Censorship Under the Guise of Protecting Children

Censorship in Music

Censorship Under the Guise of Protecting the Children

Rock and Roll Culture

Hip Hop Culture

Is Censorship in Music Viable and Does it Make a Difference?

There have been many attempts by society control music. Governmental statutes, agency regulations, business controls and parents have all tried to censor the music. Sometimes they have succeeded and sometimes they have not. The examination of various aspects of rock and rap music censorship involves general societal reactions to new and alien music, racism, governmental responses, media outlets such as Rolling Stone magazine and the New York Times, and the music industry itself. Each of these serve as gatekeepers, veritable controllers of the music and lyrics that make their way out into our collective consciousness.

Rock and roll has become a prime target for the censorship campaigns of a wide range of special interest lobbies, including religious, political, economic, and musical. Such vehement opposition, whether well intentioned or cloaked in self-interest, has existed almost perpetually throughout rock music’s rather short lifetime. Strangely, the passion and energy that have been used in attempts to either alter or suppress rock and roll music seem only to have spurred rock musicians to further flaunt whatever aspect of their music or behavior is considered to be objectionable in a show of defiant celebration.

At the heart of the issue is the fundamental departure of attitudes and practices from those that have characterized the power culture since the colonization of the United States. This change in taste is dramatic because it symbolizes widespread acceptance of the musical customs of black America and rural white America. These sectors of society had very little prestige and were dismissed as irrelevant to national standards and priorities. What was new in the 1950s was the appearance of an enthusiastic audience of middle-class teenagers from white America, coupled with a new designation for the music – “rock and roll.” Young people with a new fascination for minority music proved to be one of the major forces behind the reshaping of many social patterns in American society during the second half of the 1900s.

American parents have attempted to censor music by organizing and pressuring government and industry in the direction of control of youth-based music and youth culture. Much of the censorship by Caucasian adults has been done under the guise of protecting children. The fear is clearly that children might emulate the behavior of the rock and rap culture, as they become adults through new and increasingly shocking music and lyrics.

Much more than just music for its fans, rock and roll is a subculture in the strictest sense of the word. Initially, most of the reporting on rock music took the position that it was merely a gimmick, but later observers of popular culture wrote on its social, economic, and political functions, along with the music’s possible implications.

One way to control new creative music sounds and messages is through public criticism. Public disapproval by special interest groups has been especially notable in the past several years.

The earliest censorship efforts in rock were, of course, concerning the lyrics. As early as 1950, an official attempt was made to ban shipping and selling “obscene disks” via interstate commerce regulation. The courts ruled that records fell under the same provision as films and printed material. Broadcasters were aware of potential problems over risque lyrics and self-censored in order to avoid potential problems. In 1951, Dottie O’Brien’s “Four or Five Times” and Dean Martin’s “Wham Barn, Thank You Ma’am” were banned from airplay by LA radio stations. In 1953, Congress rejected a bill to regulate interstate shipment of obscene music. These incidents illustrate the same concerns that were later applied to rock and roll.

At the same time that America was reveling in the afterglow of the crossover anthem, “We Are the World,” the popular black music culture of the mid-1980s underwent profound transformations. The emergence of rap dealt the apparent this celebration of racial melding that had been taking place square between the eyes. Since that time, hip-hop culture, with rap music as just one element, has been both a key influence on the tastes, styles, and modes of personal expression among American youth, as well as a representation of the emergence of a new cultural orthodoxy.

The misogynistic flavor of many rap lyrics, including “Wild Thing,” along with the violent brutality of the act of rape itself, are justifiable causes for concern. However, contrary to the implications in the tone of much media coverage and public outcry, there is no proven casual relationship between rap music and violent crime. Regardless, the hip-hop culture and African-American youth, notably males, have become inextricably associated in the mainstream media with rape, the rise of drug trafficking, gang activity, car-jacking, and overall violence against the police.

Hip-hop culture resonates in vastly different ways with various groups. For its core audience of urban youth, hip-hop is uses the material and symbols of inner city life and death to clarify the search for meaning and empowerment. Hip-hop moves beyond aesthetic expression and functions almost as an alternative media form that is distinct from mainstream entities. Chuck D, leader of Public Enemy and a self-styled spokesman for hip-hop, has often referred to rap music and the larger hip-hop community as the CNN of African-American youth.

Since 1956, censorship, regulation, and control have all been issues concerning rock n’ roll. Public indignation and virulent criticism were responses to the very nature of the music form. Rock music was so alien at its beginning that it scrutinized, at first over the sounds, then over the lyrics. Yet, rock went on, albeit in many hybrid forms. Over 40 years of rock music and its offshoots are all the evidence that is needed that the music flourished despite vehement opposition and blatant attempts at censorship.

Censorship in any form goes against the grain of many Americans. The desire to protect children, to control and regulate behaviors and attitudes, to provide positive role models is certainly legitimate for most parents. But where does “control” turn into “censorship?” At what point are creative thought and new ideas being irreparably harmed? Society has always undergone changes, and that will continue to happen.

Is Censorship in Music Viable and Does It Make a Difference?

Introduction

There have been many attempts by society control music. Governmental statutes, agency regulations, business controls and parents have all tried to censor the music. Sometimes they have succeeded and sometimes they have not. It is important to take a look at censorship efforts through the offending lyrics and the surrounding youth culture beginning with rock in the mid-1960s and on through rap and the hip-hop culture beginning in the mid-1980s. It is a dilemma for many people to ideally believe in free expression as part of democracy, yet at the same time to not be absolute in that belief for various reasons. The limits of such tolerance about popular music are interesting to examine (Davidson and Winfield, 1999).

The examination of various aspects of rock and rap music censorship involves many diverse and wide-ranging topics. It involves general societal reactions to new and alien music, racism, governmental responses, media outlets such as the New York Times, and the music industry itself. Each of these serve as gatekeepers, veritable controllers of the music and lyrics that make their way out into our collective consciousness. Censorship, or “bleeping,” has been a part of a diverse American society for a long time. As nineteenth-century French observer Alexis de Tocqueville once noted, “intolerance runs alongside of a democracy.”

Legendary music producer Sam Phillips has had firsthand experience with disapproval of musical expression. In 1957, when promoting Jerry Lee Lewis’ song, “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” a record distributor wanted him to delete the word “it” from the “shake it, baby” refrain. Needless to say, Phillips refused. Another 1950s rocker, Elvis Presley, “frightened a lot of people,” according to Kenneth A. Paulson, executive director of the First Amendment Center, speaking at an Associated Press Managing Editors conference. He noted it was Elvis’ appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” during which the producers of the show refused to show the singer below the waist, that provided many young Americans with their first taste of censorship. For Jill Sobule, censorship reared its head when her single, “I Kissed a Girl,” struggled to find airtime due to its lesbian theme. Steppenwolf’s John Kay learned early on about the effects of censorship. Growing up in East Germany after World War II made him keenly aware of how badly things can go when oppression to ideas sets in and no one speaks up. Phillips noted that instead of spending their time suppressing music, people should encourage and celebrate it. “Music has done more to break down areas of censorship, racism, international understanding… More than all of the damn ambassadors put together… around the world” (AJR, 1990, p. 20).

