I Got Those White Guy Co-Opting Black Peoples' Music Blues (And A Temporary Cure)

It was a day much like any other. A spreadsheet sits open on a screen in front of me. My fingers have found a rhythym, as they should after entering data in the same format for close to an hour. If I stare down at the empty cells still to be filled in, I am overcome by some kind of strange 2-D vertigo. Thank God I have my iPod.

Soul music is especially helpful for me in situations like this. I don't know what it is about it--maybe its tendency toward groove and rhythym or maybe the emotional honesty so clear in its vocals--but soul music helps me get things done. Able to focus, work, and not get bogged down by the repetitiveness that is too often necessary to do things well. Which brings us to Timmie Rogers and his "Super Soul Brother", part vintage soul and part novelty single. Anchored by a seriously boogie-ing boogie-woogie piano and a wah-wah that means business, the song is basically an excuse for Rogers to crack jokes while giving us "a history of soul". A small sampling:

"Black people call this feeling 'soul'. White people call it 'acid indigestion'."

"The first caveman was a soul brother. Who else would kill a dinosaur and barbecue the ribs?"

"Eli Whitney invented the first cotton gin, so all of his soul brothers could stop pickin' it and start drinkin' it."

Other soul brothers include Christopher Colombus, Benjamin Franklin, Marconi, and a superhero named Super Soul Brother, who is, incidentally, "faster than George Wallace on a bicycle going through Harlem". Obviously most of these jokes are wildly polictically incorrect--but they are told so gleefully and with such comedic charisma as to be virtually inoffensive. It's a sense of humor that eventually found its most widely heard voice in Dave Chappelle and (very) quickly devolved into Carlos Mencia. But that George Wallace thing makes me smile every time I hear it.

Timmie Rogers:::Super Soul Brother

As funny as the song can be, it does raise serious questions about what it means to have soul. Do I deserve to be moved by soul music? How much does one have to have in common with a culture in order to feel comfortable enjoying its output? Do I have to eat chitlins to laugh at the joke about them and if I do does that exploit racial stereotypes or undermine them?

Clearly, I wasn't getting much work done. Data input and identity politics are not, generally, a good combination. Luckily for me, the next songs worked some kind of magic on me. Three straight absolutely killer soul songs that banished, for a few moments at least, liberal white guilt.


Sugar Billy:::Super Duper Love, Part 2

Solomon Burke:::I'm Hanging Up My Heart for You

The Gaturs:::Cold Bear

OK--Give these songs a whirl. Why did I spend time musing about whether I "deserve" to be moved by soul music? The fact simply is, I am moved by it. Music this good, this life-affirming doesn't ask to be felt--it is or it isn't. As Timmie Rogers himself says, "Soul is a deep feeling down inside you. Once you get it, you know you got it." So the next time I start to overanalyze music that makes me feel thankful to be alive, I'll know what to do: turn up the music and give thanks.