 This video is brought to you by CuriosityStream. If you sign up to CuriosityStream with the link in the description, you'll also get free access to Nebula, where you can be the first to watch all of my videos with no ads. Led Zeppelin were on top of the world in 1973. They started the year off releasing Houses of the Holy, an album that includes some of the greatest songs they ever recorded. It topped charts around the world and would eventually go on to be certified Diamond, and it still gets critical praise to this day. Following the release of that album, Zeppelin would set out on one of the most iconic tours in music history. They sold out shows across North America, including Three Straight at Madison Square Garden. These shows laid the groundwork for the way that we experience live music now. They featured elaborate outfits, lasers, and even pyrotechnics. And for the first time, Led Zeppelin hired the Starship, their own private jet, in order to do more dates. Stadium Rock had arrived. You can see footage of this tour, and the song remains the same. Zeppelin's iconic concert film shot over those three nights at Madison Square Garden. And honestly, the song remains the same is spectacular. It's one of the greatest concert films ever, and it really does give a sense of what it might have been like to see Zeppelin live in their prime. But when you watch the song remains the same, and the camera pans over thousands of New Yorkers piled in to see Zeppelin, you might notice something about the crowd. Despite the fact that New York is a deeply multicultural city, when we pan out to Zeppelin's crowd, it's, for the most part, a sea of white faces. And this is strange, because the direct roots of the music Zeppelin played was black music. Indeed, little more than a generation earlier, Zeppelin's biggest influences would have been sold on record shelves as race music, and would have been almost exclusively played on all black radio stations. So why is it that when Led Zeppelin took rock and roll to heights it had never reached before, they did so in front of almost entirely white audiences? Let's take a closer look. The same year that Led Zeppelin were embarking on a tour that would change the face of rock and roll music, the black academic and future Pulitzer Prize winner Margo Jefferson wrote a piece for Harper's Magazine called Ripping Off Black Music. It's a stunning and powerful piece, and it ends with Jefferson recalling the death of Jimi Hendrix. The night Jimmy died, I dreamed this was the latest step in a plot being designed to eliminate blacks from rock music, so that it may be recorded in history as a creation of whites. Future generations, my dreams ran, will be taught that while rock may have had its beginnings among blacks, it had its true flowering among whites. The best black artists will thus be studied as remarkable primitives who unconsciously foreshadowed future developments. It's a striking image and one that resonates all too well 50 years later. Jack Hamilton quotes Jefferson in a piece for Slate Magazine called How Rock and Roll Became White, and goes on to point out a 2011 listener poll by a New York classic rock station. That poll tried to determine the top 1043 songs of all time. Only 22 were by black artists. Of those 22, 16 were by one man, Jimi Hendrix. In the long history of cultural theft, I think that there are few artistic movements that have been so thoroughly appropriated as rock and roll. This isn't to say that there aren't still black rock fans and black rock artists. In fact, I think some of the best rock artists working today are black. But for most of the last few decades, that wasn't the case. And there's something that was lost because of that. When Led Zeppelin and their stadium rock progeny took over, black music shifted its focus to other avenues, like soul and funk. By the late 1970s, these musics were developing into a new sound that would once again be taken by white culture, disco. And then out of disco, a new black art form was birthed, hip hop. Hip hop and rock have had flirtations over the past few decades, but those have been limited. When you look at soul and funk though, the works of Stevie Wonder, Isaac Hayes, and Parliament Funkadelic would become the foundations of hip hop. I can't help but wonder what hip hop would look like today if more of it had that shared black dialogue with rock music. And what would rock look like today if Zeppelin were sharing the stage with black musicians rather than paving the way for the snow white genres of hard rock and hair metal? This isn't to say that Led Zeppelin were personally responsible for this shift. Something like this only happens because of broad cultural and economic forces. In the case of rock and roll, the biggest factor in this is the music industry, an institution with a deeply racist history that still impacts music to this day. And beyond that, there are myriad systemic forces that are too broad to properly get into in this video. Still, I don't think that means acts like Led Zeppelin can get off scot-free, because a lot of Zeppelin's music came from cultural experiences that they could never properly understand. Rock and roll in the blues are music rooted in a deep pain that is unique to the black American experience. The music's origins go directly back to plantations, field haulers, and the brutality of the transatlantic slave trade. The blues came about as a catharsis for a very unique sort of despair. But it's not just the despair. So much of blues in rock and roll comes from ideals of black masculinity. In an era where interracial relationships were deeply taboo and miscegenation was considered a cardinal sin, that sexuality was perceived as dangerous. For many, that danger