Literature Review

Historical Context of Censorship in Rock and Roll

The controversy over American popular music really began in the post-World War II era, as it began to increasingly refer to human sexuality and the racism of society. The Spanish-born Pablo Casals (1876-1973), who enjoyed a spectacular international career as a violin and cello virtuoso and conductor, was considered to be one of the finest musicians of his day. However, he had a rather harsh assessment of rock and roll in the early 1960s, one that should be viewed through the filter of a person whose life was devoted to European fine-art music.

You want to know what I think of that abomination, rock ‘n’ roll? I think it is a disgrace. Poison put to sound! When I hear it I feel very sad not only for music but for the people who are addicted to it. I am also very sorry for America– that such a great country should have nothing better to pour into the expectant ear of mankind than this raucous distillation of the ugliness of our times, performed by juveniles for juveniles. It is a terrible and sardonic trick of fate that the children of the present century should have to grow up with their bodies under continual bombardment from atomic fall-out and their souls exposed to rock ‘n’ roll (Casals, 1961, p. 18).

It would seem that many observers of rock music were more than a little willing to attribute the sordid lifestyles of various rock musicians, as well as the untimely deaths of several others, to the music itself.

Rock and roll fans, if even a portion of what the critics have said was true, by now would be stone deaf, with their minds burnt out by drugs, and their bodies wasted by excessive fornication. That none of this is true has never bothered rock opponents nor caused them to pause in their attacks. Rock bashing has remained constant since the mid-1950s both in content and style (Martin & Segrave, 1993, p. vii).

No other musical genre in Western civilization has ever aroused more controversy and stronger emotions than rock and roll. No other type of music has attracted so many powerful and amazingly self-righteous opponents. No group of musicians has taken such self indulgent and downright self-destructive glee in merging the roles of entertainer/artist and social outlaw. Simply invoking the names of three identifiable strains of this music, “shock rock,” “cock rock,” and “schlock rock,” gives some insight into the power of this music to send the protectors of American culture off on a tirade. The implications of this music, its identification with teenage thoughts and behaviors, have contributed to the overwrought reactions to its perceived menace (Budds, 1999).

Rock and roll has become a prime target for the censorship campaigns of a wide range of special interest lobbies, including religious, political, economic, and musical (Martin & Segrave, 1988; Cloonan, 1996). Such vehement opposition, whether well intentioned or cloaked in self-interest, has existed almost perpetually throughout rock music’s rather short lifetime. Strangely, the passion and energy that have been used in attempts to either alter or suppress rock and roll music seem only to have spurred rock musicians to further flaunt whatever aspect of their music or behavior is considered to be objectionable in a show of defiant celebration.

At the heart of the issue is the fundamental departure of attitudes and practices from those that have characterized the power culture since the colonization of the United States. This change in taste is dramatic because it symbolizes widespread acceptance of the musical customs of black America and rural white America. These sectors of society had very little prestige and were dismissed as irrelevant to national standards and priorities. What was new in the 1950s was the appearance of an enthusiastic audience of middle-class teenagers from white America, coupled with a new designation for the music – “rock ‘n’ roll.” Young people with a new fascination for minority music proved to be one of the major forces behind the reshaping of many social patterns in American society during the second half of the 1900s (Budds, 1999).

This transformation of American popular music became the source of violent debate simply because it was generated and given life by the youth of the power culture, without the blessing of their parents. There are few other musical movements in history that have been so clearly defined in terms of age. Once the music had been around long enough to establish itself as something more than just an irritating fad, it quickly achieved new status as the social emblem of rebellious youth.

Much of the negative reaction to rock and roll by establishment voices can be identified as both racist and elitist. In 1956, Time magazine, the most prominent current events periodical of record for American society at the time, fundamentally established the tone for the national debate. In a report on rock and roll, the magazine described the music in such negative terms as “jungle,” “juvenile delinquency,” and “Hitler mass meetings” (Time, 1956).

Entertainment music in America at this time was a very lucrative business, directly affecting the livelihood of many individuals. Suddenly, the music of young Southern upstarts began to flood the marketplace.

A serious loss of income and control caused industry executives go on the defense, going to far as to condemn the music of competitors as both socially irresponsible and morally corrupting.

The editors of Billboard and Variety, the trade magazines of their profession, raised the ugly image of government censorship as the ultimate solution to the dilemma (Billboard, 1954; Green, 1955).

It was not very long before the industry, lured by the obvious financial rewards, wholeheartedly embraced the world of rock and roll. This helped to solidify the music’s hold on the American middle class, as well as introducing musical compromises that were dictated by financial concerns. In the view of many, by the end of the 1950s the industry itself had become a big part of the problem.

The most obvious target for censors has always been the lyrics of rock and roll songs, which were labeled from the very beginning as trivial, sexually suggestive, or obscene.

Song texts of mainstream America had for many years been influenced by the high culture of Europe, though watered down for middle-class listeners. Songs with texts that offended this sensibility were banned by radio stations or deleted from the musical scores of Broadway and Hollywood.

Rock and roll culture came to accept a premise already found in folk music and fine-art music, that the subject of music should be the entire spectrum of human experience (Budds, 1999).

While many proponents welcomed this spirit of uncensored expression as evidence of the rock music’s “coming of age,” opponents intensified their efforts, repeating their battle cry that the behavior of young Americans was influenced in the most negative way by experiencing rock and roll. A good deal of the criticism has been focused on a cult of violence that was originally associated with 1970s punk and heavy metal, and more recently with gangsta rap (Ro, 1996) and the “hate” rock of white supremacist groups. For decades, feminists had been vociferous in condemning misogynist words, images, and actions, many of which can be found in the male-dominated world of rock and roll (Meade, 1971).

There is no better record of what American teenagers in the second half of the twentieth century were all about than rock and roll. It remains music with an attitude, at odds with authority figures. These attitudes have regularly been shared, without apology or embarrassment, in the common language of teenagers who are intent on carving out a meaningful identity. The casual use of profanity, the explicit references to sexual behaviors and drug use, and the open attacks on other cultural “sacred cows” are not exclusive to rock and roll.

With the twenty-first century well under way, rock and roll is more complicated controversial than ever. There is one aspect of the tradition that remains unchanged. The music that was created by young Americans for young Americans continues to alarm, shock, and challenge the very fabric of society. Its opponents are just as ready as they have ever been to give voice to their own outrage, to wage what is effectively a holy war, and to fight for censorship (Budds, 1999).

Censorship Under the Guise of Protecting the Children

American parents have attempted to censor music by organizing and pressuring government and industry in the direction of control of youth-based music and youth culture. Much of the censorship by Caucasian adults has been done under the guise of protecting children. The fear is clearly that children might emulate the behavior of the rock and rap culture, as they become adults through new and increasingly shocking music and lyrics.

During the second half of this century, the reaction to rock ‘n’ roll and rap music has developed into a true clash of cultures.

Many biases play a role in the reaction. Because creativity goes all the way to the roots of a culture, clashes inevitably happen between the roots of European and African musical sounds and words. With Euro-centric music, creativity equals change, sometimes quite subtle, with one melodic message building upon and replacing another. Composers try new musical forms and methods, new sounds, but the melody is central. Lyrics often interact, building upon a western melodic sequence of sounds.

On the other hand, creativity in Afro-centric music depends upon repetition and revitalizing sounds of the beat with the rhythm being primary. The words fit the beat and express human emotions. Such constants are all the more prominent in rock and rap music that is closely tied to African sounds and explicit lyrics (Winfield, 1999).

