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February 26, 2008
showing their color, part ii
d'Andre, about Seattle: "Even the brothers are whiny white guys."
Ruthie Foster's opening act was billed as a local band, so my expectations were low. "Crap," I thought as I surveyed the stage. "A fiddle and a banjo. This doth not bode well." Much as I didn't much think about the audience's racial composition until I was forced to, neither did I consider that of Laura Love's band. Until, that is, Ms. Love herself, attired in a du-rag and African blouse, brought up the topic. Five times.
"How great it is to see people of color on a stage!" she squealed, braying backwards like an even blinder Stevie Wonder. The audience hooted its delight. My own first reaction: yeah, it's really gratifying to see some black folk finally break through the color barrier and perform some music! My second reaction: are the two black people in her band feeling uncomfortable right now?
But then she introduced a third band member as "the only black banjo player" she knows. First thought: what a weird thing to say. Second thought: really? I never would have guessed he was black. Okay.
Then Love managed to refer to another band member as black, then herself twice, and then the white guy next to her as some sort of soulful snowflake anomaly. The act was 50 minutes long. Even by Seattle standards, this is machine-gun pretense.
Every time she mentioned the word "black," the pasty audience hooted its approval. "WHOO! BLACK!" And Love would bray.
I've seen this rhetoric before, usually from mixed-race folks. They have their Malcolm X painting in their living room and their African music playing in their CD player and they loudly blame their white cousins for keeping their black cousins down. They spend their entire lives protesting too much, putting on airs, conspicuously being black enough for...I'm not really sure who. Certainly not me. Laura Love, meanwhile, looks like the mom from "About a Boy" might look if you added bleach to her bathwater. I can see where she'd have to work hard at being perceived as black. And work she does.
As she sang backup with Ruthie Foster's band for a song and preened and danced embarrassingly with the bass player during the latter's solo, making sure to grimace and point to the bass player so that we would understand the full depths of her generosity, I very nearly lost it. There was no other word for it: I hate Laura Love.
When I got home, I was still trembling with rage. How dare that preening, talentless, pointless meat-sack sully the act for which I paid to see? Who does she think she is? I looked her up on Wikipedia.
Laura Love (1960) is an American musician. Love was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. She describes herself as a "light skinned Black" woman.Yep. She works hard at it.
posted by john at 8:07 AM • permalink