was the original allure of rock and roll. So white men like Elvis Presley started to perform this black masculinity. And while Elvis was still seen as a danger by the industry, his skin color made him safe enough to sell to white suburban teens. The same could be said of Robert Plant. So much of Robert Plant's iconic aesthetic as a stage performer is taken from black musicians. Whether it's the androgyny of Little Richard, the falsetto wail of Skip James, or the sensual moans of muddy waters, Robert Plant's entire persona is deeply influenced by a cultural experience that he never could have had. But of course, that's an experience that I don't have either. My perspective on this is limited by my own life, and exploring it on my own would be a bit of an exercise in naval gazing. So I decided to reach out to some black creators and pick their brains on the topics of rock and roll, lead zeppelin, and really just the broader trend of white people appropriating and getting rich off of black culture. I'm going to play you some parts of these conversations now. First up, I spoke with Don from the video essay channel The Most Unruly. You wish it wasn't true, but, you know, some of the greatest music comes from the most painful, you know, experiences. With Little Richard, he was still very poor, and he said even in the poor communities, they still sing. And so that's where he learned how to sing. There were a lot of white artists that did covers of Little Richard. They wanted it to be quote unquote safe for their children. So they had white people sing the exact same song. And those would be the versions that would be more popular among white people. And then it even turned to situations where like Little Richard had a hard time. Like his reputation was like those who didn't want him around would start to kind of spread things like he's here to, you know, have sex with your white daughters, essentially, you know, he's here to, as if he's like some creepy predator type person. And that's why he started dressing androgynously to show that he wasn't like this threat, but it's sad to see that that's what he had to do to continue to be the musical force that he was. So it's like literally while he's being praised by all these teenagers and stuff, they're still trying to like suppress his blackness. There's nothing about his appearance or anything where he could hide his blackness. And to the fact that they still wanted to suppress it is kind of amazing to me in a terrible way. There is a slight, from a perspective of a music fan, like a bit of a slight anger, you know, like just let the people who made the music do it. What is Little Richard gonna do through his music that's gonna defile your children, you know, that there's always a panic like for every decade. In this case, that was it, like rock music by black musicians. The fact that they had to water it down is crazy to me. It's the same song. You know what I mean? Like, like if we're gonna be honest, the exact same song with the exact same message. I'm gonna tell you a story about a guy I know, he was really into jazz music. And then I'd listen and I'm like, wow, this stuff is really nice. And then I like notice I'm like, I'm kind of thinking like, where's the Billie Holiday? Like where's the Nina Simone? Like what the heck's going on? So I go and I like look at his playlist and it's all white people. And I like, I'm kind of like really confused because I'm like, honestly, this feels slightly racist. I was like, this is like the blackest genre next to hip hop that ever existed. And you're only listening exclusively to the light that he didn't have a black artist in that playlist. So that's the kind of an example. They sang the same songs. We all know that there are some artists that replicate the sound, but like the feeling is like so not there. It sounds good, but it's like missing a lot. It's just like missing that soul. I think cultural appropriation is when you try to be something that you're not by hiding behind someone else's culture. When there's that lack of authenticity, the funny thing about it is I think people right now are kind of misunderstanding what cultural appropriation is. And there's like a lot of calling out of people. And I think you can maybe point more towards, you know, if you're a white artist and you grow dreads and you start singing like Bob Marley, you start pretending like you're Bob Marley, you start talking like you're Bob Marley, like that's appropriation. It's like, bro, that's not you. You know, and I think that's really, that's really what it comes down to. And as far as finding the line, I think you just know when you see it. You know, I think you just know when you see it. You can tell when someone's being authentic and it's like, look, they appreciate where this music came from. You can tell that, you know, they're really working hard to appreciate it even more or be better at it or whatever. And then there's the other person that's just putting on a mask essentially, you know, and a lot of times because they don't want to be seen as boring or whatever. I'll say like Led Zeppelin, like even though there's a lot of things that they stole, they still kind of put their own spin on a lot of things. So I don't hate them for that. Bring that up like regarding like the Beatles as well. I mean, the funny thing about the Beatles is they had enough original stuff that nobody had to blame them really for anything. But let's not forget that they were very much, you know, inspired by black music. I don't want in any way to diminish music by white artists because like I said, like I love Nirvana and Nirvana is probably like some of the whitest music ever, you know, but I feel it. It hits my soul. If music is music, you