Despite court rulings that such music and other cultural expressions are protected under the First Amendment, the reality is that many American adults have historically disliked non-European sounds, especially when first hearing them. Historically, the Afro-rhythmic sounds are strange and the words are shockingly suggestive. In the historical progression of blues-jazz-rock-rap songs, critics accused this music and its composers of disrupting cultural values, inciting violence and being generally detrimental to society.

Meanwhile, teenagers were not just looking for new musical sounds, but also for voices and words that spoke to them as they forged their adult identities. Adolescent upheavals also mean surviving the pressures of sexuality, romance, morality, parents, authority and government. The emerging new forms of rock and rap music tend to speak personally to older children.

Since teenagers’ tastes are still impressionable, as they move toward adulthood their interests center around the music. Perhaps it is not only the lyrics and sounds they are drawn to, but also to the possibility of breaking previous taboos with words and musical actions.

The biggest taboos for teenagers seem to concern incitement to violence toward women and authority figures, such as the police, as well as sexually explicit words. With music obviously aimed at teens, parents worry about out-of-control rebellion, and cultural and social depravity. The fear in their parents was also incitement, possibly leading some minors to behavior, such as misogyny, racism and violence. In fact, rock ‘n’ roll and rap music has become the common scapegoats for whatever is wrong with young people. Popular music that not only sounds different, but also has suggestive lyrics aimed at children, scares many parents. The response to the fear has been a series of attempted controls ranging from government to economic and commercial forms of censorship (Winfield, 1999).

The justification for attempting to enforce this kind control is based quite simply on fears about the effects of rock and rap words and music.

This form of expression may cause youth to become ungovernable, unlikely to follow society’s and their parents’ rules. The possible effects that parents want to avoid include bizarre behavior, as well as imitating alien sounds, speaking taboo words, emulating violent lyrics, fulfilling sexual desires, copying the performers’ outlandish antics and being overwhelmed by extreme audience reactions. Many adults view the musicians as instigators, whose lyrics and actions violate society’s norms and encourage sexual antics and savagery such as murder, drug use and suicide. Since music conveys feelings and emotions, the danger of this music is clear and present to those who are afraid of these types of behaviors enough to justify censorship and control.

The clear-and-present-danger designation has historically meant that the state can regulate speech if the danger is too great and obvious. In other words, free expression in the United States would not be absolute. However, some areas have not warranted protection, including pornography and obscenity that children can access.

Despite giving Constitutional protection to many forms of entertainment, the Supreme Court has never made a decision as to what degree of free-expression protection should be given to music, outside of copyright protections.

Beyond using legal controls, the censoring of music can be indirect. Consumers have been asked to boycott concerts and to not purchase the music that has been publicized as detrimental. Businesses and discount mega-stores may respond to public pressure and refuse to carry the offending music, especially any music that is labeled as either obscene or violent. The industry may even censor itself and put a damper on creative expression, no matter how financially successful the music has been.

Young people, as the prime consumers of new musical forms, have always purchased tapes, records and CDs, listened to the radio, watched MTV videos and attended live concerts www.questia.com/9801855″ (Berry & Wolin, 1985). Rock topped the list of musical purchases by dollar value (Jones, 1982). Industry executives tend avoid those artists or musical groups who are controversial enough to hurt those sales. Besides being influenced to some degree by customers’ musical choices, music companies definitely react to strong parental groups who loudly and publicly protest that particular lyrics are too violent or too sexually suggestive. Some people have even sued musicians and music businesses directly as a remedy for perceived damage to them and their families.

Public officials often react to controversial music with moral outrage, proposing new laws as a means of protecting children and society. Organized groups can exert pressure on appointed and elected officials to do something under the banner of protecting youth. In recent years, former Secretary of Education William Bennett, along with C. Delores Tucker and other governmental and parental leaders, reacted strongly to rap songs about urban violence. In the 1980s, after hearing explicit masturbation lyrics in “Darling Nikki” on Prince’s Purple Rain album, a group of politicians’ wives, calling itself the Parents’ Music Resource Center (PMRC), lobbied for legislation for labeling to warn of obscenity and deviant behavior (DeCurtis, 1992).

Warning labels on CDs, tapes and printed lyrics have become a standard part of the product today. Interestingly, in many cases the warning stickers served to increase the sales of the products. One of the leaders of the movement to educate parents about inciting and suggestive movies and music, Tipper Gore, has stated that censorship was not actually her goal (Gore, 1987). Generally, attempts to apply long-term obscenity or indecency statutes to music have failed utterly.

Partly this is due to the simple fact that messages that offend one person may appeal to another.

Music is evaluated individually by song, album, and performer. For a message to be declared obscene it must meet all the separate parts of a three-pronged legal test, based on the 1973 Miller decision: first, “whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,” second, “whether the work depicts in a patently offensive way sexual conduct, specifically defined by applicable state law,” and last, “whether the work has any redeeming social value.”

The Supreme Court has also ruled that a state could define obscenity for minors under the age of 17 and prohibit the sale of obscenity to them. Even though it has not been easy to apply the Miller obscenity test, because of the artistic or political value defense, attempts have been made. In the case of Luke Records and 2-Live Crew’s popular 1992 album, As Nasty as They Wanna Be, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals found that “the obscenity test had been misapplied, and that the recording was not legally obscene because it did not meet the third legal prong concerning redeeming social value.”

The current constitutional debate over heavy metal rock and gangsta rap music is not only about the explicit language, but is also about advocacy, which is an act of incitement to violence. Previous censorship concerns over incitement dealt with political speech. Incitement in reference to rap music is about brutality and physical injury. This means that the government, even though it has broad interests in children’s welfare, bears a heavy burden in justifying any regulations. The illusive community’s standards rules would not be used in this case.

Historically, when music has thumbed its nose at society’s norms, various internal or external controls have been exercised, or the music was altered in some way to make it more acceptable. Traditional blues singers formulated new imagery to get past record company censors. By the mid-1950s, rock ‘n’ roll, with mass appeal to white youth during the early civil rights movement, was under particularly suspicion. It was not just the startling sexual lyrics, but also the performers’ suggestive stage manner, double entendre phrases, and guttural noises that many adults found so shocking (Flood, 1991).

In the late 1950s, when “Rock Around the Clock” became a national teenage anthem, many adults tried to link it to teenagers’ open sexuality and rebellion (McDonald, 1988). Adult Americans quickly denounced rock as the devil’s music, claiming that it was filled with messages about sex, drugs, perversion, communism, atheism, miscegenation, and other criminal activities. Along with creating public outrage, the new rock music separated youth further from their parents and threatened the “normalcy” of life.

When rap music rose into the public consciousness by the mid 1980s, it represented a joining, gang-type of expression. The adult fear was that suburban American youth would indeed “join” and empathize with black adolescents’ urban experience. Although there are some white rappers, black artists dominated gangsta rap with black codes and street lingo that was explicit enough to be understood. Even though almost 75% of all rap albums were bought by white youth, rap music was considered to be a black phenomenon.

The lyrics confronted audiences with uncomfortable issues of racism, sexism, and black feelings toward white authority figures. Unlike earlier concerns about heavy metal music’s effects upon the fragile minds of a few troubled individuals, rap music was believed to cause a violent reaction from entire audiences. In April of 1989, the musician Tone Loc “Wild Thing” was accused of being the reason for the sensational Central Park “wilding” rape. The hysterical reaction was that black youth were unthinking, animal-like, and ready to erupt into a frenzy of “wilding” and rioting at a moment’s notice. Inflammatory songs such as “Cop Killer” were believed capable of inciting an entire race to murder the nation’s police. Unlike previous reactions to musical changes, these anxieties were aimed not at individual artists, but at an entire racial group (Talerman, 1994).

