This week we're going to talk about black pop in the 1970s. We're going to have a look at African American popular music coming out of the 1960s and through the 1970s. Last week of course we talked about the first half of the 1970s, mostly white rock and roll in America... and the UK. And one of the interesting things, or one of the important points that we need to keep in mind when we talk about Black Pop is that in many ways, there were two different worlds of popular music happening in the U.S. during the '70s. There's what was happening and rock radio, which was mostly FM rock radio, and, and listenership for that was mostly white rock and roll fans. and then, there was what was happening in black pop. And in many ways, especially in the first half of the decade, there wasn't a lot of crossover between those two worlds. Now, as I give you chart numbers and talk about hits during this week I'll give you numbers of these hit singles front he pop charts and you may get the idea that when you hear something was a number one or a number two hit that it was playing right next to all the rock and roll that we talked about last week. But many of these hits that we'll talk about today, well, this week were were hits on AM radio and not FM radio. And so, on AM radio there was a kind of blending together of white rock and pop and black pop and all those kinds of things together. But on FM radio where, where most of the Rock and Roll, the Led Zeppelin, the Deep Purple, the Yes, the Jethro Tull, the Doobie Brothers that kind of thing were not so much. so we really have this separation of Black and White. A kind of segregation that occurs between these two markets. And it leads to a cultural misunderstanding. That we'll talk about at the end of the 1970s. I think it's also important for me to point out as I did when we were talking about 60s black pop in the 60s in part one of the course. I really think that black pop deserves its own separate. History in the sense that history that takes Black Pop as the center and thinks of other styles as peripheral to it. When we Rock historians talk about Black Pop. Often we're really only concerned whether, whether we know it or not, how it fits into the story that we're telling. Which is primarily about Rock music and not about Black Pop music. So Somebody else, other scholars out there I hope will offer a course where black pop is at the very center of it, but for now a lot of what we say, what I say this week is going to have to do with how black pop fits into the story of rock music. now, much of what happens in the 1970s in black pop is a clear continuation of things that were happening in the 1960s, so I'll refer back. To things that we already talked about in week six of the first part of this course. What's interesting though is despite the separtion that we readily see between White Rock and Black Pop during this period. there are a lot of. Features that they share, so a lot of the things I was talking about with regards to the Hippie asthetic and some of those other kinds of things, last week, are to pop white rock in the first have of 1970s. We're going to see happening, as well, in, in black pop and we'll, we'll note those things as they go by. Here's some of the main points. Points we'll talk about this week then, is, in our history of black pop in the 70s. We'll start with, we'll certainly mention and spend some time with James Brown, the development of funk, and that story in many ways, for the 70s, starts with Sly Stone... Sly and the Family Stone and him crossing over. That leads to many imitators that during the first half of the decade then ultimately to George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic. Talk about Barry Gordy and, how his, the way he, he ran the Motown business became, an important model for people like Gamble and Huff. Who were responsible for the Philadelphia sound. and also for George Clinton, Parliament of Funkadelic. we'll talk about with regard to Motown Also, how it expands to embrace the idea of the artist as a kind of auteur. Or the, the, the, the, moving from craftsmen to artists, we've talked about happening in the sixties. We see happening in Motown at the end of the sixties, end of the seventies as well. We'll touch on the blaxploitation films that, that, usually deal with urban themes. in African American life and, and this kind of thing, and how that crosses over, into mainstream pop, and some of the soundtracks and songs that go with that. We'll talk about reggae, a bit, and maybe we'll, we'll raise the question whether reggae really belongs with black pop or not. Or should we be, be situated someplace else in the course. But nevertheless, we'll. We'll talk about reggae. And then, we'll hit on disco at the end of the decade, and the very interesting rise of disco, a kind of a return of a dance craze, in a kind of way, and the controversy over it. As white rockers rejected disco, really quite violently and we'll explore why was that. I'll forward the the explanation, I think it was, in part, a kind of cultural misunderstanding on the part of the white rockers, but anyway I don't want to get too far ahead of my story. So that's an overview of, of, of where we start. As we begin our study of Black Pop here in the 1970s. So, let's in the next video, take a look at Sly Stone and the rise of Funk.
