An historical story told by Footsteps in 3 acts of African American cultural exploration and what it means to marketers today

1. The Influence of
African Americans on the
Psyche of America
An historical story told in 3 acts and
what it means to marketers today

2. Everything old is new
again…
• A number of marketers have been
moved by the influence of hip hop on
the general market
– As such, they have started to accept
African American youth as cultural
innovators and trendsetters
• But the idea that African Americans
have had a significant influence on
white America is not a new one…

3. Since the beginning…
• The first English settlers arrived in Jameston,
Virginia in 1607
• The first Africans arrived there in 1619
• Apart from those 12 years in between, whites
and blacks have jointly made America what it
is today
– Living together and working with each other, far
more than any other racial group who now inhabits
this country, African Americans have had an
immeasurable impact on the thinking, ideas,
perspectives, and behavior of white America

4. Hiding in plain view
• What is rarely acknowledged today is
the result of this impact that African
Americans have had on white America
• Thus, the recent impact of hip hop on
white America is treated as an anomaly
instead a continuation of 400 years of
co-habitation

5. What kind of influence?
• Given how African Americans came to this
country, nearly all of their formal institutions
did not survive the passageway
• For that reason most of the influence of
African Americans on white America is with
regards to cultural/informal behavior
– The arts, religion, culinary, sports, modes of
expression, codes of conduct, etc.
• And less so on the political, economic, or educational
foundations of the country

6. Prime example
• While a number of flashpoints will be
used to illustrate this path, this
presentation will focus much of its
attention on the music of America as a
way in which to tell its story of influence

7. A story told in 3 acts
• A brief survey of the past explains how
what we see today is just more of the
same
– The difference between now and yesterday
is the role that technology has played in
making obvious what has always been true

8. Act One: How English Puritans
came to be Southerners

9. 1700’s-1800’s: How an English accent
became a slow Southern drawl
• Let’s talk about Time
– English settlers came to America with a
mechanistic sense of time in sync with their
Industrial Age culture and reinforced by
their Protestant sense of idle hands make
for a devil’s playground
• The day’s activities were scheduled to
maximize efficiency and productivity, which
meant that time was briskly paced, recorded
faithfully and colonial life was lived accordingly

10. 1700’s-1800’s: How an English accent
became a slow Southern drawl
• Africans, over 90% of whom came to live in
the South, had a different world-view
– Africans came from an agrarian, social point-of-
view that suggested that just as long as the day’s
activities got done, it mattered not whether they
were done at 9:00 AM or 9:15 AM or 10:00 AM
• Couple that with a religious orientation that emphasized
living in the now (over a concern for the future) and the
pace of work life for Africans was considerably at
variance with a European’s

11. 1700’s-1800’s: How a clipped English
accent became a slow Southern drawl
• Southern Europeans – who were more
intrinsically intertwined on a day-to-day basis
with Africans -- for all their initial complaining,
eventually slowed their living pace down to
match that of their African workers
• And that’s why speech in the South came to
be considerably slower than it is in the North
– Despite the fact that whites from the North and
South all came from common lands with the same
speech preferences

12. Apart from Perceptions of Time…
• Africans affected how Europeans came
to become Southerners
– The nature of the spirit
– Their perspective of the afterlife
– How and why they celebrated
– What they ate and how it was prepared
– The construction of their homes and the
use of space

13. Eventually…
• When African Americans came to
migrate to the North, following in the
path of their Southern counterparts,
Northern whites also came to be
different than they had been before

14. Act Two: How the culture of
America developed rhythm

15. It came from the motherland

16. Yankee Doodle Dandy, Auld Lang Syne &
Amazing Grace were huge hits in the 1790’s
• And derivations of these folk ditties and hymns is
what American music would sound like today without
the influence of African Americans
• “Almost all popular music contains elements of
African American rhythms and culture”
» World Book Encyclopedia and Learning Resources

17. 1900’s: From Al Jolson to Pat Boone
• While Ragtime turned into the Jazz Age
which soon gave way to rock & roll, America’s
melodic musical tastes were inexorably being
Africanized with intricate rhythms, complex
harmonies, and improvisational emoting
– However, most of America was not getting it from
the source but their substitutes/filters
Tutti Frutti
Long Tall Sally
The “real” jazz man?