The accusations about rap lyrics became more than a racial issue, reflecting gender and social issues concerning sexism, sexual harassment, rape, and murder. Much of rap has indeed been sexually explicit, such as “As Nasty as They Wanna Be” by 2-Live Crew, which included the songs “Me So Horny” and “Dick Almighty.” Ice-T’s “Cop Killer,” from the album Body Count, infuriated people with the lyrics “Die, die, die, pig, die!” Public outcry against “Cop Killer” went to the extreme of death threats against record company employees until Ice-T announced he would pull “Cop Killer” from his album. Internationally, Irish radio stations and Australian live shows also banned “Cop Killer” (Campbell, 1991).”

The argument soon became that censorship was justified, because rap lyrics were of a graphic nature, sadistic and masochistic. At the same time, rap music clearly resonated with a wide range of listeners and became a weekly staple on MTV. Political, boastful and angry, rap lyrics and sounds reverberated with primitive beats that shouted conflict. Rap upset the prevailing view that the lyrics did not matter. The charge against them was that groups, such as 2-Live Crew, used lustful lyrics encouraging sexual exploits and inciting violent confrontations. In July 1990, 2-Live Crew’s recordings became the subject of the “Donahue” and “Geraldo” shows, with musicians such as Frank Zappa and Axl Rose speaking out to support the right of musicians to express themselves, no matter what the response. Luther Campbell, the leader of 2-Live Crew, even came out with a solo single, “Banned in the U.S.A.” To show support for the free-expression principles involved, Bruce Springsteen granted Campbell permission to use the chorus from “Born in the U.S.A.” (Campbell, 1991).

Scholar Henry Gates argued, in a letter to the New York Times, that the case of 2-Live Crew “tells more about the American psyche” than about the group (Gates, 1990).

In some ways, banning particular songs ends up creating a type of “in-your-face” partnership between the artists and their audiences. The German group, Die Arzte, was banned by their CBS label from releasing one of their songs, “Helmut Kohl Beats His Wife.” In reaction, the group released the song itself to great popular acclaim. When the musicians were scheduled to perform and promote their album in Munich, the hall was surrounded by police, who told the band that if they sang the song, they would be arrested. Die Arzte shared its dilemma with the audience in attendance, and while the musicians played the music, the audience sang the words for them. No one was arrested (Holden, 1993).

Since the early 1970s, American government officials have been more outspoken in their judgments about the effects of various music that is aimed at youth. Rock music has paralleled the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War protests, the assassination of popular leaders, the “credibility gap,” the “generation gap,” the “gender gap,” and various environmental concerns.

American youth had already been politicized, and their ideology fairly permeated the music (Lull, 1992).

President Richard Nixon attempted to deport John Lennon from the U.S. In 1970 because of the political content of Lennon’s lyrics and what Nixon termed Lennon’s deviant behavior. Vice-President Spiro Agnew said that rock lyrics were “threatening to destroy our national strength.” Performers were fined for sexual, drug and anti-war messages.

Country Joe McDonald was fined $500 for his “Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag” in Massachusetts, as a “lewd, lascivious and wanton person in speech and behavior.” The United States Senate, led by Senator James Buckley, investigated the “drugola” between drugs and rock music. Buckley accused both CBS and Columbia Records of utilizing drugs as payment to disc jockeys in return for promoting particular songs and performers (Fong-Torres, 1973). Simultaneously, the FBI made extensive reports on John Lennon (92 pages), Jim Morrison (91 pages), and Elvis Presley (87 pages) (McDonald, 1988). Federal officials continued to connect music’s political messages to the power of resistance from the mid-1960s into the early 1970s.

The marketplace can also censor the music, indirectly. In fact, music that lacks a potential market faces insurmountable obstacles in the efforts to secure recording contracts, promotion sales, and airplay.

At about the same time that black music achieved mainstream status, much of the jazz, blues, and rhythm-and-blues genres lost their racial identification and some of their meaning. Government censorship was based on content restrictions, but the industry’s self-restraint of the music came directly from the power of the marketplace. Billboard’s chart-compilation lists historically had always determined the rankings of popular singles and albums. By the 1990s, with new computer technology adopted, black music performances on those singles’ charts improved dramatically (Sernoe, 1994).

Record companies, many of whom began life as small mom-and-pop operations, moved to a marketed consumer product by the 1980s (Goodman, 1997). Companies with thriving subsidiary enterprises were effectively held hostage to the PMRC demands. By the 1990s, music companies and music stores both refused to sell any rock or rap music labeled as violent or sexually explicit to anyone under 16.

Even mainstream non-music retailers, such as Wal-Mart, began refusing to carry certain labels and album covers.

Violence and extreme behavior in rap lyrics sells music. Before he was murdered in Las Vegas in 1996, Tupac Shakur, one of gangsta rap’s biggest stars, was encouraged by the record industry to be extreme in his antics and lyrics. His first album, All Eyez on Me, which was released in early 1996 on Death Row Records, sold over five million units. The more confrontational he was, the more newsworthy he became, and the more his record releases sold. To some he was a hero, to others, a demon. Tupac was caught squarely between his own character and the commercial image his record company required of him, and he paid the highest price of all (Bruck, 1997).

Public opinion has been insidiously cold, as well. After the rap group N.W.A., with “Straight Outta Compton,” and Ice-T, with “Cop Killer,” enraged many police officers, adults organized boycotts of the albums and the concerts (DeCurtis, 1992). An incitement charge left no free-speech protection, if the danger was judged to be immediate and likely, and if the intent was to stimulate an illegal action. Although music qualifies as protected speech under the First Amendment, and there is a right of public access to such speech, various states and cities passed statutes banning rap or heavy metal concerts due to the possibility of incitement. Unreasonably high insurance premiums for concerts have become another form of prior restraint.

Even though a municipality cannot completely deny rap or heavy metal performers access to a public forum, the issue may be what form allowed access takes (Natter, 1991). When New York City cut off the power for Rock Against Racism (RAR) at a 1989 concert, after repeatedly asking the group to lower the volume, the audience became disruptive. The courts sided with the city’s guidelines about excessive noise and the use of the Central Park Naumberg Acoustic Bandshell.

A number of cities around the country chose to ban concerts outright because of the youth of the audience and a perception that the atmosphere at concerts was sexually charged, drug-ridden, and possibly violent. Many neighborhoods successfully lodged complaints about excessive noise, as well as potential disorder (Kanzer, 1992). The Grateful Dead was forbidden to perform in many venues for fear of potential illegal drug use and violation of community mores.

By the 1990s, visual displays had become as important as music. MTV, founded in 1981, was revolutionary, allowing audiences to hear the lyrics, learn the code words, and see the artists up close, without having to go out to clubs or rock concerts. The distinction between advertising and entertainment disappeared overnight, with MTV as a trendsetter, promoting youth and the youth culture. Targeted at America’s 14- to 25-year-olds, MTV switched to rap long before mainstream radio stations did. Adult pressure groups, including the PMRC, began to protest not just the words, but the visual images of sex and violence that filled the videos. Strangely, while more explicit in visual content, MTV refused to play music with sexually explicit words (Seabrook, 1994).

