Honkie Soul The MC5 at the Democratic National Convention
Honkie Soul The MC5 at the Democratic National Convention
Lincoln Park, Chicago, August 25, 1968
The Detroit rock band MC5 are known for their affiliation with the White Panther Party, a radical group founded in Ann Arbor in 1968 by poet, jazz critic, and arts promoter John Sinclair. This chapter argues that the MC5 did not simply engage in cultural appropriation of Black music but rather sought to transform it into a new idiom relevant to white musicians and radicals like themselves. Rather than attempt literal imitations of blues or avant-garde jazz, the MC5 self-consciously adapted the form and style of their African American influences into a new context. This approach also informed their political stance, which was itself an adaptation, sometimes reverential and sometimes whimsical, of the ideas of Black Power figures such as Amiri Baraka and Eldridge Cleaver. The MC5 believed that their commitment to African American music inspired and justified their political activism, but this belief was always threatened by their tenuous position as white performers of that music.
Keywords: MC5, White Panther Party, avant-garde jazz, Detroit rock, rock, Black Power, Amiri Baraka, Eldridge Cleaver, cultural appropriation
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