last week.)
What happened in the interim? A roommate who really liked rap. She introduced me to her favorites, pointing out the joy, the honor, the intricate rhythms, the cunning and transformative use of sampling, and the sometimes unlikely rhymes and wordplay.
She found the best to show me, and shared her love.
Is it my favorite genre now? No. But familiarity has rendered me not a complete asshat on the topic. I went from listening to my roommate's choices and accepting that an authority (someone who liked rap) said that they were good, coming to enjoy them myself, and then gradually feeling the confidence to say "I'm not an expert on the genre, but I enjoyed this." I doubt I'll ever have the expertise to say "I see what this artist was attempting to do, and I admire the attempt, but I feel they fell short in the following ways", in the way that you can sit me down near a violinist playing from the first few Suzuki violin books and I'm likely to be able to tell which notes they got wrong, and whether it was sharp, flat, long, short, or some other issue. I'm all right with that; there are many things in the world, and I have a limited time to develop expertise. I can still enjoy things though!
I am still, and will always be, running headlong into things in the world and in my head and saying to myself, "oh holy fuck that's racist." And, I hope, having the ever-loving self-awareness to not actually act on any horrible things my head is saying. But just not saying actively racist shit doesn't mean I'm not doing racist things. Every time I randomized the radio and stumbled in to rap music and my reaction was "that music is not for people like me" and moved on without bothering to listen to see if I actually had opinions of my own, that was racism. Hard for me to realize at the time, but unmistakably racist.
The internet is quietly helping me learn appreciation for things I never knew before, and with any good luck I can develop a taste for the good bits without revealing my previous shameful attitudes.