Presidential candidates in the 1990s openly attacked extreme expression. Bill Clinton went after Sister Souljah, of Public Enemy, for her outspoken 1992 remarks. In 1996, Bob Dole and Bill Clinton both urged industry responsibility with internal censorship. Their comments have been among the many adult attempts to control rock and rap expression, by using the defense of children argument. The music itself may represent aesthetic and artistic freedom, but to political leaders and many other adults, the music also represents much more. The music embraces attitudes about urban life and provides guidelines on how to respond to personal relationships and to social values. Popular music aimed at youth has been, and will always be, political. Lyrics will continue to express attitudes about social mores, civil rights, racism, war participation, sexism, the environment, the urban blight, police brutality, and authority. Rock and rap music are stand-ins for the generational tension that exists in western society (Winfield, 1991).

Rock and Roll Culture

Rock ‘n’ roll music, called the first unavoidable mass cultural commodity explicitly aimed at teenagers, has also been labeled a homogenizer that absorbs the musical traditions and innovations of people with nothing else in common, including race, economic class, geographic region, or ideology, recycling them in endless combinations. Much more than just music for its fans, rock and roll is a subculture in the strictest sense of the word. Initially, most of the reporting on rock music took the position that it was merely a gimmick, but later observers of popular culture wrote on its social, economic, and political functions, along with the music’s possible implications. One issue that hasn’t been well covered, in fact many might say it has been totally ignored, is censorship – the regulation and control of rock music. Acts of regulation influence not only individual artists’ freedom of expression, but the field of rock ‘n’ roll as a whole. Therefore, it is important to take a look at the various responses from the most popular and music-oriented mass media, including such publications as Variety and Billboard, and particularly the bible of rock music, Rolling Stone (Fore, 1999).

One way to control new creative music sounds and messages is through public criticism. Public disapproval by special interest groups has been especially notable in the past several years. These groups have focused on music at congressional hearings and have requested specific censorship actions. Radio and television stations, as well as regulatory agencies, have reacted to this pressure by banning particular rock songs, and more recently, rap music. Magazines such as Billboard and Rolling Stone have served as outlets for opinions and responses to censorship attempts. They have responded to the criticisms and provide information on the possible implications of popular music.

In 1954, fans of older music forms were disturbed when rock and roll began to emerge as a new form of music (Betz, 1986). Rising our of a convergence of previously established types of music, including country and western, rhythm and blues, and pop, rock attracted new fans. The World War II generation and older, had no idea what to make of this new music. Audience’s confusion about the sounds, along with objectionable content, opened the door for attempts to regulate the music. The beat was certainly alien, as Time magazine noted in 1956:

Characteristics [of rock music are]: an unrelenting, shocking syncopation that sounds like a bull whip; a choleric saxophone honking mating-call sounds; an electric guitar turned up so loud that its sound shatters and splits; a vocal group that shudders and exercises violently to the beat while roughly chanting either a near-nonsense phrase or a moronic lyric in hillbilly idiom (Time, 1956, p. 58).

Editors of Rolling Stone commented at a later date that rock and roll had always been a frank and sometimes vulgar sort of music, with plenty of things for critics to complain about. Associated with the 1950s era concern about juvenile delinquency, the hoodlum element, and obscenity, rock and roll’s roots were dismissed as lower class and associated with disruptive elements in society. As a theme, associating a genre with immorality was the justification used for most attempts to control and regulate music during each decade of musical change through the subsequent years.

The earliest censorship efforts in rock were, of course, concerning the lyrics. As early as 1950, an official attempt was made to ban shipping and selling “obscene disks” via interstate commerce regulation. The courts ruled that records fell under the same provision as films and printed material. Broadcasters were aware of potential problems over risque lyrics and self-censored in order to avoid potential problems. In 1951, Dottie O’Brien’s “Four or Five Times” and Dean Martin’s “Wham Barn, Thank You Ma’am” were banned from airplay by LA radio stations. In 1953, Congress rejected a bill to regulate interstate shipment of obscene music. These incidents illustrate the same concerns that were later applied to rock and roll.

When rock music took the nation’s popular music charts by storm from 1954 to 1956, critics raised the specter of a Communist plot, risque lyrics and Elvis’ “obscene” movements, as terrible dangers to the impressionable youth of the nation. The Roman Catholic Church urged a boycott of rock music, while theater owners, radio station managers, and even local sheriffs’ offices tried to ban the playing of particular rock songs and performance of rock acts. Bill Haley and His Comets were prohibited from performing in Jersey City, New Jersey, even as their music was banned by a radio station in St. Paul, Minnesota (Portch, 1956).

At the beginning of the 1960s, the criticism was mostly about suggestive lyrics and presentation, but gradually moved on to political content and the artists’ deviant lifestyles. The criticism was chilling and the censorship was absolute. Local broadcasters refused to air songs or artists deemed obscene or overly violent by vocal anti-rock advocates. “Tell Laura I Love Her,” the story of a stock car driver and recorded by Ray Peterson in 1960, was called the “Death Disk.” Even the BBC refused to play such “tasteless and vulgar” subject matter. Inexorably, teenagers in America and Great Britain still purchased the records.

Folk rock engendered its own negative response centering on the artists’ ideologies about the war, civil rights, and sexuality, as well as the musicians’ lifestyles, which were often centered around leftist organizations, drugs, alcohol, and sexual promiscuity. Variety noted that the major complaints were about artists such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. In 1963, ABC-TV’s music-oriented variety show, “Hootenanny,” prohibited Pete Seeger and The Weavers from appearing because of the artist’s past political affiliations. That same year, CBS barred folk-singer Bob Dylan’s performance of a song that satirized the John Birch Society on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

Interestingly, this highly political subject matter coincided with the beginning of the Vietnam War. Rock musicians sang of the growing controversy of the war, as well as the protest and peace movements. As the divisiveness increased in the country, the artists’ song lyrics became more strident. Variety noted that the American military kept songs of the protest movement from being sent or played overseas on armed forces radio stations (Variety, 1965). By the latter part of the 1960s, anti-rock advocates also began to attach songs that referred to sexuality and drugs or that dealt with the artists’ personal lifestyles. By 1970s, the British BBC refused to play groups like the Beatles because of their references to drug use and sexual activities.

The controversy over rock music in the 1970s centered basically around lifestyles: sex, drugs, and obscene language. The decade kicked off with a performance of the musical Hair, which not contained nudity, as well as explicit sexual subject matter in the soundtrack. The provocative play was sidelined for six weeks pending a court decision concerning free expression in music and theater www.questia.com/9801938″ (Variety, 1970). The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a warning about this same time to all broadcasters to “keep tabs on any recordings that might ‘promote or glorify’ illegal drugs.” Although it was only a warning, many songs were immediately cut from the airwaves in a classic knee-jerk response (Hall, 1971).

Incidents of attempted control in the 1970s followed the same pattern as those of the previous two decades. A summary of the situation was that rock had been under siege from the very first. During the ’50s, the anti-rock groups blamed the music for juvenile delinquency. In the ’60s and ’70s, drug abuse was the issue, plus the fact that rock ‘n’ roll was allied with the anti-war movement. Then came the 1980s, which sparked a rapid increase in the banning of music.

