BunnyBlinks

Still, I live for (and through) open ears, so I thought maybe I just wasn’t listening closely enough. Of course, that’s as true here as anywhere. Something about the music prompted me to listen more closely to the words, which as Wayne says, “are actually quite laudable in an era when women are more likely to appear as strippers than equals in R&B and hip-hop depictions.”

Here’s a link to what Wayne wrote that got me thinking.

Copied below is where I went with it. “Effervesynth”? “Ne-Yo Schenkerian?” That’s some wonderfully p(h)unny stuff. Thanks for all you are, Wayne.

Ne-Yo’s “Miss Independent,” harmonically speaking, isn’t going to fit into any neat Schenkerian plan, and not just because of your and my justifiable skepticism of music-analytical reduction.Because of the meter, I’d argue (and maybe I’ll even use the present, non-conditional tense starting now) that we have to hear the first chord as some sort of I. But we can’t, if we’re gonna be Zocchian about it. (For the benefit of anyone reading this who’s not Wayne or I, I’ll just say “Zocchian” is an inside-joke, a reference I use with tongue firmly planted in cheek. It’s a shout-out to a mutual friend, who’s an awesome pianist who can provide a play-by-play harmonic analysis, score, unseen, of even the fastest, most complicated tonal music.) So, straight off the bat, we lose the ability to proceed through a convincing harmonic analysis of this song in any traditional sense.

Of course, we can (and I will) do so anyway, which isn’t a bad exercise. In fact, the process might help us connect to the music on another level.

With philosophical disclaimers out of the way, I’m thinking we have to hear the song as being in B-flat minor. With no altered keys (five flats: BEADG, if you’d like a refresher).

Whereas the Romantics (not the band, as far as I know) — perhaps in an attempt to ride the coat-tails of Beethoven after the “controversy” — which stemmed from the fact it opens with a series of V-I, not I-V or I-V-I progressions — of his First Symphony, we can’t say it’s surprising or innovative that “Miss Independent” doesn’t start on I. Starting on IV is a little weirder, but not really too weird, because the producers are likely not thinking tonally, per se.

As a side note, this goes well with my theory that contemporary music (lots of dance music, but lots of other music, too) has effectively replaced V with IV. IV used to serve to prepare V (so sayeth the Schenkerians), or otherwise it was simply used to expand I. Today, IV tends to be the place I moves to and from — thus playing a role traditionally given to V — but IV still retains a sense that it’s “expanding the tonic” (another word for I, the root harmony, which defines the key), which is why the music we both love so much keeps flowing, pushing forward even as it asks us to listen to things that aren’t harmonically relevant.

Back to the beginning of the song: the first chord is E-flat minor. But because we initially hear it with that gay (sorry, I couldn’t resist) effervesynth, which starts on — and folds back to — D-flat, the chord is effectively a seventh chord. So it starts on a (minor) IV-7.

So the progression, as I (am asked, for the historical record, to) hear it is:

iv7 — i — VI — VII

(Note: I’m capitalizing major chords and not minor, as most theory students are asked to do unless they attend UW-Madison.)

This (non-)progression is repeated over and over until the bridge, which, by the way, I haven’t given much thought to yet, other than to briefly think about how cheesy it sounds to me. Have fun with that!

Now, I could spend way too long on this. Hell, I probably already have. But one thing is worth noting in particular. If you were to remove the iv7 (which would likely change the song beyond recognition), you get a familiar progression of some pop music (and note: it’s not really a classical progression, since it doesn’t — to Zocchian ears — “progress”). I’m thinking of some hardcore metal songs, the verse of Prince’s “Little Red Corvette,” or the entirety of Stevie Nicks‘(s) “Edge of Seventeen.” Weird, actually, I think the Prince reference would be on key. Keep in mind we’d have to hear both those songs as I — II — iii instead of VI — VII — I.

So yeah, it’s complicated, mostly because we’re forcing harmonic theory where it doesn’t belong. Still, even leaving that opinion aside, it’s also complicated because the iv7 makes it complicated. It’s a lush, energetic chord that displaces the tonic (i) harmony on the downbeat. When you play it on the piano …

D-flat D-flat
B-flat D-flat
G-flat F
E-flat F

… you can feel and hear how the iv7 results from a double-appoggiatura of sorts. G-flat and E-flat narrow in on F, and when they get there, it’s just a i-chord.

Jammin!