know, if it makes you really feel something that it makes you feel something regardless of who made it. But when you're listening to the song, you know, you're just paying attention, you know, just to that. It really comes down to not just the authenticity and the way you live with the authenticity and the way you sing and perform. I really want to thank Don for his insights. And I highly recommend that you check out his channel if you want more great music content. After that conversation, I spoke with FD Signifier, who does cultural analysis through a black lens. Unfortunately, some of the audio from this interview is a little messed up, but I promise the sound gets better and the conversation is worth it. There's a constant testing of allegiance to the culture that, you know, gives us all life as black people. And so, you know, listening to rock music was an indicator that maybe you could not be trusted, that you may have too much of an affinity for white people in white communities and that may risk God knows what. So it's so many complex layers of why that was a white people thing. But it's still sad because I know so many people that missed out on awesome music during that era because they didn't have the opportunity to consume it without feeling like there was going to be something lost in the process. I talk a lot on my content about the facade that black men put to the world as a survival tactic because we're all really, really sad. And so what you get is this flashy character that's a life of the party. It's like when you get some of these guys home by themselves, they're, you know, it's a different story. And so what if we could have taken that moment of the sad despondence, the emptiness that it was, you know, growing up in poverty and growing up with struggle and growing up feeling like people don't understand you. And you put that into the rock music that accepts that type of content. There's probably so much good stuff that we miss. And that's why I love Gabriela Full-Server to a Kenny Mason. Like I don't know him in particular, but I know that kid. And so everybody feels pain. Everybody struggles. Everybody has struggles that are unique to their identity, their worldview, their existence. But the thing that makes pain for black people in America unique is the absence of a foundation without it, if that makes sense. When you look at your history books, when you look at your reality, when you don't have so many foundational elements of what it takes to build civilization within your culture, pain becomes the rally that's why it's in gospel too. That's why the blues was what it was. That's the black national anthem. That's why music has always been such a big thing for black people because it allowed us to diffuse that into something joyful, even when the song was about the struggle. We're not going to stop too many elements of systemic oppression by barring white rappers or stopping leads. If we go back in time and we destroy lead zeppelin, we're not going to reduce the amount of poverty in Detroit. So the artist's responsibility is to not be culture vultures. The crowd is still going to come for you as the white purveyor of this black art. But do the due diligence of letting it be known where it came from, speaking up when you have the opportunity to speak up for these people and not disrespecting the content that you pulled it from. Rock was still very much a black thing until zeppelin and then that's when it became heavy metal. The fact that they became the face of rock and roll, there's multiple things there. So for one, to be real, the zeppelin that became big did not, the sound was very different by that point. When they started playing got arenas, we're talking about stairway to heaven and we're talking about like those arena rock anthems, which don't sound like Chuck Berry, Laura Richard, you know, et cetera, muddy waters. But I think as much as rock music was essentially, you know, stolen, it also evolved so far away from where it came from that it was also just like giving away. You know, I'm not a true musician, but you listen to the Chuck Berry, whomever else, the classic joke among black people is the one in the three versus the two in the four. Black people clapping two on the four, you all clapping one in the three. And so like zeppelin is definitely one in the three. I think it's just we were like, yeah, that's clearly not us anymore. That's how I became white people of music because it was like we can't dance to this. I don't know how this is working. So that's this that there's the actual technical musical element. That is a curiosity. What's not curious at all is that once a white audience got a black art form from a black artist, it just became white art because that is that is the tradition of the consumption of black art is that it will only be loved and accepted openly by a handful of white people, but it won't have mass appeal until it has been bleached and some of the edge has been taken away and you put, you know, safe white faces on it. And then you have access to the to the economic and, you know, societal benefits of appealing to a large audience of white people. It's at this point, it's over. Like the harm has been done. And we're kind of just parsing through. This is the autopsy state. At this point, really, all you can do is tell the story. I think that's the thing is to is to tell the story and to require the inclusion of the space because I remember like the VH1 music doc era, but like I remember those music doc eras and none of them included, you know, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, so on and so forth. None of them included that, which is why I went to Led Zeppelin. It wasn't till one of my own boys put me on