On Nerds, Retro Soul & the Stickiness of Writing About Race
by Oliver Wang
Quite a few people asked if I had read this past weekend’s NY Times piece by Rob Hoerburger on the new(ish) generation of retro-soul artists, “Can a Nerd Have Soul?”
To be honest, I initially avoided it given the godawful headline and while that may not be Hoerburger’s fault, it gets things off to a terrible start, not the least of which is the insinuation that the things we associate with nerdiness – obsessive behavior, social awkwardness, intelligence and whiteness – are somehow mutually exclusive with what we associate with “soul.” And since “soul” is also synonymous with Blackness, the title suggests, whether intentionally or not, that whatever Black soul connotes – emotion, pride, community – it’s incompatible with the idea of also being smart, a little goofy and detail-oriented. That would surely come as a surprise to the countless Black soul artists, producers, songwriters and label owners of the last five decades, many of whom could surely be all those things without it seeming very contradictory. You read enough R&B biographies and for every commanding, crazily confident stage king like Solomon Burke or James Brown, it’s exceedingly easy to find other artists who were known for their awkward introversion (Aretha Franklin), debilitating shyness (Marvin Gaye), or preternatural, photographic memory (Stevie Wonder).
I don’t mean to write a treatise about a headline but my point: it’s a wack headline and does the longer article a disservice in potentially dissuading folks from reading further. But I finally gave in, hit the lede (which I liked a lot) and then things began to fall apart for me.
My biggest issue with it is that, from very early on, it creates this strange – and I would argue, false – division within the world of retro-soul artists. On one side, there are “the nerds”, identified here as including Mayer Hawthorne, Aloe Blacc, Eli Reed, Kings Go Forth, etc. And they are somehow different from other similar artists who apparently are stylistically different but not in any well-explained way.
Read the Full Essay @ Soul Sides
by Oliver Wang
Quite a few people asked if I had read this past weekend’s NY Times piece by Rob Hoerburger on the new(ish) generation of retro-soul artists, “Can a Nerd Have Soul?”
To be honest, I initially avoided it given the godawful headline and while that may not be Hoerburger’s fault, it gets things off to a terrible start, not the least of which is the insinuation that the things we associate with nerdiness – obsessive behavior, social awkwardness, intelligence and whiteness – are somehow mutually exclusive with what we associate with “soul.” And since “soul” is also synonymous with Blackness, the title suggests, whether intentionally or not, that whatever Black soul connotes – emotion, pride, community – it’s incompatible with the idea of also being smart, a little goofy and detail-oriented. That would surely come as a surprise to the countless Black soul artists, producers, songwriters and label owners of the last five decades, many of whom could surely be all those things without it seeming very contradictory. You read enough R&B biographies and for every commanding, crazily confident stage king like Solomon Burke or James Brown, it’s exceedingly easy to find other artists who were known for their awkward introversion (Aretha Franklin), debilitating shyness (Marvin Gaye), or preternatural, photographic memory (Stevie Wonder).
I don’t mean to write a treatise about a headline but my point: it’s a wack headline and does the longer article a disservice in potentially dissuading folks from reading further. But I finally gave in, hit the lede (which I liked a lot) and then things began to fall apart for me.
My biggest issue with it is that, from very early on, it creates this strange – and I would argue, false – division within the world of retro-soul artists. On one side, there are “the nerds”, identified here as including Mayer Hawthorne, Aloe Blacc, Eli Reed, Kings Go Forth, etc. And they are somehow different from other similar artists who apparently are stylistically different but not in any well-explained way.
Read the Full Essay @ Soul Sides