Organized groups like PMRC formalized the movement that had begun with the birth of rock music. Now, addition to concerns about lyrics that referred to drug use and explicit sex, the PMRC wanted regulating devices to include record rating and record labeling. Senate hearings alerted the citizenry about the evils within rock lyrics. During the 1980s, artists were accused, even tried in court, for causing the deaths of several teens that listened to “suicidal” heavy metal lyrics. It all essentially comes back to the content of the lyrics. From the late 1980s and on into the 1990s, the PMRC continued its media appeals, talk show appearances, and magazine and newspaper interviews, to draw a following and begin pressuring record companies to label albums with questionable lyrics (Zucchino, 1985).

By 1985, record companies had begun to label artists’ records and tapes that were deemed to contain “offensive” lyrics. By the early 1990s, in an effort to head off proposed state laws, the companies agreed to use a standardized warning label.

Artists, including Madonna, Red Hot Chill Peppers, Prince, and Ozzy Osbourne, were the targets of legal attacks that claimed their performances were indecent or obscene. Politicians Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole blamed music for the moral erosion of American society (Fole, 1999).

In 1967, Rolling Stone magazine had been started as an outlet for the growing trend of rock music news. The emphasis was not just on rock ‘n’ roll music, but on the exploding youth culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s that included such radical concepts as free love and cultural bohemianism. Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner wrote in an open letter to the readers, that the magazine “is not just about music but also the things and attitudes that the music embraces” (Wenner, 1993).

While the music might have been the generational glue, the ideas about youth, personal relationships, social values, political ethics and the conduct of life, had been previously ignored by other media. The mainstream media paid scant attention to the biggest stories of the times, which concerned the emerging generational upheaval in America. Even though rock music had been around for 13 years, Rolling Stone quickly provided complete reporting of music news and became highly influential among youth.

A it is impossible to overestimate the impact that it [Rolling Stone] had on young readers. As many have remarked, for the first time everything they wanted was assembled there for them: the music, the musicians, the new attitudes; all presented in a style that was both exuberant and believable” (Flippo, 1974, p. 163).

The first articles about attempts to control and regulate the music did not appear in Rolling Stone until 1969. The content of these articles largely coincided with the popular issues regarding the control of rock music. In 1970, such articles about song lyrics included “Christ They Know It Ain’t Easy” and “Lennon’s Song: The Man Can’t ***** Our Music.”

Other articles provided brief coverage about regulatory agencies’ control and were straight reporting of the status surrounding a particular event.

With the PMRC’s mobilization, Rolling Stone’s coverage grew quickly. From 1985 to 1991, the magazine carried 26 articles on various aspects of control. Twenty of those stories appeared in the first 25 pages of the magazine with around 7 pages of content, rather than the usual one-page summaries. Rolling Stone’s major censorship topics were stickering, labeling, and ratings, in conjunction with the tracking of PMRC’s efforts. Rolling Stone’s anti-censorship sentiments included obvious disdain for the PMRC’s actions, with an editorial placed in the middle of articles.

Detailing the 1985 Senate hearings, Rolling Stone opined that the PMRC’s proposal was unworkable and unnecessary, coming perilously close to censorship. One three-page article was clearly an anti-labeling opinion piece. Rolling Stone argued that control efforts have a negative effect on the music industry in this statement: “The concessions [voluntary labeling] sound disturbingly like self-censorship. Who needs legislation if the record companies voluntarily slap labels on their albums and if record companies like Circles won’t sell those albums to minors?” (Goldberg, 1990, p. 20).

Since 1956, censorship, regulation, and control have all been issues concerning rock n’ roll. Public indignation and virulent criticism were responses to the very nature of the music form. Rock music was so alien at its beginning that it scrutinized, at first over the sounds, then over the lyrics. Yet, rock went on, albeit in many hybrid forms. Rolling Stone commented that the music danced on the outer edge of what society finds acceptable. 40+ years of rock music and its offshoots are all the evidence that is needed that the music flourished despite vehement opposition and blatant attempts at censorship.

Hip Hop Culture

At times, the media has acted as a cultural gatekeeper for the new musical forms created by African-Americans, often framing the coverage of jazz and rap music, and the critical response by its own reporters, as negative. It is enlightening to compare the response to jazz in the 1920s, when it was first becoming popular with, with the emerging rap and hip-hop culture in the 1980s, just as rap was becoming popular with middle-class white youths. In both cases, the music was portrayed as a conflict story and the media cast itself in the role of censor through the negative images created in its coverage (Hill, 1999).

At the same time that America was reveling in the afterglow of the crossover anthem, “We Are the World,” the popular black music culture of the mid-1980s underwent profound transformations. The emergence of rap dealt the apparent this celebration of racial melding that had been taking place square between the eyes. Since that time, hip-hop culture, with rap music as just one element, has been both a key influence on the tastes, styles, and modes of personal expression among American youth, as well as a representation of the emergence of a new cultural orthodoxy. The term hip-hop refers not only to rap music, but to a larger cultural complex of urban youth culture that incorporates language, dance, fashion, visual art, literature, and cinema. Though the centerpiece has been rap music, the hip-hop formation also encompasses other distinct musical genres, such as new jack swing, house music, and dance hall reggae (Leland, 1992).

This unique, complex cultural formation has been heralded with considerable controversy and debate in the mass media. The New York Times has often been a primary forum for this often heated public discourse. Because of the esteem enjoyed by this newspaper among the most powerful segments of American society, it has frequently served as a cultural gatekeeper, agenda setter, and chief arbiter of news and information. For well over one hundred years, the Times has played a vital role in America’s public discussions about emerging cultural developments. It is relevant to look at the coverage provided by the Times because of its close, physical proximity to the very African-American communities in New York that gave rise to hip-hop culture. It is of interest here to take a critical look at the New York Times’ coverage of hip-hop as it occurred within the social and political context of 1980s America, especially in comparison to how it covered Black popular music during the 1920s (Williams, 1987).

The ongoing debate, taking place today about rap music, is similar to the mainstream responses to the emergence of jazz during the Prohibition era. Critics then called the music “decadent,” the “devil’s music,” and “jungle rhythm” (Frohnmeyer, 1994). Some cities even banned jazz performances as sinful. In Chicago, no trumpet or saxophone playing was allowed after the sun went down. The reaction was clearly racist, as were various turn of-the-century prohibitions against ragtime, captured in this 1899 tirade:

wave of vulgar, filthy and suggestive music has inundated the land… with its obscene posturing, its lewd gestures. Our children, our young men and women, are continually exposed… To the monotonous attrition of this vulgarizing music. It is artistically and morally depressing and should be suppressed by press and pulpit (Frohnmeyes, 1994, p. 39).

In the post- Cold War era, years where the American public was finally free of the constant image of a communist threat, yet strangely devoid of any clearly defined identities, the distinction between good and evil, us and them, have become problematic. Without specific demons to on which to focus popular agreement, national identities have become ever more difficult to justify and maintain. It would appear, if the common practices of the mainstream media from 1985 to 1990 are any indication, many of these ominous figures were lurking in the inner cities of America (Hill, 1998).

