After having a meeting with Milo and discussing Steve Reich he gave me the advice to read black minimalism an article/essay by David Toop. I did some research and couldn’t find it online so I got issue 414 of The Wire at the library and had a read.
“The history of minimal music has been distorted by racist received wisdom that discriminates between white simplicity and black primitivism.”
I think this in itself speaks volumes. I hadn’t considered this outlook when reading into minimalism but now it’s something that is painfully obvious, the cannon is predominantly white European men. So how can minimalism be defined just by one type of creator? Why is minimalism defined only by the white European male canon?
David also goes to reference Yolana V and she quotes
Becker is a good looking white guy who has done very well out of his philosophy. Basically: simplify. Ten ways minimalism will change your life, his website advises, and who am I to argue? The thing that caught Yolanda’s eye was from Jon, who suggested that discarding outward signs of status and identity if you were African-American risked forfeiting respect and any kind of foothold in an unequal society. “Therefore,” Jon concluded, “is minimalism, much like golf, a white man’s philosophy”
This quote I took from the article continues on the ideas of white control. That minimalism for one group of people such as the eurocentric white male who this time was not the less dominant cultural human being in society. But having dominance sadly over others can consider certain aspects to be beneficial and create an idea of minimalism. When for Black African-Americans this was impossible, to further lower their status and identity when it was already at an all-time low doesn’t work. It also doesn’t consider this from others’ points of view.
“white Americans often feel entitled to respect for their sensibilities, sensitivities, and tastes, and to their implicit, sometimes violent, control over the soundscape of an ostensibly ‘free’, ‘open’ and ‘public’ space.” She cites the example of a white man named Michael Dunn marking his aural territory within a Florida petrol station in 2012: “Dunn didn’t want to hear hiphop at the pumps, so he walked to the jeep where Davis and his friends were listening to music and demanded they turn it down. when the teenagers refused, Dunn shot into their car and fled.” Jordan Davis, all of 17, was shot dead.
I think this part of the essay perfectly describes again the oppression people of colour face in a white-dominated society. The idea of a white-controlled and dominated soundscape is again something I haven’t thought about. That they are entitled to not have their taste or sensibilities challenged. They want to have their taste not be challenged and when Dunn was presented with something else he murdered. This is painfully obvious now why black minimalism or any other minimalism hasn’t been considered for the canon and this sort of essay/article is a good way of understanding the context.
The article also continues to argue the balance between black and white. John Cage and his piece 4:33 is arguably the first case of minimalism in modern artworks Cage was inspired by Rauschenberg’s white paintings but had cage seen the other black paintings which were supposed to be seen together what would have changed? It also continues on to discuss the idea of cultures having their own ways of doing things and as Toop says “that’s why different art forms exist?”.
Black voices were also heavily part of early white minimalistic works. Being sampled and used in music concretè by artists such as Reich, Young, Maxfield and others using it as a raw material. Without the context of the environment it was recorded or who was speaking. Again not considering whose voice is being used or is part of minimalism. The white narrative controlled by white people is something that needs to be altered. Different narratives and histories are always present. James Brown is considered in this article to also be a minimalist, his work didn’t have a higher meaning despite being for the culture and community. It had what can be described as a parallel movement to the white rich eurocentric males in the minimalism category. Due to the white-controlled soundscape, this hasn’t come to light.
I think this article/essay spoke volumes to me, especially if I intend to create some sort of minimalism within my work. It’s an interesting thing to consider what minimalism is within my culture and other cultures and where I situate my practice within it. It can be easy at times to seek the canon within each practice but this doesn’t create any sort of critical practice. I think reading this has brought up good points against my previous book on minimalistic music and its defined characteristics, something that I now wish to break completely.