White power music

This article is about neo-Nazism and white supremacy music. For the early 1900s term for African American music, see Race music.

Raised arms Nazi salute for the heavy metal band Batallón de Castigo during a 2003 concert in Alcalá de Henares, Spain.

Racist music is music associated with and promoting neo-Nazism and white supremacy ideologies. Although musicologists point out that many, if not most early cultures had songs to promote themselves and denigrate any perceived enemies, the origins of racist music is tied to the 1950s.

Racist music adopts the musical conventions and trappings, rhythms and forms of non-racist music to advance extreme white racism in various music genres, including pop and rock. By 2001, there were many music genres with white power rock, including Nazi Punk, hatecore and National Socialist black metal. Racist country music is mainly an American phenomena. Other racist music genres include fascist experimental music and racist folk music.

Role in the white power movement

Barbara Perry writes that contemporary white supremacist groups include "subcultural factions that are largely organized around the promotion and distribution of racist music." According to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission "racist music is principally derived from the far-right skinhead movement and, through the Internet, this music has become perhaps the most important tool of the international neo-Nazi movement to gain revenue and new recruits." The documentary VH1 News Special: Inside Hate Rock (2002) noted that racist music is "a breeding ground for home-grown terrorists."

Brian Houghton, of the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, said racist music is used "to grab these kids, teach them to be racists and hook them for life." In 2004, a neo-Nazi record company launched "Project Schoolyard" to distribute free CDs of the music into the hands of up to 100,000 teenagers throughout the United States. Their website stated, "We just don't entertain racist kids … We create them." The article "The Hardest Hate: A Sociological Analysis of Country Hate Music: From Rebel Records to Prussian Blue: A History of White Racialist Music in the United States" says "musicians believe not only that music could be a successful vehicle for their specific ideology but that is also could advance the movement by framing it in a positive manner."

Perry writes:

It is not a simplistic cause-effect relationship, but there is no escaping the fact that the media, as pervasive as they are, have significant sway with the young. Teens and others may purchase white power rock music with racist and violent lyrics that encourage the purported struggle for white rights.

Kevin Saunders argues that of the groups that want to "pass on racial hatred and the doctrine of white supremacy" to teach children to hate, the ones who do so through music are perhaps the most successful. The book Hate Crimes: The Rising Tide of Bigotry and Bloodshed says that White Aryan Resistance (WAR) has stated: "Music is one of the greatest propaganda tools around. You can influence more people with a song than you can with a speech."

Kathleen M. Blee writes: "To be a racist skinhead means to be a part of a musical subculture of loud, hard-core music with viciously racist lyrics. [They] see such music as a key to reviving a movement they regard as floundering under the lifeless leadership of older Klan and Nazi leaders." The white power subculture includes "violent dancing, all-night parties featuring drugs and alcohol ... [building] a sense of individual and collective power no matter how illusory." The concerts serve as effective recruiting tools to bring in youths who are attracted to the music, concerts, and culture of white power skinheads.The white power movement has bundled racist music along with stickers, clothing, sunglasses, pet wear and and other, usually online, enticements to recruit young, white social outcasts.

A newer trend is for all-female white power bands to form and be marketed, because all-male white power bands are limited in venues they can play. Additionally, the female-fronted bands are much less likely to encounter violent anti-racist protests. Another aspect of female racist bands is their general disdain of performing heavy metal and hard rock music and their prefererce for a variety of post-feminist sensibilities in lyrics, style of music and performance.

In a multi-millon dollar industry that helps finance and recruit for "hate groups in the Western world", the Internet and low airfares have helped internationalize the efforts. The music is more pervasive in Europe than the United States, despite many European countries banning or curtailing distribution. European governments regularly deport "extremist aliens", ban racist music groups and raid racist organizations that produce and distribute the music. As of 2001, there were albums from 123 US-based bands and 229 from other countries, mostly Europe. In the United States, however, racist music is protected freedom of speech in the United States by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The multimillion dollar industry is arguably most active in the U.S., bringing in funds for far right groups in the U.S. and producing music and propaganda for the rest of the world.

Racist music is becoming less taboo, as the Internet allows users to purchase quickly and anonymously as compared to having to go into a store. American mainstream music retailers cite the first amendment and "slippery-slope" logic to defend their right to sell racist music online.

Racist country and folk music

Politics of the Southern United States have been intertwined with country music, which evolved from traditional English and Irish folk music that came to the US in the 1800s. This relationship can be traced back to political barbeques held in Virginia during the colonial era. According to some writers, the politics of country music are perhaps best aligned with populism.

