Rock 'n Soul: More African Americans/Blacks In Rock Music

[AltHistoryNerd]

Challenge: Introduce more African-Americans to the heavy metal music scene.

Here's where I'll start.

In 1990, A young man from Georgia named Lajon Witherspoon buys an album from his favorite rapper, Ice Cube's newest project, Body Count.

He's shocked to find out that it's not a rap album. The lyrics of the album, however, speaks to him. Racism and police brutality are both issues that speak to him deeply. LJ is inspired by the pure anger of the music and decides to start making his own heavy metal music. He asks his dad for a guitar for his birthday. His dad obliges. However, his dad buys him a jazz guitar. At first, LJ was upset, because most of his heavy metal heroes like Randy Rhodes used rock guitars.

But then LJ realized that if he wanted to become a serious musician, he would have to market his sound to his community, which was a majority black community. That's where he combines jazz guitars and heavy metal into his own unique sound. The marketing ploy pays off. Both blacks and whites in his town start coming to his shows in droves.

He then sees a man approach him after one of his shows.

"Hello, young man.". The man who he saw at his show wasn't any ordinary man. It was Vernon Ried of Living Colour. "I see what you did there. You remind me of myself 10 years ago. How about I introduce you to others like 'us' and we see how far your guitar playing goes".

At first, LJ couldn't believe it. The pioneer of African-American heavy metal came to his show. Not only did he come to his show, but he outright recruited him for a new band. He accepts the invitation and starts touring with other black heavy metal performers.

The band's sound combined jazz guitars and heavy metal, with a bit of a funky crunch. The band quickly rose into the stratosphere. They christen themselves "The Bass Fishermen".

After finishing a successful tour, LJ goes back home. He sees a bunch of rats in his house. He picks up a can of Sevindust and pours it over a smudge of peanut butter to kill the rats. The rats eat it and die, but they won't go away. He then smells a stench in his closet where the rats are coming from. It turned out to be the body of his brother, who was killed by a bunch of gangbangers when he was on tour with his band, the Bass Fishermen (Pronounced Base Fishermen). He decides to rename his band "Sevendust", in honor of his brother's memory.

He pens the lyrics to the song "Black". His fellow bandmates love the song. A year later, in 1995, it becomes a surprise top 30 hit. The NuMetal craze in SoCal suddenly whithers on the vine. More and more BlaqueMetal bands hit the scene. Which then inspires more black American youth to abandon New Jack Swing and Rap and start playing the guitar. He's labelled the "Black Kurt Cobain", for how he severely curtailed the interest in rap and nu metal music. Even former NuMetal bands such as Bands such as Korn and Coal Chamber develop a funkier and soul oriented sound. Blaquemetal is unique in regards to other music styles as it both expresses rebellion against conservative white culture's segregationism and conservative black culture's cultural isolationism. It also thumbs its nose against the senseless violence and senseless consumerism of hip hop.

It even inspires a young white man from Detroit, Michigan named Marshall Mathers to start his own Blaquemetal-hip hop band called D12.

Thoughts?

 

[ejr1963]

Intriguing to me as a musician (I've been playing guitar for a very long time, and used to play lead guitar, and sing lead and backing vocals in heavy rock bands). Maybe if this occurred, Fishbone would have done even more heavy songs like "Servitude", instead of doing more funk oriented stuff. 24-7 Spyz would have been more than mainly an underground band, and Cyclone Temple (which was the brainchild of lead guitarist Greg Fulton, and played some killer thrash metal) would not have went nowhere and wound up fading away. The Black Rock Coalition (of which Vernon Reid was a founding member), would have been a prominent part of the whole black metal movement, going much further artistically than the "coulda been a contender status" it wound up with IOT.

 

[GarethC]

Any TL which results in more Vernon Reid guitar solos is a good TL.

Why does NuMetal wither on the vine?

 

[ejr1963]

Any TL which results in more Vernon Reid guitar solos is a good TL.

Why does NuMetal wither on the vine?

Vernon Reid's guitar tone is an acquired taste IMO. He's a fantastic player, and has nice clean tone, but I don't much care for his dirty sound, and I never have (even in the late 80s/early 90s) - it's too squawky sounding. It's all midrange - no bottom end wallop, and no crunch or grind IMO.

As for Nu Metal - well, if it exists it'll certainly be different. Some sort of down tuned, and/or 7-string guitar oriented music is going to happen. Whether it'll just be nothing but chugging along on the low strings rhythm guitar (like nu metal IOT) , or be more melodically adventurous, is anybody's guess.

 

[thekingsguard]

Color me very interested - this could well save rock and roll in the mainstream, rather than slowly dying after Kurt Cobain

 

[JasonVoorhees525]

I'd really like to see a full-fledged TL based on this.

Though is Blaquemetal a lot like funk metal, or does it have some of its own defining musical characteristics?

