“Uplift and Downbeats: What If Jazz History Included the Prairie View Co-eds?” by Tucker and “How Rock and Roll Became White and how the Rolling Stones, a band in love with black music, helped lead the way to rock music’s segregated future” by Hamilton, are intricate articles which question the common notions of popular music’s assumed whiteness. In the midst of discussing this complex phenomenon, they point out the infuriating occurrence of how the labelling of black bodies as an “other” is disadvantageous, yet the same labelling on white bodies can serve as a social booster.
For the Prairie View Co-eds; an unrecorded women’s jazz band from a historically black college, their perceived “otherness” ultimately contributed to the absence of their group from Jazz histography, despite their talent and popularity in the 1940s as “Black college bands, women instrumentalists, and unrecorded bands seldom make it into the purview of jazz history books,” (Tucker, 31). Opposingly, the qualities of the band, The Rolling Stones which characterized them as “other” became revered and thought of as synonymous with the whiteness of rock, regardless that they had been emulated from Black musicians. Hamilton notes that, “This transition—from the Rolling Stones being heard as a white band authenticated by their reverence for and fluency within black music, to the Rolling Stones simply being heard as a new sort of authentic themselves—is among the most significant turns in the history of rock” (Hamilton). Unfortunately, these are not the only cases, as this cultural appropriation lives behind the stories of an overabundance of popular songs and music.
Among this stolen pile of music “The Lion Sleeps tonight” blends right in. Originally written and performed in Zulu by South African singer Solomon Linda, “Mbube” sold over 100,000 copies, and propelled Linda into stardom in South Africa (Wikipedia). But, “Mbube” did not reach the fame the whitewashed version, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by The Tokens, which became the best-known version and a number one hit in the US (Wikipedia). This story lines up with those mentioned before. The original artist, Linda is now unknown, similar to The Coeds and akin to the Rolling Stones, “The Lion Sleeps tonight” which was written by a black artist, found its primary success in the hands of a white male doo-wop group.
Solomon Linda “Mbube”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrrQT4WkbNE
The Tokens “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”
References
Hamilton, Jack, and Jack Hamilton. “How the Rolling Stones, a Band Obsessed With Black Musicians, Helped Make Rock a White Genre.” Slate Magazine, Slate, 6 Oct. 2016, slate.com/culture/2016/10/race-rock-and-the-rolling-stones-how-the-rock-and-roll-became-white.html.
Sherrie Tucker, “Uplift and Downbeats: What If Jazz History Included the Prairie View Co-eds?” Jazz Research Proceedings, International Association of Jazz Educators (2001): 26-31. (PDF)
Wikipedia contributors. “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 28 Jan. 2019. Web. 31 Jan. 2019.
jay.lyons.class 