Country music has spawned several subgenres, including racist country music. Populist sentiments remained in the racist subgenre — also referred to as segregationist music — which came about in response to the American civil rights movement. The songs expressed resistance to the federal government and civil rights advocates who were challenging well-established, white supremacist system and racist practices endemic in the American southern states. There were also changes in the music recording industry in the 1940s and 1950s that allowed regional recording companies to form across the US, addressing small specialized markets. B.C. Malone writes:

the struggles waged by black Americans to attain economic dignity and racial justice provided one of the ugliest chapters in country music history, an outpouring of racist records on small labels, mostly from Crowley, Louisiana, which lauded the Ku Klux Klan and attacked blacks (generally called niggers and coons) in the most vicious of stereotypes terms.”

Racist country music was used by white racial extremists to "advance their goals and movement objectives through lyrics that dehumanize African-Americans and create imagery of white unity and solidarity."

In the mid-1960s, the civil rights movement reached a "fever pitch", and in 1966 businessman Jay "J.D." Miller created a niche record label for his company, the defiantly segregationist Reb Rebel label. It was arguably the most notable of the racist country music record labels. The artists often adopted pseudonyms, and some of their music was "highly confrontational, making explicit use of racial epithets, stereotypes and threats of violence against Civil Rights activists."

Much of the music "featured blatantly racist stereotypes that dehumanized African Americans", equating them with animals or by "using cartoonish imagery associated with “Jigaboos”". Lyrics warned of "white violence" on African Americans if they insisted on being treated as equals. Other songs were more subtle couching racist messages behind social critiques and political action calls. The lyrics, in the tradition of populism, questioned the legitimacy of the federal government and rallied whites to protect "Southern rights" and traditions. The racist country music song "Black Power" includes the lyrics:

The ones who shout “Black Power” / Would bury you and me. / Yeah, the ones who shout “Black Power” / Should let our country be... / White men stand together and register to vote. / Don’t let them take way our land. / We’ve still got lots of hope.

Reb Rebels released 21 singles and For Segregationists Only, an album of its ten bestselling songs, four of which were Johnny Rebel's. The label's first single, "Dear Mr. President" (referring to then-president Lyndon B. Johnson), by Happy Fats (Leroy Leblanc), sold more than 200,000 copies. The song parodied Johnson's Great Society programs which aimed to eliminate poverty and racial injustice. Other songs were primarily about civil rights or the Vietnam War, "but never really attacked black people." The studio's second release, "Flight NAACP 105" by "the Son of Mississippi" (Joe Norris), was the label's bestseller; the track was a "spontaneous skit in the vein of Amos 'n' Andy." It was the first in a series of "highly racist take-offs" of Amos n’ Andy.

Few of Miller’s racist records were played on the radio in Louisiana. Sample suggests that Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens' Council members made up the bulk of the underground network.

Johnny Rebel

Johnny Rebel, the pseudonym that Cajun country musician Clifford Joseph Trahane used on racist recordings issued in the 1960s, became the "forefather of white power music." Johnny Rebel's six singles (12 songs altogether), frequently use the racial epithet nigger, and often voiced sympathy for racial segregation and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), such as his first B-side "Kajun Klu Klux Klan", which was a "cautionary tale centered on the story of 'Levi Coon' who dared to demand that he be served in a café." The songs were "vehemently anti-black, its pro-segregationist lyrics set to the twangs of the era's swampbilly craze."

Thanks to bootleged copies and the Internet, Johnny Rebel's career has never died; in the late 1990s he was re-discovered, and he re-released his music on CD and promoted it with his own webpsite. The site, however, did not spark new interest outside his fanbase until September 11 attacks of 2001. Johnny Rebel recorded and released "Infidel Anthem", about "the whipping America should lay on Osama bin Laden," leading to an appearance on The Howard Stern Show, where his new compilation CD and the new song were promoted. At the time, Stern's show had a peak audience of around 20 million.

Michael Wade argues that Johnny Rebel "influenced British racist musicians, notably the band Skrewdriver, which inspired other right-wing musicians."

White power rock music

Nazi punk music is similar to most forms of punk rock, although it differs by having lyrics that express hatred of Jews, homosexuals, communists, anarchists, anti-racists and people who are not considered white. In 1978 in Britain, the white nationalist National Front (NF) had a punk-oriented youth organization called the Punk Front. Although the Punk Front only lasted one year, it included a number of white power punk bands such as The Dentists, The Ventz, Tragic Minds and White Boss. The Nazi punk subculture appeared in the United States by the early 1980s, during the rise of the hardcore punk scene.