In January of 1990, the Washington Post printed an editorial that was entitled “Hate, Rape and Rap” written by future second lady and crusading record-labeling lobbyist Tipper Gore (Gore 1990). This article added to the raging clamor already being heard from policy makers, civil libertarians, intellectuals, and concerned citizens about the emergence of rap music and hip-hop culture into the public arena. The previous April, a young and white female investment banker had been raped, brutalized, and left for dead after jogging through New York City’s Central Park. As portrayed in the news and police reports, the perpetrators were a “gang” of black teenagers out for a night of “wilding,” which was a reference to the song, “Wild Thing,” by rap artist Tone Loc. This song was allegedly sung by the defendants to celebrate their actions, after they were detained by the New York Police Department (USN&WR, 1989).

The misogynistic flavor of many rap lyrics, including “Wild Thing,” along with the violent brutality of the act of rape itself, are justifiable causes for concern. However, contrary to the implications in the tone of much media coverage and public outcry, there is no proven casual relationship between rap music and violent crime. Regardless, the hip-hop culture and African-American youth, notably males, have become inextricably associated in the mainstream media with rape, the rise of drug trafficking, gang activity, car-jacking, and overall violence against the police (Hill, 1999).

During a period in U.S. history where the Soviet Union had faded as a direct threat, the need to explain profound social problems prompted much of the mainstream media to conveniently use rap music to portray Black urban youth as modern folk devils. The vilification of Black youth in the mainstream media’s early efforts to understand rap music informs us about how the severe anxieties at the conjunction of race, class and generational difference continue to permeate the story of American social relations. Racial conflict has long been epitome of conflict within American society, shaping all other social antagonisms. Further, many Americans show a real reluctance to engage in self-critique around this issue, except perhaps immediately after disastrous social upheavals like the Los Angeles rebellion. This contributes to a “political climate in which images, not ideas, dominate” (West, 1993, p. 5).

Mainstream media practices in industrialized societies tend to assume that there is a national cultural agreement. Implicit is the assumption that individuals within the nation share a common framework of both meaning and interpretation. Therefore, when events are placed in the context of this framework, it is believed that people will ultimately view themselves as a collective body despite their individual differences of opinion (Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clarke & Roberts, 1978). This is especially true when the perceived interests of this constructed we are threatened by outsiders.

This model of the communications presents news as both a product and as a social record. In this context, communication is “not being directed toward the extension of messages in space but the maintenance of society in time; not the act of imparting information, but the representation of shared beliefs” (Carey, 1975, p. 5).

Hard news, editorial opinion, features, gossip, and even comics, give the world both ideological and conceptual values taken from the language and social dynamics of the prevailing culture. In this way, the media coverage of hip-hop becomes an invaluable tool in understanding how the core values of the culture are governed and reaffirmed during a period of vocal class and racially based antagonism.

Hip-hop culture resonates in vastly different ways with various groups. For its core audience of urban youth, hip-hop is uses the material and symbols of inner city life and death to clarify the search for meaning and empowerment. Hip-hop moves beyond aesthetic expression and functions almost as an alternative media form that is distinct from mainstream entities. Chuck D, leader of Public Enemy and a self-styled spokesman for hip-hop, has often referred to rap music and the larger hip-hop community as the CNN of African-American youth. Performer Ice-T intoned that “rappers have been reporting from the front for years” (Ice-T, Hilburn & Phillips, 1992, A7). The weight of much of the evidence supports Sister Souljah’s claim that “whoever wants to speak to young people will have to come through the corridor of hip-hop” (Sister Souljah & Mills, 1992, B1). Not unlike the majority of mass media, hip-hop functions as “social critic, agenda setter, commercial agent, cultural purveyor, catalyst for dissident press, as well as an outlaw” (Hill, 1999, p. 106).

The hip-hop controversy is not the first time that the New York Times and an emerging music culture have collided. The Times’ coverage of jazz from 1921 to 1929 shows a negative media response to jazz, with coverage that was generally explicitly racist at the beginning of jazz popularity. However, once jazz began to enjoy more international acclaim, particularly in Europe, the Times’ coverage also changed. Toward the end of the 1920s, the newspaper both increased its jazz coverage and improved the tone of that coverage. It began to feature jazz personalities, predominantly selecting young white artists such as Paul Whiteman or the Gershwin brothers. It was not until much later that the African-American originators of jazz were given any significant ink in the Times (Williams, 1987).

Although the emergence of these two creative musical genres is sixty years apart, they share several clear parallels. Hip-hop appeared on the popular scene during the 1980s, at a stage of American development that was similar to the environment that characterized jazz of the 1920s.

New York City was one of the most important urban centers for both jazz and hip-hop. In reconstructing the hostile climate of post-World War I America, the historical context for early jazz, Williams characterizes the general nature of the Times’ early coverage:

In 1921 readers of the New York Times were exposed to vehement assaults upon jazz by church and state. The clergy blamed jazz for a host of unseemly behaviors including fornication, suicide and alcohol abuse. In a pathetic combination of report and exaggeration, the Times printed that jazz had driven one musician to suicide (Williams, 1987, p. 3).

In the seven decades since then, the New York Times has moved toward a more enlightened, professional, and objective editorial viewpoint, relative to its coverage of African-American cultural issues. The relationship between news organizations and the larger society they serve are characterized in the following passage:

In their attitudes, in their organization, in their identifications of events as news, the news media are part and parcel of the society they serve. Although they claim to be merely a mirror to the world, that “mirror” might be better described as part of a reciprocal relationship between the news media and their environment. The news media are both “a cause” and “an effect” (Tuchman, 1978, p. 188).

From 1985 to 1987, in its early years of reporting on hip-hop, the New York Times’ coverage was sporadic. It had already begun to vilify hip-hop by drawing parallels with incidents of violence and vandalism at concerts. Headlines from that era included “On L.I., Fights Follow a Film on Rap Music” (6 Nov. 1985); “42 Are Hurt as Gang Fighting Breaks Up California Concert” (19 Aug. 1986); and “1 Killed, 5 Injured and 16 Arrested at Rap Concert” (26 Nov. 1987).

On top of this, one Times news article about PMRC, chaired by Tipper Gore, evoked negative images of rap and hip-hop by suggesting to its younger readers that these genres say “it’s all right to beat people up” (Palmer, 1986, p. B23).

Hard news stories about violence at rap concerts represented most of the Times’ early coverage. However, the Times did do some features on the personalities and the emergence of the art form into mainstream popular culture.

As early as 1985, when there had not yet been much coverage, one Times article acknowledged hip-hop’s international appeal and its domestic crossover popularity and influence. Former rock critic turned hip-hop manager, Bill Adler, commented:

Even in cities like Chicago, where no rap music is played on the radio, the [Run DMC] show attracted 15,000 people, which is some indication of rap’s underground appeal… The rap industry now is a lot like Black rhythm and blues just before it was discovered by the mass audience in the 50s. The major radio programmers and record labels are trying to ignore that, but it’s building a strong cross-racial audience anyway (Palmer, 1985, p. C13).

The scholarly viewpoints of art historian and Yale University professor, Robert Farris Thompson, black feminist writers Michele Wallace and bell hooks, and Harvard University professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., were the only academic voices on African-American culture that appeared in the Times in these early years of coverage. The Times rarely looked for opinions from activists or academic leaders on hip-hop. Neither did they seek out black music critics, except for an occasional freelance contribution.

The nearly total absence of alternative viewpoints, itself an insidious form of censorship, made the Times’ staff of middle-class critics and reporters the de facto authorities on hip-hop for all of America. Portraying themselves as the experts on rap music to both readership and advertisers, these writers managed to dislocate rap music from the broader cultural field of hip-hop, while at the same time largely ignoring the ways in which each are rooted deeply within the broader scope of the American culture (Hill, 1999).

