Georgia Straight
October 10, 2002

Digitopia Blues Raps on Race and Culture

by
Martin Turenne

Digitopia Blues: Race, Technology, and the American Voice is, at first glance, a curious piece of work. It is, in author John Sobol’s own words a “personal narrative”, one in which he passes through “a kaleidoscopic tunnel of black communication” to find the root of African-American music: orality. The Toronto-based Sobol is a journalist, a saxophonist, and an oral poet- and for the record, he is white, a fact he clarifies in the book’s foreword, where he describes himself as, among other things, a “cultural appropriator”,“a bourgeois colonizer”, and “a wannabe”, Sobol’s admission of his whiteness serves no ironic end; instead, it sets a reverential tone for the lovingly woven narrative it precedes.

Sobol sees the development of black American music as resulting from the African-American community’s collective quest to redeem its oral heritage, a heritage devalued by white subjugators. The book begins and ends with contrasting notions of white and black histories of music. According to Sobol, white tradition often divorces music from practical affairs, it prizes the mind over the body, and it prefers the written word to the spoken one. In black culture, however, Sobol argues, music is a communal activity, one that freely incorporated other modes of expression (e.g., dance). These distinctions are fleshed out in Sobol’s well-researched thesis, which finds him connecting the oral foundations of such diverse black forms as blues, gospel, free jazz, and hip-hop.

Digitopia Blues is divided into three sections. The first explores the vocal underpinnings of black American music; the next charts the music’s integration into mainstream society; and the last documents how orality and literacy are coalescing in the form of Web-based activism and software-based musicianship. Sobol;s analysis of African-American music’s development rings resoundingly true, and he rightly points to the absence of powerful black voices on the Internet as a serious threat to the viability of distinctly black artistic forms.

The roots of popular music have become so intertwined they’re almost inseparable. This is an era when middle-class white kids dress up in red and white and act like gutter-blues singers to grand critical acclaim. It’s been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but when does imitation become usurpation? Does the fact of Eminem’s talent mean that African-Americans have won? Or have they lost? Are we facing a time when black kids will abandon hip-hop? That prospect isn’t as far-fetched as it seems. Blues-rock, for example, originated as a black form. But can you imnagine the White Stripes as a black duo? I can’t.

It speaks to Sobol’s skills as a provocateur that he prompts the reader to raise such difficult questions. Over the course of this slim volume, the author emerges as a sympathetic character whose reverence for black culture makes him a worthy guide to a music not his own. Briskly paced and superbly written, Digitopia Blues provides a lucid account of the history of African-American music, a music that has become, for better or worse, the world’s. His book begs to be read, and what’s more, it begs to be discussed.