UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title All that Is Solid Melts into Sound: Music, Interculturality and the (Trans)Formation of the Self in Desegregation Era Los Angeles Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/06x0h2gv Author Willett, Darren James Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO SOUND: MUSIC, INTERCULTURALITY AND THE (TRANS)FORMATION OF THE SELF IN DESEGREGATION ERA LOS ANGELES A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in SOCIOLOGY by Darren James Willett September 2017 The Dissertation of Darren James Willett is approved: ___________________________________ Professor Eric Porter, Ph.D., chair ___________________________________ Professor Herman Gray, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Professor Julie Bettie, Ph.D. _______________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by Darren James Willett 2017 Table of Contents 1. Abstract……………………………………………………………...iv 2. Acknowledgements………………………………………………….vi 3. Preface………………………………………………………………..1 4. Introduction…………………………………………………………..6 5. Chapter I – So Long Jim Crow: Desegregation of the Los Angeles Unified School District and the (Trans)Formation of the Self………...............................................................................50 6. Chapter II – “Let’s Take It to the People; Let’s Take It to the Stage”: Mapping Intercultural Bands and Scenes from the Schoolyard to the Stage in Desegregation Era Los Angeles……....103 7. Chapter III – “Oh, He Can Play? Well Who Gives a Fuck What He Is?”: Subversive Colorblindness as a Counter to White Supremacy……………………………………………….141 8. Chapter IV – “If Ever I Would Stop Thinking About Music and Politics”: The Politics, Culture and Economy of Intercultural Music in Desegregation Era Los Angeles…………...180 9. Conclusion………………………………………………………...244 10. References………………………………………………………...258 iii Abstract All that Is Solid Melts into Sound: Music, Interculturality and the (Trans)Formation of the Self in Desegregation Era Los Angeles Darren James Willett This dissertation takes a social psychological approach to critical race and cultural studies as it makes use of in-depth interviews and archival data to draw relationships between the personal accounts of musicians who were inducted into the Los Angeles Unified School District’s desegregation effort and the broader sociohistorical context of desegregation within which these accounts were experienced. Specifically, this project explores how youths who attended desegregated schools in the 1980s and 1990s used music to navigate new forms of intercultural social interactions. At times, this meant employing racialized genres to reaffirm intra-communal solidarity and/or subvert the coupling of such genres with racialized bodies, while at others, youths engaged a cross-cultural politics to explore new identities, thus expanding upon existing notions of self, community and cultural belonging. In this sense, music became a site wherein categories of sameness and difference were both erected and obscured. A primary focus of this dissertation is to explore how new forms of social interactions made possible during this era prompted unique (trans)formations of the self among youths who attended desegregated schools, and how these youths took these (trans)formations, and their music, from the schoolyard to the stage as they cultivated intercultural musical scenes that coevolved with the ideological, political and economic currents of the time. In so doing, these musical scenes engaged a cross-cultural politics that began to unsettle the institutions and ideologies of racial segregation and white supremacy, and helped to actively construct the iv new possibilities, and communities, that emerged during desegregation era Los Angeles. An overarching concern of the dissertation, however, is how this transformative potential has since been repackaged by politicians, policy makers, and both public and private institutions within the city to manufacture the façade of a post-racial American metropolis in a city that continues to be fraught with segregation and racial inequality. As such, contemporary Los Angeles harbors a contradictory and perplexed engagement with multiculturalism that has left racial politics within the city teetering between hope and despair. v Acknowledgements Quite literally, it takes a village to produce a dissertation, and I wish to take a moment here to express deep gratitude to my village of advisors, mentors, interviewees, friends, and family members who, in various ways, offered me the support necessary to make this dissertation possible. First and foremost, I wish to thank the chair of my dissertation committee, Professor Eric Porter, for his generosity, his insights, and his willingness to oversee my work. His discussions with me concerning music and interculturality helped me hone my focus on the bands and scenes explored herein, and guided me as I placed them within a broader historical and sociological lineage of intercultural music from Los Angeles. Additionally, his assertion that the ways in which musicians speak about their work has gone largely underexplored encouraged me to push my interviewees’ recounts against theories developed by scholars who write about them, and to level my gaze at the active role musicians play in the construction of those possibilities that parameterize the social world – a focus that laid the groundwork for the theoretical and analytical framework herein. Moreover, his close readings of draft upon draft of each chapter offered innumerable critical insights that allowed me to confront the unique limitations and potentials within my own perspective, and afforded me the opportunity to mature intellectually in ways I had not previously imagined. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, he coached me on how to take on the immense workload of teaching, research and writing a dissertation all while raising two children. vi I also wish to thank the other members of my dissertation committee, Herman Gray and Julie Bettie, both of whom inspired me to level my gaze at the workings of power within popular culture, and, in so doing, influenced my work in unique and specific ways. Herman Gray pushed me to consider the ways being born into desegregation era Los Angeles had caused me to take multiculturalism for granted. This suggestion moved me away from the reductive coupling of multiculturalism with disingenuousness, and allowed me to realize that within the shift in racial politics that defined desegregation era Los Angeles was something more complex and thus worthy of study. He also encouraged me to think beyond the simplistic perception of popular culture as a mere representation running parallel to the social world, which allowed me to better hear the ways in which my interviewees and their music helped to construct the new possibilities and communities that emerged during desegregation era Los Angeles. Moreover, Herman Gray’s suggestion that the music industry was more fragile than I had come to believe softened me enough to interrogate the multifaceted relationship between political economy and intercultural musical scenes, a relationship upon which I had soured as a professional musician in Los Angeles. Julie Bettie’s emphasis on popular culture as a site that both reifies and destabilizes systems of power and oppression have had an obvious impact on my own research. Moreover, her keen use of interview data and ethnographic practices in her own work provided a model of research excellence toward which I aspired. Additionally, her suggestion that the most important sociological findings emerge from the exceptions, not the rules, allowed me to focus on the emancipatory potentials of the cultural work vii performed by those who defy conventional modes of expression. Without both of their encouragements, I fear I would have simply become subsumed by the overwhelming resilience of systems of oppression. I also feel an exceptional gratitude for Dr. Wendy Martyna who served as my teaching mentor during my doctoral studies, and helped me cultivate a unique combination of intellectual expectation and emotional compassion. I particularly wish to thank her for introducing me to Social Psychology, and helping me understand that my lifelong commitments to social justice could be furthered by conducting research anchored within this field. The theoretical dispositions of Social Psychology allowed me use interview data to do the work of the sociologist – to connect personal experiences with broader sociohistorical phenomena – and drove the methodological and analytical bases for this dissertation. I have also been able to make meaningful connections with great thinkers outside of my home institution. Dr. Rickey Vincent was one of the first people to provide me with the theoretical tools that would become central to this dissertation as he helped me hone my focus as an undergraduate instructor at UC Berkeley. His insights pushed me to more thoroughly interrogate the relationship between US racial politics and the production and consumption of musical forms, and the ways in which I, personally, was positioned and implicated within these interrogations. Additionally, Professor Jocelyne Guilbault’s work on Trinidad’s Carnival musics and the construction of Trinidadian national identity inspired me to formulate the concept of “(trans)formation.” The discussions she generously engaged with me provided viii affirmation that this was indeed a productive lens through which to conceptualize identity formation, and afforded me the confidence to make this concept a framing device for this dissertation. Her work also forced me to sit with the uncomfortable notion that neoliberalism could actually function as a catalyst for grass roots musical production, a premise that was counterintuitive as I had always coupled neoliberalism with the inevitable outcome of increased social inequality. I also wish to thank Matthew Markovoich who offered me countless hours of musical discussions over the last decade or so. Most specifically, he helped me apply the biological theory of “coevolution” to sociological research, thus bridging two fields that have historically been ideologically opposed due to the overly simplistic “Nature vs. Nurture” binary. Of course, I owe an insurmountable debt of gratitude to my wife, Melanie Willett, for enduring the frequently uncertain and always demanding obligations of graduate study. She stuck with me even when it seemed there was no end in sight, and consistently strategized ways to help me achieve every milestone on route to my doctoral degree. Moreover, her growth as an intersectional feminist and an activist has been a continuous source of inspiration, while her incredible gift with photography has shown me how, in many ways, imagery can perform the work of the sociologist long after the word has done its do. And to my parents, Sue and Greg Willett, I owe the deepest gratitude for giving me life and love throughout the sometimes tumultuous, but always endearing, life-long journey that culminates in the pages that follow. They have both been a continuous source of compassion, understanding, inspiration and intellectual growth. Without their guidance and ix