18. Underground
• While America was unaware of the
musical origins of much of their favorite
songs, there were pockets of the
country who not only were aware of the
influences but emulated them
– These were the underground movements
in America looking to identify with those
who really were the content creators

19. The White Negro:
The search for authenticity
• 1940’s: Hipsters: white jazz aficionados who were
“cool” and on the outskirts of American Society
• 1950’s: Beatniks: popularization of jazz culture
language and style breakthroughs bemuses the
mainstream
• 1960: Mods: First evidence of globalism -- a
European transformation of Jamaican rude boy
culture and the r&b tastes of American serviceman

20. Act Three: How technology finally
awarded African Americans credit for
creating a global urban culture

21. 1970’s to present: How MTV and
Soundscan changed the world
• Even though the message of hip hop is now
carried globally mostly via the uber
technology of the Internet, hip hop originally
became part of the American culture because
technology spread the words of rap beyond
their local origins (MTV) and then measured
the effect on consumer behavior (Soundscan)

22. Video killed the radio star
• Back in the dark ages before hip hop,
there was no national media organ for
music
– There were a few national television shows
like American Bandstand
• But most Americans musical tastes were
developed by their local radio stations
• In 1981, MTV changed that…

23. The MTV Effect
• From the beginning, MTV changed
America’s musical consumption and
rock culture
– For the first time there was a 24 hour on-
going video barometer of what music that
the WHOLE country would be exposed to
• And for the first time in America, what was
once local became national
– With a caveat…

24. In the beginning…
• MTV had no commitment to playing
music by black artists
– However, when influential artists like David
Bowie questioned “why not” in an on-air
interview, as well as the head of CBS
records, the station changed it’s policy in
1983
• Opening its doors to Michael Jackson and R&B

25. But, right around the same time…
• In the South Bronx, a new black music
was being born…hip hop
• From the beginning it had an immediate
and enormous impact on African
American youth

26. 1970’s/1980’s: The hood
• Hip hop fashion was associated almost
exclusively with African Americans in urban
areas in the 1970s and 80s…
• But almost from the beginning, just like
with the hipsters, the beatniks, the mods
of past generations, hip white teens were
enthralled with this new sound and new
culture
» Spiritus Temporis.com

27. 1988-1991: America awakens
to discover
what their teens are listening to
• On August 8, 1988 MTV debuts Yo! MTV Raps
and brings hip hop to America
– The show becomes the #1 show on the network
– MTV Europe, MTV Asia, and MTV Latino eventually
also bring hip hop to the world

28. 1988-1991: America awakens
to discover
what their teens are listening to
• In November, 1991, David Samuels writes an
influential article in the New Republic informing
America that 80% of rap music is being bought
in white suburbs ( a Soundscan insight)

29. 1990’s: From the hood to the ‘burbs
• Why are companies pitching products to the
hip-hop crowd? Because for most of the
1990s, hordes of suburban kids--both black
and white--have followed inner-city idols' in
adopting everything from music to clothing to
language
• Scoring a hit with inner-city youths can make
a product hot with the much larger and
affluent white suburban market
» American Demographics, November, 1996

30. 2000’s: Hip Hop becomes Pop
• Hip-hop sensibilities have ingrained
themselves into society: Clothing,
advertisements, visual art, television, food,
drink, even language have been influenced
by rap and hip-hop. Not since the rise of rock
‘n’ roll has a specific musical format had such
impact on pop culture
» Media Life, August 7, 2003

31. 2008: Global
• The point is, Hip Hop has transcended its roots from the Bronx
and streets of L.A. to become a global sound
» Netmix, 5/10/08
• The language of Hip Hop Culture in the United States, is …
being adopted and adapted by youth around the planet, in
countries as distant and diverse as Mexico, Cuba, France,
Bulgaria, Ghana, Pakistan, Japan, Australia and many more.
The Hip Hop Nation has, as predicted as far back as 1991,
become the “Global Hip Hop Hood”
» PBS.org October 24, 2008

32. Preference Influence
• A 2005 study of youth musical preferences
showed that 65% of AA’s, Latinos, and whites
listened to a hip hop song the day before
– Double that of the next musical choice
• Not surprising considering their overall musical
preferences Overall music
preference
Hip Hop
African-
American
81
Latino 70
White 60

33. Hip hop’s effect
• Unlike traditional music genres like pop, rock and country,
whose artists generally make the bulk of their money selling
albums and touring, hip-hop has spawned an impressive
cadre of musicians-cum-entrepreneurs who have parlayed
their fame into lucrative entertainment empires. Curtis "50
Cent" Jackson…made an estimated $32 million last year…he
told Forbes last year. "I never got into it for the music. I got
into it for the business.”
» Forbes, August 16, 2007

34. Fashion
• Gucci seems to realize that it owes much of its
recent popularity to hip-hop’s enduring affection
for the Gucciness of Gucci, which, arguably, isn’t
affection for classic Gucci as signified, but affection
for hip-hop’s kidnap and brainwash of Gucci, which
has been successfully turned out…to represent that
cultural revolution of dazzling urbanites
•
» NY Times, March 8, 2008

35. Hip hop and alcohol
• A study of rap music indicated that references to
alcohol in rap song lyrics increased five times (from
8% to 44%) from 1979 to 1997
• Alcohol references in music (1999)
– Hip Hop: 47%
– Country & Western: 13%
– Top 40: 12%
– Alternative rock: 10%
– Heavy metal: 4%
» Journal of the Study of Alcohol, 5/1/06

36. Online
• While there are certainly
notable examples of musicians
from other genres pushing digital
distribution…no other musical
genre has moved its culture
so fully online as hip hop
» Salon, June 1, 1999