The Rock Against Communism movement originated in the United Kingdom in late 1978 with activists associated with the NF. The most notable RAC band was Skrewdriver, which started out as a non-political punk band but evolved into a white power skinhead band after the original lineup broke up and a new lineup was formed. They were the "most dominant white racial extremist band" and were idealized in the "emerging movement that arose in response to perceptions of political liberalism, diversity, and the loss of a power in the white community." Skrewdriver advocated on behalf of extreme right-wing and racist politics, and Donaldson self-identified as a British neo-Nazi. The group performed mainly for other white power skinheads and "asserted the need for extremist political violence." Bands that followed their lead also "fused racist ideology, heavy metal and hard rock styles", embracing "aggressive racism and ethnic nationalism".

National Socialist black metal (NSBM) is black metal that promotes National Socialist (Nazi) beliefs through their lyrics and imagery. These beliefs often include: white supremacy, racial separatism, antisemitism, heterosexism, and Nazi interpretations of paganism or Satanism (Nazi mysticism). According to Mattias Gardell, NSBM musicians see "national socialism as a logical extension of the political and spiritual dissidence inherent in black metal. Bands whose members hold Nazi beliefs but do not express these through their lyrics are generally not considered NSBM by black metal musicians, but are labelled as such in media reports. Some black metal bands have made references to Nazi Germany purely for shock value, much like some punk rock and heavy metal bands. According to Christian Dornbusch and Hans-Peter Killguss, völkisch pagan metal and neo-Nazism are the current trends in the black metal scene, and are affecting the broader metal scene. Mattias Gardell, however, sees NSBM artists as a minority within black metal.

See also

• "Das Judenthum in der Musik" ("Jewishness in Music") - essay by composer Richard Wagner
• List of neo-Nazi bands
• List of organizations designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups‎
• Louis and the Nazis - 2003 documentary about American neo-Nazis
• Odinism
• Nazi punk
• Stop murder music
• Wotanism

Bibliography

• Apel, W. (1969). Harvard Dictionary of Music, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
• Brake, M. (1980). The Sociology of Youth Culture and Youth Subcultures, Sex and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll?, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Fox, K.J. (1987). "Real Punks and Pretenders: The Social Organization of a Counterculture.", Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 16, 344-370.
• Fryer, P. (1986). "Punk and The New Wave of British Rock: Working Class Heroes and Art School Attitudes", Popular Music and Society, 10(4), 1-15.
• Grout, D.J. (1960). A History of Western Music, New York; W.W. Norton & Co.
• Hebdige, Dick. (1979). Subculture: The Meaning of Style; London, Methuen; Fletcher & Son ltd, 1979..
• Herman, M. (2006), J.D. Miller. Retrieved August 29, 2006.
• Johnny Rebel – Klassic Klan Kompositions. (2003). Retrieved February 1, 2006.
• Joseph, B.W. (2002). "'My Mind Split Open': Andy Warhol' Exploding Plastic Inevitability", Grey Room, 8 (Summer), 80-107.
• Lawler, J. (1996). Songs of life: The meaning of country music. Nashville, TN: Pogo Press.
• Leroy “Happy Fats” LaBlanc. (no date). Cajun French Music Association. Retrieved June 17, 2006.
• Mackay, J. (1993). Populist ideology and country music. In G. H. Lewis (Ed.), All that Glitters: Country Music in America (pp. 285-304). Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press.
• Malone, B. C. (2002a). Country Music, U.S.A. (2 nd ed,). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
• Malone, B. C. (2002b). Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’: Country Music and the Southern Working Class. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.
• Messner, B. A., Becker, P. J., Jipson, A., & Byers, B. (in press). The hardest hate: A sociological analysis of country hate music. Popular Music and Society.
• Pittman, N. (2003). Johnny Rebel Speaks. Retrieved February 1, 2006, from “Present at the Creation.” (2001, Fall). Southern Poverty Law Center Intellegence Report. Accessed November 1, 2006.
• Sample, T. (1996). White soul: Country music, the church, and working Americans. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.
• Tucker, S. R. (1985). Louisiana folk and regional popular music traditions on records and the radio: An historical overview with suggestions for future research. Louisiana Folklife: A Guide to the State. 222-240.

Further reading

• Farmelo, Allen. "Another History of Bluegrass: The Segregation of American Popular Music, 1820-1900." Popular Music and Society, 25.1-2 (2001): 179-204.
• Hill, Jane H. (2008). The Everyday Language of White Racism. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.