Yes, yes, yes, asking for generalizations/stereotypes, YMMV, etc.
But I was thinking – I see black guys fairly frequently with motorcycle club leathers on (and I infer, perhaps not entirely correctly, the clubs are mostly mono-ethnic).
So the white biker culture is sort of identified with particular music genres/performers.
Thing is . . . none of these are necessarily ones I’d think most black dudes would feel terribly at home with (putting aside the fact that country and Southern rock, say, don’t attract huge black audiences, I can think of a few biker-associated acts who are more or less big old overt racists – I’m talking about you David Allen Coe).
So what kind of tunes would I be digging on if the Soul Brothers MC (http://www.soulbrothersmc.com/) let me kick it with them one weekend?
Also, one of the founding members of the Allman Brothers Band was black. Not to read too much into that alone, but I don’t think Southern rock is as monolithically white as one might think it is. The bands that one associates with white supremacy and racism aren’t the ones with the big draws, anyway.
My father and brother ride. I don’t know if they would call themselves “bikers”, even though my brother does belong to a club. He listens to rap (of the southern variety), but he’s open to other genres. My father listens to everything short of country/western and classical. If he were a teenage girl, he’d probably have posters of Paul McCartney and Sting on his bedroom walls.
As far as southern rock goes, yeah, you might want to pump your brakes on that generalization. I know I’m just one black chick, but I personally love southern rock. I don’t know about racist stuff, but give me the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynrd, and the Black Crowes any day.
Black motorcycle rider here. I listen to rap. When I started to ride, that didn’t change. Granted, I don’t belong to a club, I don’t have a sound system on my bike, and I don’t ride a Harley-style bike. The last time I encountered a black MC (at Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles on a Sunday morning, no less – a true house of worship), one of the guys had soul blaring from his ride, and another had rap music.
Thanks for the info. I was wondering about this just last night.
I was playing the video game “Left 4 Dead 2”, and in one stage there’s a large poster for a fictional biker / southern rock band called “The Midnight Riders”.
When “Coach”, one of the characters in the game, sees the poster, he says non-ironically “I love these guys and have all their albums”.
This made me wonder because Coach is a middle-aged black man. Not the kind of person I imagined would listen to a biker band.
This is actually not asking for a generalization or a stereotype in any way. There is a definite, concrete, answer to this question. And when we find the first black biker we’ll ask him and get that answer.
(This was funnier before I read the rest of the thread.)
My dad is a biker and raced for 20 years. I have been around every stripe and flavor of biker. I can think of no two who like the same music. In my general experience with black people, I find that there is no such thing as stereotypical “black” music. Some people like rock, some like rap, some like country, some like gospel, some like old soul/R&B, some can’t even dance. Race doesn’t seem to have fuck all to do with any of it.
I’m passing acquaintances with a few full patch MC members of a well known club and they listen to rap music, and these are white dudes. True the older guys like more “biker” oriented stuff, but the younger guys like the same music as most people their age. Music taste usually has less to do with the color of your skin than it does with how long you’ve been walking around in it.
1950s-1980s Original Cast Recordings, Broadway and London, particularly Follies, Annie, and the 70s revival of Gypsy with Angela Lansbury. But DO NOT EVER make the mistake of calling them “soundtracks” unless you want some black bikers to beat your ass like you’re Aldonza in the Man of La Mancha Act 2 climax.
I think you’re splitting hairs on that one. I, for one, don’t especially like narrow genres, and wikipedia boasts they’re at least the “architects” of Southern Rock, so I’ll claim that as a point in my favour.
I like Dire Straits, and certain people in my circle of friends get pissy when I call them a prog rock band, so I’m used to blurring the lines of rock genres. They’re too hard to follow, anyway!
Really? I honestly believe that they are considered a “Southern Rock” band solely because of where they came from, and they have much less to do with the other bands considered “Southern Rock” than a lot of bands and performers from the North. Molly Hatchet and Ted Nugent have a lot more in common than the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
It’s one of the problems with cites on Wikipedia - all you need is a reference to a critic in a magazine or book, and critics are as fallible as anyone else.
One of my favorite quotes from a critic was in Trouser Press’s review of Kate Bush’s The Dreaming: “This is what Progressive Rock would have sounded like if it had actually progressed.”