Even though they did acknowledge the contributions of individual African-American performers, the Times only once credited hip-hop with being an extension of earlier African-American culture. In 1988, one writer compared the manner in which apparently disparate generations of African-American musicians fashioned new musical forms through the eclectic use of music and other recorded material (Watrous, 1988).

By 1989, the New York Times’ coverage of the hip-hop cultural phenomenon had begun in earnest. Feature articles replaced spot news stories as the primary vehicle through which items about hip-hop were published (except for controversies related to the personalities and concert-related violence). By 1989 and 1990, the main body of hip-hop coverage was appearing in the “Arts” section of the newspaper.

The Times began to focus more extensively on hip-hop once its combination of music, dance and politics became more widely familiar and popular among white suburban youth. The emergence of Public Enemy personified this trend. While Public Enemy had started to win both popular and critical acclaim in 1987, it was in 1989 that the its hip-hop classic, “Fight the Power,” was featured in Spike Lee’s film, Do the Right Thing. Also in 1989, after a group member made widely publicized comments attributing “a majority of the wickedness” in the world to Jewish people, the Times took its first notice of the group. This coincided with the December release of “Welcome to the Terrordome,” which evolved into yet another rap anthem. At this point, Times music critic Jon Pareles wrote, “A band that has always insisted on the political impact of its music has become stubbornly, clumsily impolitic” (Pareles, 1989, p. C15).

Oddly, the negative news coverage of Public Enemy did not extend to other hip-hop acts. Other overtly political performers, such as KRS-One and hard core, gangsta rappers The Geto Boys and N.W.A., received far more positive coverage in the newspaper. However, none of these other hip-hop acts were credited with public utterances that were antagonistic to the Times or to New York City’s Jewish elites. In 1989, the Times began to report the expansion and diversification of hip-hop, with feature stories acknowledging the existence of West Coast “gangsta” rap, and “female rap.” By 1990, the Times was noting that hip-hop groups other than Public Enemy were articulating a militant message. There are major discrepancies between the Times’ response to “gangsta rap,” and its earlier representations of Public Enemy and “radical” rap. Made famous by LA groups N.W.A. And Ice-T, gangsta rap alarmed various groups. The homosexual, feminist, and African-American communities protested gangsta rap due to its lyrics and thematic content that glorified gay bashing, misogyny, criminal violence, and the use of the word “nigger.” Yet, despite gangsta rap’s heavy emphasis on crime, violence, and abusive language, the Times maintained an overwhelmingly positive attitude toward gangsta rap (Kelly, 1996).

The Times acknowledged gangsta rap as a way for African-American youth to give voice to the harsh realities of life in America’s inner cites. None of their gangsta rap coverage attributed any aspects of inner city life to possible structural flaws within the American social order. Instead, nearly all of the features articles attributed problems prevalent among the American “underclass” solely to the inadequacy of its own members.

Gangsta rap was never subjected to the type of intense critical scrutiny that had previously been leveled in the direction of radical rap.

In 1990, immediately after a Fort Lauderdale judge ruled that w2-Live Crew’s album As Nasty as They Wanna Be was obscene, in the three Florida counties under his jurisdiction, there was an avalanche of media coverage focused on 2-Live Crew and hip-hop in general. Times critic Pareles defended hip-hop: “From its beginnings in the mid-1970s… rap has been met by condescension, rejection and outright fear from those outside its domain.” (Pareles, 1990, p. D1).

As the legal case continued, the Times focused less and less on 2-Live Crew and hip-hop and turned to the broader issue of censorship. The newspaper covered the trials of both 2-Live Crew and the African-American record storeowners who were arrested for selling the group’s censored album. The Times coverage of the 2-Live Crew trial was so intense that, in October of 1990, that they printed an AP story about the trial jurors’ request to be allowed to laugh during the trial testimony because of the physical pain they were experiencing while restraining themselves (Times, 1990).

In August 1990, on the day before of the release of the Geto Boys’ first major-label album, it was suddenly withdrawn by the distributor. The Times reported that Geffen Records would not endorse the explicitly violent and sexual lyrics of the album. Even though the Times mentioned (in passing) that Geffen Records does distribute controversial albums by white performers such as Andrew Dice Clay, and the rock group Slayer, this double standard was never explained.

Conclusion

Since 1956, censorship, regulation, and control have all been issues concerning rock n’ roll. Public indignation and virulent criticism were responses to the very nature of the music form. Rock music was so alien at its beginning that it scrutinized, at first over the sounds, then over the lyrics. Yet, rock went on, albeit in many hybrid forms. Over 40 years of rock music and its offshoots are all the evidence that is needed that the music flourished despite vehement opposition and blatant attempts at censorship.

The transformation of American popular music became the source of violent debate simply because it was generated and given life by the youth of the power culture, without the blessing of their parents. There are few other musical movements in history that have been so clearly defined in terms of age. Once the music had been around long enough to establish itself as something more than just an irritating fad, it quickly achieved new status as the social emblem of rebellious youth.

No other musical genre in Western civilization has ever aroused more controversy and stronger emotions than rock and roll. No other type of music has attracted so many powerful and amazingly self-righteous opponents. No group of musicians has taken such self indulgent and downright self-destructive glee in merging the roles of entertainer / artist and social outlaw.

Rock and roll has become a prime target for the censorship campaigns of a wide range of special interest lobbies, including religious, political, economic, and musical.

Strangely, the passion and energy that have been used in attempts to either alter or suppress rock and roll music seem only to have spurred rock musicians to further flaunt whatever aspect of their music or behavior is considered to be objectionable in a show of defiant celebration. The justification for attempting to enforce this kind of control is based quite simply on fears about the effects of rock and rap words and music.

This form of expression may cause youth to become ungovernable, unlikely to follow society’s and their parents’ rules.

The possible effects that parents want to avoid include bizarre behavior, as well as imitating alien sounds, speaking taboo words, emulating violent lyrics, fulfilling sexual desires, copying the performers’ outlandish antics and being overwhelmed by extreme audience reactions. Many adults view the musicians as instigators, whose lyrics and actions violate society’s norms and encourage sexual antics and savagery such as murder, drug use and suicide. Since music conveys feelings and emotions, the danger of this music is clear and present to those who are afraid of these types of behaviors enough to justify censorship and control.

Censorship in any form goes against the grain of many Americans. The desire to protect children, to control and regulate behaviors and attitudes, to provide positive role models is certainly legitimate for most parents. But where does “control” turn into “censorship?” At what point are creative thought and new ideas being irreparably harmed? Society has always undergone changes, and that will continue to happen. Not all change is good, but neither is all change bad. Many people who jump on the bandwagon of censorship have never listened to the songs or the artists that they so vehemently oppose. This ignorance is far more dangerous than a few lyrics or odd sounds could ever be.

But regardless of attitudes toward change, or fear for children’s sensibilities, or personal feelings about musical forms, censorship doesn’t work, it never has, and it never will. Ideas cannot be controlled through censorship. To attempt to censor music is somewhat akin to telling the human spirit not to seek to fly. In the words of Sam Phillips, “Music has done more to break down areas of censorship, racism, international understanding… More than all of the damn ambassadors put together… around the world.”

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