Week 11: Tracy Chapman

As Whiteley makes note of in her analysis of the successful black folk/pop singer, Tracy Chapman has often been criticized for her somewhat “tame” songs of political protest, which have been described as a simple “after-dinner conscience-comforter” (187) for a largely white and middle class audience. But Whiteley argues Chapman’s refusal to conform to the stereotypes which surround black women and black music is precisely what makes her a significant figure within black female musicians. Utilizing the originally white but revolutionary potential of folk music, Chapman sings of the powerful themes of marginality and being an outsider, and the lack of collective social support for those who experience hardships due to their race, gender, class or sexuality.

One of her key songs to reach popular, mainstream appeal is Fast Car, a very personal tune which deals with a woman’s inescapability of men caught up alcoholism; after leaving an alcoholic father, the protagonist of the song ends up with an alcoholic husband as well. Whiteley makes note of Chapman’s use of music to convey the powerful themes within her songs—in Fast Car, a sense of being “trapped” in this cycle of the often hopeless reality of alcoholism is created through a two-bar guitar riff which continues to repeat itself throughout the song. Her use of melisma and vibrato portray the emotions of helplessness and sadness felt by the victims and outsiders of her songs.

Ultimately, Chapman challenges the stereotypical portrayals of black women musicians and black music while adding to the diversity of black musicians within the tradition of musically expressing the issues “surrounding racialised exclusion, ‘Black identity,’ and social and cultural difference” (191). Her position as an educated woman and a politically and socially conscious individual, alongside her very personal music expressing issues of marginality make Chapman a powerful figure not only within black female musicians, but within the broader realm of women in popular music.

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I'm fairly ashamed to admit, until I began this course and the required readings, I had always thought Tracy Chapman was white. My first encounter with Fast Car was through a playlist my first-year dorm-mate and I had created on her laptop, which would play while we bustled about in our miniscule dormitory. I only knew of Tracy Chapman through that one track, and had never been exposed to actual images of the musician. I'm sure a large part of my false assumption of Chapman as a white pop musician was the style of the music. As Whiteley mentions in her article, folk music is generally associated with white culture. Athough I find Chapman's refusal to conform to the stereotypes of black female singers very powerful, I wonder how many people, like me, end up initially brushing her off as another white folk pop singer, and completely miss her revolutionary messages?

My perspective of Chapman has completely changed from when I was folding laundry to her most well-known song in a dusty dormitory. The fact that she consciously refuses to fit into stereotypes surrounding black women is admirable, and something that I feel I can relate to.
Born in Tokyo but raised in small-town in the Okanagan, I continually struggle with my identity as a first generation Japanese-Canadian. I vaguely remember being kind of the circus freak on my first full day of grade one; my mother had packed me a traditional Japanese lunch with rice balls, sweet scrambled eggs and chopsticks, which fascinated the other kids, who had their typical Wonderbread sandwiches and fruit-roll-up snacks. Embarrassed at my apparent difference to everybody else, I asked my mother for sandwich lunches from that day on.

Recently I've felt the struggle with my dual identity, especially with language. I speak Japanese fairly fluently, but probably only at the level of a middle school student. As I am shoving more theories into my head and expanding my academic knowledge, I feel my Japanese is slowly fading away. It's really frustrating to not be able to speak to my parents and the Japanese people in my life about my studies and everything I'm learning. I don't even know the word for 'feminism' in Japanese. Initially being embarrassed by my obvious differences from the largely white population of my small hometown has resulted in increasingly assimilating myself within North American culture. While I think its great how successful and influential a musician Chapman is without conforming to stereotypes, I wonder if she feels the loss I feel, when I think about how I've tried to stray as far as I could from limiting Japanese stereotypes.

In a desperate attempt to re-emerge myself back into Japanese culture, I took a stack of Slam Dunk manga (arguably one of the most influential Japanese comic books of all time) and some of my old Japanese pop CDs from my parent's home a few weeks ago. One of the CDs was a single by pop/folk artist Chitose Hajime, who rose to the top of Japanese music charts in 2004 with her single 'Wadatsumi no ki.' This song has always been one of my favorite songs, ever since I heard it during my trip back to Japan in 2004. Even though I can't understand every word in the song, or really even comprehend much of what she's actually singing about, I feel very emotional every time the song is played. And I feel that much of that emotion derives from my struggling yet strong identification with Japan. I hope to pick up some new albums when I visit Japan again, and find more music the Japanese side of my can identify with.