Bucking the Force

nouveau tech vs. raheem's gargantuan original

Why this Black Girl is Ipodless

“I’m asking if y’all feel me and the crowd left me stranded.” – Talib Kweli, “Respiration” (Blackstar)

I recently had a discussion with a good friend of mine. She’s a smart, funny, African American law school student and she’s admittedly part of the force. A newly transformed Bostonian, she marches with the beat of the urban intelligentsia, tuning in daily. She’s on it jogging, walking to class, waiting for the T train. Together, she, with the legions of sporting metal rectangles and earbuds, with the click of a finger, beams up her inner Scottie. Her method of choice: the Apple I pod portable music device.

As sure as there are bourgeois black folks up in Fort Greene, as sure as Amy Ruth can put her foot in some chicken and waffles up on 116th and Lenox Ave., the “I force”, the legions of folks with the metallic machines, are in every city. The energetic young man tucks it into his messenger bag briskly walking to his Midtown Manhattan office. The daddy’s depositing my allowance into my account trust fund baby cloaks hers with pink jewels from Sunset Blvd. And the upwardly mobile children of minority baby boomers display theirs with their keeping-up-appearances to uplift the race Louis Vuitton book bags in DC and the ATL.

When I see them on the subway in the Apple, they’re often looking into space, lost in an Ipod induced haze. Fiddling with my lesser CD player, I imagine that they smirk at me. In reality, it is only the blank looks on their face that signify something real. As one magazine put it, we pod, therefore we are. The unwritten subtext being: and you are not.

I was asked by this same friend, on a recent visit to Boston, would I consider getting one? Looking up from my computer, I answered, almost if on reflex, “Heck naw”. Why, she wondered? To paraphrase Lauryn Hill, “‘Scuse me if I get too deep” but the whole idea seems to run counter to music. The first “beats, rhymes and life” were organic, created by primitive people who meted out their stories with no more high tech tools than their calloused feet and hands. Music told a story/ gave a warning/ worked the healing. Literally, it sprung from the earth.

Fast-forward to now and we seem to think that how we hear our music is a symbol of entitlement, not of shared entertainment. It’s an object to own instead of one to enlighten the masses, a measure of privacy, not one of bombastic playfulness (see: Radio Raheem of “Do The Right Thing” lore). To me, it’s a sign of the times. By allowing us to retreat into our separate corners, we brush the communal “dirt off our shoulders,” like Jay Z says. For, we think, the Ipod haze becomes us and we are one with the machine. And, lest you think I’m speechifying, I’ll be the first one to admit that my portable CD player is linked to my dome. I do understand the need to be alone with your tunes, playing the off-the-cuff notes that only you might need to hear. You know -- that secret playlist with a little latter day Keith Sweat sprinkled with Another Bad Creation's B sides and Positive K (the one hit wonder of “I Got a Man” fame)? LOL

It’s just that all of this uniformity makes me want to try to question the current we’re moving in. Getting a daily look at those white earbuds just makes me miss the time when music meant community, openness, an exchange of energy, not solely commercial goods. I’d love to see people “clap their hands just a little bit louder!” like little Stevie Wonder asked a live audience to do in “Fingertips Pt.2”. And when I’m walking down the city streets, it might be nice for old time’s sake, to see a high top faded-brother break out the shoulder top radio, or nod intently, as LL Cool J said, to the bass of a “booming system” as cars ride by. If only to nod to Public Enemy and fight the tiny metallic powers that be...