John Lee Hooker, you know what I'm saying? Like that I understood the connection somewhat. That's because that's what cultural appropriation is. It's not, hey, I am a person not of a culture doing a thing that came from another culture explicitly. It's not just when differences and systemic barriers change the result of me doing the thing versus you doing the thing, right? It's not just that. It's how the history books are written by the dominant class and the dominant class gets to choose who really made history. And so VH1, as much as their indelible part of my youth growing up, really sucked at telling the story of music because it was always white centered. And so for you and whomever is doing this type of content, you have to require that these things are brought out. And then the fandom has to hold people accountable, especially since the fandom is still very white in this regard. You all have to hold each other to that standard to say, hey, don't tell the story of rock and roll and not include the black originators of the art form. And yeah, and that's the thing about racism that I try to focus on is that racism, I'm starting to call it a passive debuff because being seen as racist is the only thing that a white person has to worry about socially that is not within their control, right? And so the byproduct of that is the litany of defense mechanisms against that accusation, no matter how valid it is. And what that has created is that racism now is a moral issue. It's an issue of personal character. And so what happens when you let that become the standard passive racism, which is way more impactful on so many other things, gets goals unchecked. And so you don't think about the fact that you are not you are excluding all these other communities in your work until you stop and think about it. And if you don't have enough, if you don't have the right stimulus to do that, it'll never happen. And you'll never recognize it. And then God forbid somebody brings us to your attention where you're not ready to receive it. And then it becomes a conflict because now they're not calling out a flaw in a social system that produced your behavior. They're calling out you and who's not going to defend themselves. A big thanks to FD signifier for coming on. And again, I really recommend you check out his channel. He's creating some of the most interesting, thoughtful content on the entire platform right now. I think that both of these conversations helped me understand how to approach this topic better. While Zeppelin did steal a lot of black music, they also seem to approach it with a sort of honesty and authenticity. They borrowed from black culture, but they also mixed it with their own heritage, taking influence from English folk song and classical music. That's the sort of dialogue that helps music evolve. And it helped Zeppelin create great art. But you can't ignore the fact that Zeppelin were operating as part of a broader system, one that takes the culture that comes from black struggle and black pain and exploits it for white monetary gain. The very same systems that vaulted Zeppelin to historic levels of fame and success that gave them the freedom to experiment and change music like they did kept black communities from doing the same. Intentional or not, Led Zeppelin played a big part in us missing out on two generations of potentially incredible black rock music. And when we celebrate Zeppelin's historical footprint today, we often do so without accounting for the black trailblazers that inspired them. This is a reality that we need to be willing to accept if we want to engage with Zeppelin's music. And for me, applying this critical lens to Zeppelin is a show of appreciation. It's showing a willingness to hold the artists we love accountable for the systems that they help perpetuate. In doing so, I think that we can deepen our relationship with these artists and become more responsible fans. But while this history of culture theft is something we might be able to have a dialogue about, it's not the only stain on Zeppelin's reputation. In next week's video, we're going to dive into some of the ugliest realities of Led Zeppelin's career and have our most difficult conversations yet. I had a really fun time making this video and especially having conversations with FD Signifier and the Most Unruly. What you saw in this video was only a fraction of those conversations. And honestly, I really think there's a lot more great stuff that we talked about in both. If you want to hear the conversations in full, I'm going to be posting them on Nebula. Nebula is a streaming award nominated platform created by and for creators like myself. And it gives us a place to experiment free from the constraints of YouTube. If you're thirsty for more Zeppelin content, I've got a whole other Zeppelin series on Nebula, Led Zeppelin's Epics, where I go deep on Stairway to Heaven, Cashmere, and Achilles' Last Stand. And if you've watched my videos, I'm sure you know what I'm going to say next. The best way to get Nebula is by signing up to CuriosityStream. CuriosityStream is the streaming platform dedicated entirely to documentary content. If you sign up with the link in the description, you'll get 26% off an annual subscription to CuriosityStream as well as full access to Nebula. That means you can watch the documentary The Other F Word, which asks the question, what happens when anti-authoritarian punk rockers become dads? Or you can watch Bolero, a global hit, which explores the story of one of the most recognizable songs ever written. And of course, there's thousands more documentaries on all sorts of topics where that came from. So why not check it out? 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