The (White) Elephant in the Room

According to the IFPI annual report, the music industry is a multibillion-dollar industry which brought in 20.2 billion dollars in 2019 in the US alone (IFPI, 2020). Even though we live in a globalized world, the western world has monopolised the popular music industry, making it extremely difficult for others to contribute and succeed within the industry, especially from ethnic minorities in western society.

The western world is notorious for invading lands and different cultures. There are records found in Spain dating back to 1449 of laws that were conducted, where people of colour and their place of origin became valid reasons for the rationalisation of treating people as property(Gorsky, 2016). These laws were to become a massive part of the Atlantic slave trade in the following centuries, which began the ramification of systematic racism of black people in western society.

During the slave trade, a lot of African culture and traditions came to the western world. For example, the banjo, a highly inspired African instrument that was brought over with the slaves. It was first used in Minstrel shows that were extremely racist, as white people mocked African culture by dressing up in blackface (Blackface: The Birth of An American Stereotype, 2017). Today it is commonly thought of as an instrument used in country music and American folk music, which is predominantly represented by white people. The banjo is just one example of how the western world has taken something from the African culture and made it their own.

Blues and jazz are both genres that roots back to the African culture. In the 1917’s, as the popularity around jazz grew there where a lot of propaganda discouraging people to listen to jazz saying that it was a form of “bayou voodoo” (Anderson, 2004). During the 1920’s a lot of white musicians started playing jazz, where able, recording the music, making it easier to distribute. Jazz was also the inspiration for rock and later pop music that is predominantly played by white people today.

In 1970 Hip hop became a new genre of music. It was a movement that started due to the economic challenges in the Bronx that mainly effected African Americans. Hip hop inspired RnB music and is today the two genres in the popular music industry that have the highest percentage of black musicians.

It is evident that time and time again it seems to be easier for black musicians to create their own platform and even their own genre of music to be able to succeed in the music industry. This is also true for other ethnic groups for example with K-pop from Korea that gained popularity around year 2000 and has contributed with hits like Gangnam style by PSY that ranked number 2 on the billboard list in 2012.

In 2018 UK Music Today published a survey that concluded 3000 artists and stated that 17.8 percent of the artists where Black, Asian or of ethnic minorities, this was an increase from 2016 however that number is still pretty low (UK music today, 2019). It is hard to find solutions for inclusion in the music industry however I think that by educating ourselves, speak up for the people around us and supporting the artists that are underrepresented we have a starting point. And for now, I would like to end with a quote from James Baldwin “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it’s faced.