To help you out, let me finish by writing out for you how I’d play it to really feel what I’m getting at. The middle lines are the right hand (start with your pinky on the top note, thumb on the bottom). It looks like four lines, but think of it as triads. I just want you to see (and feel) the two pitches converging into one. The bottom (bold) line is the left-hand bass line, which I think matches the bass of the song. I positioned the right-hand triads to give smoother voice leading between the first and second chords, and also so that you can hear the riff’s melody on the top, which is where it is in the actual mix. Finally, I just noticed that the melodic instrumental riff follows what I had already notated as the top line of the right-hand triads, but it fills in the F-to-D-flat interval stepwise, while rhythmically anticipating the chord changes. This melodic hook (for your own safety, don’t try to play it at the same time) is in italics at the very top, but there’s no space to notate anything other than each pitch the first time it’s heard. (I’m not notating repeated pitches or rhythm there.)

The Advocate: Let’s start with what’s hot — why the silence on gay issues? You’ve done only one other interview with the LGBT press. I know people wish they were hearing more from you.

Senator Obama: I don’t think it’s fair to say “silence” on gay issues. The gay press may feel like I’m not giving them enough love. But basically, all press feels that way at all times. Obviously, when you’ve got a limited amount of time, you’ve got so many outlets. We tend not to do a whole bunch of specialized press. We try to do general press for a general readership.

But I haven’t been silent on gay issues. What’s happened is, I speak oftentimes to gay issues to a public general audience. When I spoke at Ebenezer Church for King Day, I talked about the need to get over the homophobia in the African-American community; when I deliver my stump speeches routinely I talk about the way that antigay sentiment is used to divide the country and distract us from issues that we need to be working on, and I include gay constituencies as people that should be treated with full honor and respect as part of the American family.

So I actually have been much more vocal on gay issues to general audiences than any other presidential candidate probably in history. What I probably haven’t done as much as the press would like is to put out as many specialized interviews. But that has more to do with our focus on general press than it does on… I promise you, the African-American press says the same thing.

I can’t help but think of my previous post on tags and labels, as well as this Slog post from Christopher Frizzelle. How many different magazines would he have to grant interviews to for everyone to feel equal? I understand there’s a desire in the LGBT community for a fair-minded president, but guess what: there are other communities who share the same desire. Isn’t Obama doing all of us a service when he directs his comments on LGBT issues (whatever those might be) to a Baptist Church, or to national audiences at a Democratic primary debate in New Hampshire and the 2004 DNC, rather than limiting himself to Hillary-style preaching to the choir while hoping no one else hears about it?

The three-page interview ends on the same theme. Has this guy been reading my mail, or what? It’s weird, really, and certainly unexpected to have a presidential candidate reaching out to me this way, as a member of that slowly but steadily growing constituency group comprised of people who will no longer think a certain way simply because of who we are (nor decide who we “are” based on somebody else’s checklist).

Do you have any regrets about the South Carolina tour? People there are still sort of mystified that you gave Donnie McClurkin the chance to get up onstage and do this, and he did go on sort of an antigay rant there.

I tell you what — my campaign is premised on trying to reach as many constituencies as possible and to go into as many places as possible, and sometimes that creates discomfort or turbulence. This goes back to your first question. If you’re segmenting your base into neat categories and constituency groups and you never try to bring them together and you just speak to them individually — so I keep the African-Americans neatly over here and the church folks neatly over there and the LGBT community neatly over there — then these kinds of issues don’t arise.

The flip side of it is, you never create the opportunity for people to have a conversation and to lift some of these issues up and to talk about them and to struggle with them, and our campaign is built around the idea that we should all be talking. And that creates some discomfort because people discover, gosh, within the Democratic Party or within Barack Obama’s campaign or within whatever sets of constituencies there are going to be some different points of view that might even be offensive to some folks. That’s not unique to this issue. I mean, ironically, my biggest … the biggest political news surrounding me over the last three weeks has been Reverend Wright, who offended a whole huge constituency with some of his statements but has been very good on gay and lesbian issues. I mean he’s one of the leaders in the African-American community of embracing, speaking out against homophobia, and talking about the importance of AIDS.

And so nobody is going to be perfectly aligned with my views. So what I hope is that people take me for who I am, for what I’ve said, and for what I’ve displayed in terms of my commitment to these issues, but understanding that there’s going to be a range of constituencies that I’m reaching out to and working on issues that we have in common, even though I may differ with them on other issues. And that’s true, also, by the way … well, I think that’s going to be true so long as I’m reaching out beyond the traditional Democratic base.