 

[AltHistoryNerd]

BlaqueMetal would probably end up sounding a lot like Sevendusts' current sound. Except with jazz guitars and a bit of a hip hop beat.

 

[JasonVoorhees525]

How long would the fight between BM and rap go on before BM came out on top? Because hip hop has been huge in African American culture since the late '70s, so it's definitely not gonna go down without a fight.

 

[Marius]

No hip-hop, or a much less influential form of hip-hop, will also have implications in parts of Africa, where African-American cultural influence is strong.

Will we see blaquemetal emerge in Africa or more homegrown genres in Africa?

 

[Arkenfolm]

So to African Americans what Ill Nino was to Latinos? Or something more? I'd probably listen to an album of that. And personally, I'd probably hate it since it sounds like something so easy to mess up. And honestly, what is this? Pantera, plus jazz influence? This was the era where Atheist put jazz in death metal to incredible results, granted, but overall jazz in metal has a very mixed track record (all those bad progressive metal albums which try and have jazz influences in them, ugh). Seems very ugly, soundwise. It's not easy to combine with metal.

"Blaquemetal", though, that just seems perfect for maximum trolling of the metal community by the name alone. But would this be an independent coining of the term or a reference to black metal proper? This was the same era where certain Norwegians were burning churches and killing people, after all. I'd love to see Varg Vikernes's reaction to this.

On the other hand, helping to kill nu metal can only be a good thing. But thanks to Pantera, there were plenty of godawful metal albums by established bands in the early 90s, so the damage was already done. But hopefully the world would be spared St. Anger and some certain godawful Slayer albums. Although thinking of it, if all those awful groove metal albums in the 90s had some jazz influence thanks to "blaquemetal", some band would've made it work somehow. I'll cite Kreator's Endorama and the weird gothic metal that album was as an example of how that deviation from the usual sound can make a surprisingly good record.

But how could this beat hip-hop? Does this divide the black community between fans of hip-hop and "blaquemetal"?

Will we see blaquemetal emerge in Africa or more homegrown genres in Africa?

Considering there is an Angolan band, Neblina, strongly influenced by the late 00s metalcore trend (at least on the album I heard from them) as well as that heavier sort of radio rock, I think that that's an inevitable development. African metal (not made by the white minority throughout Africa) seems surprisingly sparse, at least considering what I know of modern Africa and the stuff coming out of the most random spots in Asia. There will always be a bunch of bands from wherever influenced by what's popular and so all they do is make a shoddy and amateurish imitation. Some bands, though, go for more, and can stand on their own. We'd see the same with blaquemetal.

Although I would kill to hear a metal band influenced by West African music, or even just more African-themed concept albums. The Sunjata epic, for instance, could make a very cool concept album. At best we have Skinflint of Botswana, who are kinda "eh" quality-wise although I love their dedication to African themes. And despite the emergence of Nigeria as a major economy and market, Nigerian metal seems extremely underground even for Africa. Seems like a potential future hotspot.

 

[Behemoth]

I wouldn't call myself a musician but I have been playing bass on and off for roughly 13 years. I originally started off with more jazz oriented music then went towards metal. When it comes to music I definitely try to be open to different genres. As far as metal bands from Africa are concerned I have heard of Skinflint and another one out of Angola called Before Crush. Before Crush sounds a bit like Killswitch Engage, IMO. I'll definitely follow this thread to see how it progresses because the concept is intriguing.

 

[AltHistoryNerd]

How long would the fight between BM and rap go on before BM came out on top? Because hip hop has been huge in African American culture since the late '70s, so it's definitely not gonna go down without a fight.

Probably for about a decade. There are some cultural undertones to the blaquemetal vs hip hop war. Blaquemetal is the music of the new, affluent, educated and anti-authoritarian black middle class youth as well as an affluent, anti-authoritarian middle class and affluent white youth, while hip hop is the music of poor inner city blacks. Pretty much, it becomes America's more affluent answer to the red suspenders skinhead movement.

 

[Marius]

Considering there is an Angolan band, Neblina, strongly influenced by the late 00s metalcore trend (at least on the album I heard from them) as well as that heavier sort of radio rock, I think that that's an inevitable development. African metal (not made by the white minority throughout Africa) seems surprisingly sparse, at least considering what I know of modern Africa and the stuff coming out of the most random spots in Asia. There will always be a bunch of bands from wherever influenced by what's popular and so all they do is make a shoddy and amateurish imitation. Some bands, though, go for more, and can stand on their own. We'd see the same with blaquemetal.

Although I would kill to hear a metal band influenced by West African music, or even just more African-themed concept albums. The Sunjata epic, for instance, could make a very cool concept album. At best we have Skinflint of Botswana, who are kinda "eh" quality-wise although I love their dedication to African themes. And despite the emergence of Nigeria as a major economy and market, Nigerian metal seems extremely underground even for Africa. Seems like a potential future hotspot.

