AUSTIN, Texas – Chuck D. summarized this year’s South by Southwest Music Conference in a single question.
“What makes a man or woman sit on a porch in Mississippi or Louisiana with three chords – a dog by his side, some macaroni and cheese, some barbecue or whatever – at 10:30 at night want to play to the moon?” the Public Enemy rapper said during an emotional panel discussion about music’s role in bringing the races together. “It definitely ain’t a recording contract.”
It was a sentiment that echoed throughout the five-day festival, though few saw the ramifications as broadly as Chuck D.
“Governments are the cancer of civilization,” he said. “Music and culture are the things that glue civilizations together.”
He and Public Enemy proved that the night before, as thousands packed the Auditorium Shores outdoor park for the biggest concert of the conference. When Chuck D. called for raised fists – either as a show of outrage against President Bush and the Iraq War or as a show of solidarity for all musicians – he could see thousands of them, in every shade the human race comes in.
In these days when the music industry wants people to believe that tastes are becoming narrower and narrower, Scandinavian blondes, black teenagers, Japanese businessmen, University of Texas frat boys and seemingly every other racial and age demographic put their fists in the air with Public Enemy.
Forget the business, countless panelists said. Focus on the music. The business will follow.
It was as if the struggling music industry had finally worked through all the stages of grief associated with billion-dollar revenue drops – “denial,” “bargaining,” “anger” and “despair” – only to arrive simultaneously at “acceptance” smack dab in the middle of Austin, Texas.
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