Has hip-hop and R&B brought about the decline of African-Americans in rock music?

I grew up listening to (in no particular order)

• Prince
• Living Colour
• Lenny Kravitz
• Rage Against the Machine (Tom Morello)
• Hootie and the Blowfish (Darius Rucker)
• GnR (Slash) -I don't know if it's appropriate, but I'm including him here
• Tina Turner
• James Brown
• Ray Charles

I've seen Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley in concert.

Then of course Jimi Hendrix and I feel I have to include the King Of Pop for his mixture of pop, rock, and r&b.

Or, am I just old and out of the loop of popular artists?

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I think it's a numbers game. When rock was in its heyday it was still a pretty low percentage of black artists. Now that rock is in decline, you're being exposed to that same percentage.

Gary Clark Jr is a solid present day representation tho!


Also,
Not sure I'd even put brown or Charles in the rock category

Well, if you say black instead of the stupid hyphenated term you could include Bloc Party, Skindred and a few other British rock bands.

Also, Slash was born in the UK, so he's not AA. Queue Lennox Lewis puzzled look at American reporter.

William Duvall, Alice in Chains

Tobias Funke said:

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I think it's a numbers game. When rock was in its heyday it was still a pretty low percentage of black artists. Now that rock is in decline, you're being exposed to that same percentage.

Gary Clark Jr is a solid present day representation tho!

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The decline of rock music. Seems right. I'm older and gravitate towards indie rock so I know I'm out of the loop.

From your comment I did a little research and came across a 2017 article in The Washington Post titled Why my guitar gently weeps: The slow, secret death of the six-string electric.

They attribute the decline in playing the electric guitar to:

• loss of role models
• electronic music
• programmed beats

The evolution of the musical industry I suppose. The young aspiring rappers I work with spend their time working on lyrics and composing in GarageBand like I used to practice drums.

I think one of the reasons I asked the question is because, as a drummer, I thoroughly enjoy hearing instruments more than programmed beats, and the youth I work with have no interest in learning bass, guitar, drums, horns, whatever. The instruments themselves represent another genre of music-rock-which they detest, when I'm thinking, why not incorporate instruments into your rap composition?

When songs start to sound the same (and these young adults will say as much), do something different. Use all of your creative abilities.

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Also,
Not sure I'd even put brown or Charles in the rock category

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Yeah. You're right. I'm stretching it.

tk for tu juan said:

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And thanks for posting.

Brought me back to the 80's when I was listening to punk and thrash.

The Heavy is a good rock band and headlined by a POC.

Great thread.

I think it is just a general decline/death of rock as a genre. It still seems to be alive in Sweden for some reason but overall new rock is hard to find.

I think there are two main factors:

1) "My parents are lame!"- teens & young adults tend to rebel and not like their parent's music just because.

2) It is hard- rock music is friggin hard to play. You to have actually play an instrument, write songs, and sing. Not many new artist actually do these things.

I did discover some new bands that are pretty incredible, specifically: Greta Van Fleet, The Tubes, Eclipse.

edit: as far as black Americans are concerned I agree with the lack of role models. It is odd considering rock basically started with black Americans.

What's up Kid? Merry Christmas to you and yours.

I personally believe your second point is definitely a factor. In the article I linked above it reports

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In 1979, Tascam's Portastudio 144 arrived on the market, allowing anybody with a microphone and a patch cord to record with multiple tracks.

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Well, if the current role models are becoming rich and famous without the arduous effort of learning an instrument, developing vocals, and writing music-then that is the model for success.



Side note: I think the problem with my OP is I did not elaborate on the question posed and the list of musicians and my final statement seem to suggest I am asking for a list of African-American musicians, which I am not.

I think it's very reasonable to consider the cost of entry. Instruments and music lessons cost money. They take time. Other ways of entering the market developed and changed the direction of popular music. They also take money and time and practice, but no doubt a different path and different styles of music emerged.

Tom Morello is still making music.

Because of this thread I started searching around for some recent bands, sometimes you have to look in South America for rock/metal bands

expresswrittenconsent said:

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Rock was always white ppl appropriated blues so of course it is and has always been mostly anglo.
The list is pretty funny as supposed examples. Living color had 1 hit 35yrs ago and nothing else. LOL at the idea of them epitomizing 'black rock'.

Morello and Slash dont belong on the thread either since neither of them is black. Maybe you could start an equally horrible 'what happened to mixed race guitarists' thread?

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Racist.

The Dears:



Finley Quaye:



Bloc party:

Interesting the OP is focused on the US. I don't see how R&B can have contributed to the decline of African-Americans playing rock music since that has historically been a genre dominated by African-Americans and it may, depending on your definition, predate rock music.

Check out some of the acts playing at an Afropunk festival if you want to explore bands that play rock music - there are quite a few. These festivals have a pretty wide variety of music genres, but rock is certainly well-represented.

https://afropunk.com/festival/brooklyn/line-up/

Ben Harper

Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears - ***** I love you

one of my favorite songs. does this count?

Where have all the African American rock musicians gone? Well, OP provided us with 9 musicians, three of which are half white covering 50 years of rock music. Sounds to me that they were never a big part of rock music to begin with.

You're right. Elvis invented Rock & Roll. /s

EDIT: Can't believe I have to put the sarcasm tag