Black Guy, White Music

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I weighed the possibilities, considered the uncharted territory and then began to think the unthinkable. I clutched a copy of Zeppelin II. Was there really something beyond the long hair and loud guitars? Did all the vague lyrics really add up to anything? Could the last true bastion of cool be hiding beneath a cloak of lame?

I went out with white music like a girl my parents didn't want me to date. I kept the volume low. I hid my new CDs. A new magic poured into me, mostly from Bjork and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Unlike hip-hop, here was a music that I did not have to reconcile with the fact of being a father, music that had lyrics so surreal that they bent my head into knots. And although my greatest fear still was that a visiting friend would find my copy of Radiohead's The Bends, I was in love again and shocked by what I had to thank for it.

The fact is that white music made me understand how black I really was. I realized that I was connected by experience and history, connected in a way that didn't require recitations of Big Daddy Kane. But more freeing was the simple sense of disconnection--the ability to listen to White Music the way white kids must have listened to jazz, soul or hip-hop. I had no personal stake in the Arcade Fire. I did not have to debate the effects of Foo Fighters on young black youth. For the first time ever, I was just listening to music.