Remember (he seems to say), there are other people in this country, and they don’t always agree with you. Why don’t you invite each other over for a conversation instead of yelling unintelligibly from your sound-proof boxes? It might not be as bad as you think. Moreover, you might quickly learn that your neatly compartmentalized community isn’t as heterogeneous as you once thought.

It sure doesn’t hurt that he stays calm when talking about the attacks levied at him. I’ll admit to usually arguing this point a little less eloquently in debates with my more stubbornly issue-based-voter friends, perhaps a bit like Claire on “Six Feet Under” when she calmly explained to her brothers in this brief (NSFW) clip, “Newsflash! Other people exist!”

There will undoubtedly be more occasions when we wish he would’ve phrased the truth a little differently. I hope by then we’ll have learned to get his back when he stumbles. If we don’t, we’ll lose yet another election, plain and simple, if not fair and square. Saying different things to different groups is easy, and they’ll all love you for it. But for how long? What happens when word gets out you’re speaking out of both sides of your mouth? Do you brazenly laugh in the faces of the special interests who support you? I choose respect over condescension any day.

It started with “Poolboy,” who earned his nickname in part with his handiness and helpfulness, but mostly, to be sure, on account of his appearance. Poolboy rolls with lots of different folks, including his young, cute, and clever kids, and a large, diverse group of friends and family. Perceptions of Poolboy vary remarkably from person to person and situation to situation, and he’s well aware of this phenomenon. So frequently it’s surreal, he’s asked oddly personal questions by strangers and acquaintances alike.

“Are you gay? But don’t you have kids? and wasn’t there a girlfriend?” he might get asked in the local gay bar.

Then there’s the just-as-frequent line of questioning: “You’re straight? But the purple hair!” someone will ask when they notice his lingering glance at a physically attractive woman I somehow failed to notice. (The hair, I’ve observed, is a conveniently mentionable symbol for any confidently expressed flamboyant mannerisms that usually go unmentioned.)

Generally, acquaintances feel forced to conclude, usually in a whisper, that “he must be bi.” All this unnecessary–and to him, pointless– speculation gets to be a little much for Poolboy. If pressed, he’d probably admit that his resistance to these categories is partially a political response. Mostly, though, the questions just annoy him. “I’m a doer, not a labeler. Can’t I just be ‘Poolboy’?”

Of course, without labels we’d have no language; without categories, education as we know it would be impossible. (We might, however, pay more attention to which sorts of words make for the best labels, describing processes, not things.) Moreover, many of us feel that gay (somewhat more so than lesbian) politics is based in the knowledge that people are born gay, and so “gay” must be a category.

In academic circles, there’s a push to embrace more and more narrowly defined labels as we specialize in ever smaller areas of expertise. I will admit to consciously resisting this trend in my own scholarly and pedagogical endeavors. But there’s no denying that labels–some helpful, many meaningless–are at the heart of “music analysis,” whose apparently jealous sibling discipline, “music theory,” constantly strives to label bigger and better systems.

Academic careers can be built on the coining of a new term or theory, especially once people adopt and/or reproduce it. This might not be a musically sensitive process, but it’s power. After all, academics are capitalists, too; especially, so it sometimes seems, when they claim not to be.

Admittedly, in talking about labels and categories we could be talking about any cultural phenomenon. Think: advertising and political demographics, like “Soccer Moms,” “Nascar Dads,” “Green-collar workers,” and “Obamicans.” How many tags–or should I say labels?–should I affix to this post? and why?

Poolboy, I think, is right to resist. Sure, the rest of us initially teased him, throwing what we first heard as trivial protest back at him. Now, though, questions like “Why do you have to label her a ‘bartender’?” have become a way of poking fun at each other while embracing the absurd. The childlike banter has evolved beyond the “your mom” joke into surprisingly sophisticated real-life sketch comedy.

A lot of power lies with those who frame a debate. We can, however, challenge and teach the debate framers, and refuse to answer with a simple, confirming or denying “yes” or “no.” We’re better off reformulating those questions that serve no purpose other than to divide us.

Poolboy reminds us that we can fight the power by playing around it.

It’s great to see him make it on TV, too, perhaps even more so than the initial thrill of seeing out-and-about Rachel Maddow occasionally smack down Pat Buchanan on MSNBC. (More often than not, she appears way-too-comfortable listening to Pat Buchanan’s incessant screaming.) What’s more, Dan still keeps it real on Savage Love. This Week’s Column makes me wish someone like him was around in the mainstream media when I was a kid. A touching reminder, really.

Update 4/4/08: Dan writes a touching Savage Love response to his mother’s death. This is why I like the guy.