Oh, music. I obviously can't give The Black Kids' Experience, but this is a rough summary of what I lived through as a Caribbean immigrant kid in NYC, and what my church recommended to all its parents for their kids:
1) Prestigious music was approved of. Classical, etc. Of course no one told us about The Chevalier de Saint Goerges or any other Black composers.
2) Mainstream modern music was approved of. Michael Jackson, etc.
3) "Christian Rock" (ugh) was approved of (even though listening to it was like eating a quart bowlful of twinkies). This overlapped with Gospel in that Black performers made Gospel and much less money and White performers made Christian Rock and more money.
4) "Black music" was more likely to be approved of the older it was. Older jazz, Mahalia Jackson's singing, those were good. Currently produced rap was right out for aspirational/respectability politics reasons. We were supposed to be the Good Hardworking Black people. (there is so much in that sentence, ugh.)
5) "weird" music (They Might Be Giants, etc) was right out, because it was "weird" and therefore not mainstreamly aspirational. (My parents also hated my reading Fantasy and SF and so on)
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Oh, music. I obviously can't give The Black Kids' Experience, but this is a rough summary of what I lived through as a Caribbean immigrant kid in NYC, and what my church recommended to all its parents for their kids:
1) Prestigious music was approved of. Classical, etc. Of course no one told us about The Chevalier de Saint Goerges or any other Black composers.
2) Mainstream modern music was approved of. Michael Jackson, etc.
3) "Christian Rock" (ugh) was approved of (even though listening to it was like eating a quart bowlful of twinkies). This overlapped with Gospel in that Black performers made Gospel and much less money and White performers made Christian Rock and more money.
4) "Black music" was more likely to be approved of the older it was. Older jazz, Mahalia Jackson's singing, those were good. Currently produced rap was right out for aspirational/respectability politics reasons. We were supposed to be the Good Hardworking Black people. (there is so much in that sentence, ugh.)
5) "weird" music (They Might Be Giants, etc) was right out, because it was "weird" and therefore not mainstreamly aspirational. (My parents also hated my reading Fantasy and SF and so on)