The second part of a series on trying to find the “right music” to please everyone at a High-School football game. See Part 1: The Racial Divide Got Wider…
Part 2: The Perfect Mix
How did this turn into me writing about issues of race? At first, I was just hoping to relate to you my experience trying to make a listenable, high-school stadium friendly mix of songs for a Friday night football game that would be enjoyable for players, parents, and anyone else in attendance.
First off, when trying to make a music mix for a large group of people gathering together for like a party for instance, keep one thing in mind: It’s going to be impossible to please everyone with the songs you select. No matter how many people are happy and dancing along to the music, you’ll have a few bitter people who can’t understand why you’re not playing the new 50 Cent CD or some Nickleback. These people will constantly try to slip these party poopers into the CD player too, so you have to watch them closely.
To me, making a playlist for an event means putting aside your desire to show everyone what a brilliant music connoisseur you are. You might think this is the time to bust out the hidden gems in your record collection or show how obscure your tastes are, but it’s totally not. You’re trying to accomplish a goal with your music selections. For a party, the goal is, as I recall P. Diddy once saying, to keep the bodies on the dance floor. Even if the music being played is awesome, if there’s nobody nodding their head and tapping their feet, the DJ has failed. This means playing stuff you normally wouldn’t listen to driving down the street, like 80’s new wave and Biggie. Ok, maybe I do listen to 80’s new wave driving down the street, but it’s better for parties. I dare someone not to move during “Hypnotize” or “Tainted Love”. You know what I mean.
For a playlist being played before a football game it’s my personal opinion the music should first serve to get the players and the crowd pumped up for the game. There’s nothing like the feeling of walking up those stadium steps or preparing for a game and getting hyped while AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” booms over the loudspeaker. But, at Bedford, as is the case in most professional sports like Basketball and Football, the majority of players are black. This means that while I might get revved up for a game by listening to “Baba O’Reily”, a young black man doesn’t get fired up at all.
Tonight, because he has given our town athletic prowess, we embrace this large black man and his hip-hop culture!
I’ve always thought that the phenomenon was sort of funny to see. The players are black and the majority of the songs being played at a Cavs or a Browns game are classifiable as Rap or Hip-Hop- certainly music favored by the black culture. Then, you’ve got a stadium that’s 95% full of tens of thousands of white people watching the game. I’m sure there’s a majority of people in the stands that would like to hear something different, like say, Neil Diamond, but it’s not going to happen.
So, when asked by my father, who is the announcer for both the football and basketball teams to make a CD of Rap and Hip-Hop that “the kids would like” but didn’t have any foul language, I relished the task because I knew it would be a challenge. The music the team had been warming up to was your run of the mill Jock Jams type CD’s, available at Wal-Marts nationwide that have your expected arena standards like “We Will Rock You” and “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now”. These songs are fine and dandy, but let’s put it this way: the kids were getting tired of trying to put their game faces on to “Hit Me with Your Best Shot”. Pat Benatar has no value to a 17 year old young black man. As the quarterback of the team told me earlier this year, “We need to get some stuff that’s gonna get us going out there!” The team needed songs it could get fired up to and more importantly, identify with.
Pat Benatar: Not firing up young black men on the gridiron.
So, my job was clear. The only problem was, even though I listen to Rap more than the average person, I couldn’t come up with a playlist of 20 current songs that would pump up the team and pass the lyrics test. As a matter of fact, almost 0% of rap music passes the lyric test, meaning it’s not listenable at a public high school football game unless it’s edited. Rap music, by its very nature, is gritty and street driven, meaning it’s going to swear, cuss, and talk about sex, drugs, and sex and drugs. I don’t have a problem with that, nor do I want to debate the lyrics debate, rather my goal was just to make the playlist. So, for the last couple of months I immersed myself into Rap music.
Soon, I would learn that an “edited” version label doesn’t really mean those doing the editing got everything you’d think they would…
You’ll see what I mean in Part 3.
