[criley2]

>I'm a little puzzled as you're describing a music stylist on skin colour, black vs white

You may not realize this, but in the 1930-1950 era being described in America, there was something called "Segregation" where black people were considered legally inferior to white people. As such, there was a very hard line between "black" and "white", a line that was aggressively enforced by every level of society from lawmaking, policing and justice, to radio and TV access, to education, to neighborhoods, and frankly everything else.

With that context, I think it's very easy to see how there can be "black swing" and "white swing" -- it was in a society that forcibly separated everything into "black X" and "white X".

[IncreasePosts]

You should be able to describe the sound differences if the music is that distinct.

[watwut]

People not deep into music have hard time verbalize difference between metal and rock or hiphop and rap. Despite differences being super obvious when listening.

[criley2]

>You should be able to describe the sound differences if the music is that distinct.

They are and I can, however the existence of Black Swing is in no way predicated on a difference in sound only.

Consider this: white culture in America continually stole from a legally repressed black culture, including white swing which stole the black art and commercialized it. Even if a 1950 white swing song sounds similar to a 1940 black swing song, there is still a "black swing" and a "white swing".

Frankly, I think trying to reduce history of music down to "the sounds themselves" is a way to whitewash the history and destroy the true knowledge of what happened and why. The context is very important.

[wbl]

Go listen to Straight Otta Compton and then Vanilla Ice and you'll get it. Or for Swing Count Basie vs. the slicker more commercial Glenn Miller but it's subtle.

And then Coltrane and Orman and Davis come and change the whole jazz world.

[IncreasePosts]

I didn't ask for examples, I'm familiar with what race these artists are.

My point is if the music actually is so different, it should be noticable and describable without knowing the race of a particular artist. So how would you describe the black music that describes only black musicians but not white musicians from this period, and vice versa.

[SamBam]

"Should be describable" is a false metric. We can hear differences between categories and not be able to verbalize what we're hearing. It's the same for anything -- you could walk through a museum showing abstract expressionism and action painting, and feel that one of the styles speaks to you, and yet not be able to put into words how the two styles are different.

The brain can categorize much more easily than it can create a concrete definition for those categories.

[thaumasiotes]

> We can hear differences between categories and not be able to verbalize what we're hearing. It's the same for anything

For some reason, the view is widely held that internal thoughts are expressed in words. This would mean that anything you can think can easily be verbalized.

The fact that this view is quite obviously false seems to bother very few people.

[contrast]

There’s an assumption to your argument that I don’t believe holds true, that there is such a significant difference that it should be easily describable.

Talking about the arts is difficult. In everyday conversation, well known phrases for describing the arts include “I know it when I see it” and “if you have to ask, then you’ll never know”. I’m a fan of “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”. It just isn’t easy to describing differences in performance and interpretation.

Since it’s widely recognised that describing music is difficult, and since you’re familiar with the artists in question, perhaps you could accept the point in good faith or put into words why you don’t think they are any different?

[Pannoniae]

Sure. 99% of the white musicians at that time were total sellouts who played extremely straight, boring, conservative and no-frills music without any embellishment or soul.

The most obvious difference is the energy level and "rawness" of songs - those white bands had really carefully choreographed performances with minimal deviation, even solos were often written out in similar big bands.

Black musicians often shouted, yelled or mugged during performances - all of these are completely absent in white performances at that time.

[hobs]

So describe the difference between NWA and Vanilla ice to yourself while everyone else moves on.

[damentz]

Ya you're not being honest in the slightest. The OP likes the music made by the group he mentions. You instead say he's being racist for liking music of that group. I'm having a hard time discerning if you're trolling or serious.

[_a_a_a_]

That's extremely patronising, I know well about segregation of that era, and that segregation functionally continued far longer than the 1950s. Blatantly there's a difference, that was what I was asking about the effect of, which you ignored. At least @ Pannoniae provided an answer.