Are most indie rock fans white?

Cafe Society
1

I recently read that indie rock now implicitly means “white rock” (A Paler Shade of White | The New Yorker). Are most indie rock fans white?

2

I’d say yes - and that most rock fans more generally are as well - isn’t the article about how the Indie bands themselves are less influenced by black music than those such as The Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin etc?

3

I don’t know why this discussion is confined to “indie” rock when it was always generally understood that most rock fans, period, are white. Why should this surprise anyone?

4

Moving to Cafe Society.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

5

I haven’t read the article but I don’t think that’s really true. Motown,soul, r’n’b, world etc. still have a big influence on the sound of many “indie rock” acts. Few of them nowadays, however, try to replicate the early rock and blues stuff in the way the Stones and LZ did.

6

Once upon a time (80s, 90s), ‘indie rock’ was dubbed as such because the artists were releasing rock music on an independent label. In more recent years, the term has become so broad that it’s tough to pin it down to any meaning at all.

7

“Now”? Since when have most indie rock fans not been white?

“Indie rock” was pretty meaningless right from the beginning. It was more or less a synonym for “college rock” and REM was (and still is, really) the poster child for the subgenre.

8

I would bet good money that fans of most music genres including hip hop and blues are white at least in the U.S.

9

Well the indie scene sure isn’t exclusively white, at least not in these parts. Gnarles Barkley (w/Ceelo Green) first hit on the indie circuit.

Little Tybee is not monoracial.

The Knux are an indie act from New Orleans with no shortage of melanin.