Yeah, I have never seen a metal band with black members in South Africa, even your more mainstream rock is pretty much exclusively white. If there are any black-only bands (talking about the traditional kind - a singer, with a guitarist, bass player, drummer etc) they'll normally be reggae or ska, maybe some crossover stuff, but definitely nothing what you could call metal.

For example, like these guys, the Blk Jks (pronounced Black Jacks), definitely a more reggae-ska sound and they are one of the biggest black 'rock' bands in SA.

 

[Hadley]

I wonder how this would affect other metal subgenres like Power Metal, Death Metal, Thrash Metal, Grindcore, Groove metal, and of course, Black (not blaque) Metal.

 

[AltHistoryNerd]

I wonder how this would affect other metal subgenres like Power Metal, Death Metal, Thrash Metal, Grindcore, Groove metal, and of course, Black (not blaque) Metal.

Lives on for about 8-10 years and then becomes like Emo, another racially inclusive style of rock music. Dated and faded away in the public consciousness.

 

[AltHistoryNerd]

No hip-hop, or a much less influential form of hip-hop, will also have implications in parts of Africa, where African-American cultural influence is strong.

Will we see blaquemetal emerge in Africa or more homegrown genres in Africa?

It becomes popular in richer African countries such as Nigeria and South Africa.

 

[thekingsguard]

I wonder how this would affect other metal subgenres like Power Metal, Death Metal, Thrash Metal, Grindcore, Groove metal, and of course, Black (not blaque) Metal.

Maybe we see Black Power Metal? Name aside, I adore the sound of the otl genre, and bands from Tyr to HammerFall to Sabaton. Be cool to see some black bands pull from African mythos the way most power metal bands to Norse or Celtic myths.

 

[flippikat]

There's also Death, who recorded an album in the mid-1970s (unreleased until 2009), with a pre-punk edge that could've triggered a black hard-rock movement in the 1970s with a bit more luck.

 

[Arkenfolm]

Yeah, I have never seen a metal band with black members in South Africa, even your more mainstream rock is pretty much exclusively white. If there are any black-only bands (talking about the traditional kind - a singer, with a guitarist, bass player, drummer etc) they'll normally be reggae or ska, maybe some crossover stuff, but definitely nothing what you could call metal.

For example, like these guys, the Blk Jks (pronounced Black Jacks), definitely a more reggae-ska sound and they are one of the biggest black 'rock' bands in SA.

Rock influenced enough, I'd say. Gotta love their songs in Zulu.

I wonder how this would affect other metal subgenres like Power Metal, Death Metal, Thrash Metal, Grindcore, Groove metal, and of course, Black (not blaque) Metal.

Certainly African influences could fit very well in some avant-garde tech death band.

There's also the infamous Orisha Shakpana from Jamaica, your typical underproduced (putting it lightly) black metal project, just unlike with your usual black metal band, this guy claims to be an obeah priest and tends to write about Afro-Caribbean occultism. I'd assume TTL we'd be seeing a lot more of that from the Caribbean, including something with non-bedroom quality production. And you would see a lot more coming out of Jamaica beside the usual reggae and dancehall and such. Come to think of it, someone would try blending Jamaican influences into this at some point.

Maybe we see Black Power Metal? Name aside, I adore the sound of the otl genre, and bands from Tyr to HammerFall to Sabaton. Be cool to see some black bands pull from African mythos the way most power metal bands to Norse or Celtic myths.

I've been dreaming of something like that for ages. Once again, African history is full of so much awesome material for that. I guess all we got so far (for power metal) is Armahda from Brazil who peripherally deal with some Afro-Brazilian themes (the song "Spears of Freedom", about the Battle of Porongos in the War of the Farrapos, dealing with slave soldiers defending the revolt in Rio Grande do Sul). I'd bet at some point (if they continue with their whole Brazilian history/legends thing akin to Sabaton's military history thing), they'll do a song on the Sabinada, although I'd love to hear their take on the Revolt of the Malê, simply because of a certain famous TL here regarding that incident.

 

[thekingsguard]

I've been dreaming of something like that for ages. Once again, African history is full of so much awesome material for that. I guess all we got so far (for power metal) is Armahda from Brazil who peripherally deal with some Afro-Brazilian themes (the song "Spears of Freedom", about the Battle of Porongos in the War of the Farrapos, dealing with slave soldiers defending the revolt in Rio Grande do Sul). I'd bet at some point (if they continue with their whole Brazilian history/legends thing akin to Sabaton's military history thing), they'll do a song on the Sabinada, although I'd love to hear their take on the Revolt of the Malê, simply because of a certain famous TL here regarding that incident.

This band sounds awesome. Please tell me they got stuff up on YouTube.