Noted rock writer Ann Powers, currently the main pop-music critic for The Los Angeles Times, wrote in that paper some of her thoughts about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and its recent 25th-anniversary concerts in New York (of course!). Naturally, she engages in the popular sport of complaining about who was onstage and who wasn’t. “Where’s the hip-hop? The disco? The funk? The punk? Why no Latin music?” she complains.
But she accurately nails the Rock Hall as a “kind of counter-cultural Friars Club, in which the titans of the post-Elvis and Little Richard era fete each other at black-tie dinners.” She’s clearly endured a few too many of those induction speeches by industry honorees, name-checking every record-label exec they ever crossed paths with and telling an anecdote about most of them.
And then she tackles the knotty and endlessly debated issue of what a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is supposed to be anyway — the shifting balance of the importance of personal ties to zeitgeist trends, the battle for “authenticity” and whether that really matters in the end, and, as she puts it “the idea that pop music could support an elite at all.”
She quotes former Rock Hall education director Bob Santelli as saying, “The curatorial team attempted to build a rock and roll historiography, one that would create a basic foundation from which future discourse on the music could be launched,” adding, “He was using curatorial lingo to say something Rock Hall haters should be happy to acknowledge: At least since it took on the larger project of archiving and interpreting pop history since the rock era, this is an institution whose primary purpose is to cause arguments.
There’s much more. Here’s the link if you’d like to go argue with her. —Anastasia Pantsios
This article appears in Nov 4-10, 2009.
Ann Powers is right. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is about starting arguments.
Anyone who accepts the responsibility of interpreting the impact of rock music on our world, signs up for a never-ending task. Where does it start? Where does it end? Who’s in? Are Jazz and Country part of it? What about Pop? What about Hip-Hop?
Inevitably, whoever takes a stand first will suffer the slings and arrows of everyone who comes after them with another artist, genre or nuance. And the critics would be right. Rock is accessible to everyone and the very nature of it is to be contentious and thought-provoking.
Beyond its exhibits, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum has launched award-winning programs to teach students about the impact of this art. The programs have been recognized by teachers across the U.S. and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. Each year, hundreds of thousands of fans come from around the world to experience the museum and in 2010, the Rock Hall will open the first major Library and Archives dedicated to preserving the history of the music.
No other art form has the impact of Rock and Roll – however you define it. It started revolutions. It elected world leaders. It touches our souls. It defines our times.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is the institution that accepted the assignment of telling the story. We all might not agree on every artist or moment, but one thing we all have to agree on: It is worth arguing about.