Patriarchy and the Music Industry
In her seminal work The Creation of Patriarchy, Gerda Lerner espouses on the origins of the enthronement of patriarchal thought and the overthrow and displacement of the feminine principle, the principal and original creator force of the universe.
Patriarchal thought pervades our current reality and can quickly be perceived as organic and justified, even when the truth stares us boldly in the face. However, it is an illegal domination with the fundamental goals of exploitation, subjugation, manipulation, and suppression of humanity. The two sexes are susceptible to this dominance, even though ostensibly patriarchy privileges men. It positions humanity in a survival mode masked by ego and triggers a quest to pursue, compete and run a never ending race. It is framed by a narcissistic predominance characterized by a deep-seated greed, power and control over others, the quest for respectability, recognition and validation and a desire to acquire insatiable wants.
In the music industry, patriarchy is the wind beneath the wings of a pervasively corrupt system. With a white controlled media proprietorship and a predatory political economy which is structurally pyramidical, the controllers (like Clive Davis, Tommy Mottola, Chris Blackwell, etal) are positioned at the apex while carefully selected blacks (like Quincy Jones, Antonio “L.A Reid, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Russell Simmon, Dr Dre, P-Diddy, Jay Z, etc) function as middle men and gatekeepers. Like a football scout, they are the ones who source talents, provide the platforms which facilitate a showcase, refinement and packaging of the artist for onward progression in the “food chain” through contractual bonds, etc. They are often furnished with a media generated larger than life persona. They are economically empowered and positioned to stoke envy and trigger aspiration in onlookers, but they are literally servants with no autonomous decision making powers. They function as the “in-betweens, middlemen or “Jesuses” of the industry whose mediatory interface is required to obtain favour from the inaccessible music big wigs.
This is why a Toni Braxton needed Laface; Eminem needed Dr Dre; Justin Bieber needed Puffy Love, etc. In very rare cases, where an artist is exceptionally gifted and endowed with established networks in the industry, the big wigs magnanimously display some “humility” through a first contact like Clive Davis’ meeting with Whitney Houston. With a step mom, Cissy who was already a prominent background singer for Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, etc. And step cousin, Dionne Warwick and family friends like Stevie Wonder and Luther Vandross, it was a question of time. However, regardless of the route chosen to access the industry, all artists function as cannon fodder destined to be exploited and dumped when their value depletes.
Oftentimes, out of naivete and desperation for fame and fortune, many artists have signed away their lives through their avoidance of meticulous studying of contractual conditions and agreements. Few years down the line, they realise that they have been shortchanged and that while their music rakes in a fortune for the music labels, they are hardly beneficiaries, but the men at the top.
History has shown that whenever music artists have found themselves in vulnerable positions like this and sought to reclaim the right to their artistic autonomy or even attempted the establishment of independently owned music distribution networks, their untimely deaths have always been an immediate outcome.
There have been too many deaths in Hollywood to rationalize them as mere coincidences. These artists often die in plane crashes, are depicted by media as suicidal or drug addicts. And one has often wondered, if the music environment is wholesome, why do artists who started out promissorily with palpable vitality and enthusiasm, develop these tendencies? How come the executives never get suicidal or die of drug overdose? The obvious answer that I have found is that the artists are the hosts and the executives are the parasitic elements.
While the former combat the pressures of an industry that demands more than they are willing to offer and fights to survive and stay afloat, the latter views the former as energetic supply whose creative juices must be drained to its advantage. The asymmetrical relationship invariably suffers a symbiotic deficiency and is sustainably parasitical. And patriarchy is parasitical in nature. It steals, kills, destroys, exploits, endangers, maims, suppresses and maligns when threatened by public exposure.
Furthermore, the claws of patriarchy dehumanises and systematically reinvents the artists biological orientation, thereby eroding their innately endowed essence. This occurs through the mechanism called the Faustian Bargain or in common parlance, “selling one’s soul to the devil”. Artists, in a bid to swim the murky and treacherous waters of fame, gain favours or protection, supersede others through a quicker attainment of visibility, mobility, longevity and respectability within the industry, compromise or auction their essence as humans and end up as “money-rich”, but tainted empty shells, thereafter. To numb the pain and erase the memories of the sordidly diabolical path taken, drugs and alcohol become their haven.
The candid interview granted recently by iconic actor Terrence Howard poignantly underscores Hollywood’s modus operandi, which has been an open secret for decades. This essence is what Howard calls the “man card” or “woman card” [ Valuetainment “Puffy tried to fuck me….” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTcs6fnUQbg ] After viewing this interview, it would be safe to conclude that headliner artists are often not the best or most principled, but the compromisers and morally bankrupt. Howard would exemplify this assertion. Despite possessing an incredible craftsmanship, brilliance, integrity and sound values, can we earnestly say that he is one of the most successful and accomplished in Hollywood? Just a thought!
Let us ponder on the “man and woman card” concept espoused by Howard. It is always astounding to hear about the sexual fluidity of certain artists, considering their puristic demeanour in the years of early beginnings. The grapevine has over the years identified male artists who started their music apprenticeship in the church like Marvin Gaye, Luther Vandross, Johnny Gill, Kenny Latimoore, etc, to be sexually fluid. Did this occur pre-Hollywood or thereafter? Did these men lose their “man-card”?
As for the “woman-card” which Howard describes as the inability to biologically reproduce on the part of the women, I have often been beffudled by the humongous ratio of females in Hollywood who have attained motherhood through the interventionist measure of surrogacy. I recollect Lauryn Hill’s hit-song “To Zion” from her singular album and magnum opus The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, which recounts how she was advised to abort her child and prioritize her career. She sings “Look at your career, they said”, Lauryn baby, use your head, but instead I chose to use my heart. Now the joy of my world is in Zion…..” Hill exited Hollywood after that album and has since refused to return while operating peripherally.
The rampancy of surrogacy, display of fake baby bumps and adoption in Hollywood compels me to conclude that these women have possibly been coerced into a forced hysterectomy, thereby losing their “woman-card”, that is the ability to procreate. Strangely, the traditions and lifestyles inherent in Hollywood have been transposed, entrenched and normalized within the larger society. Nowadays, no one cares! Even biologically functional women employ the services of surrogate mothers.
It also bears mentioning the predatory proclivity of patriarchy as witnessed in the male-female relational dynamic. One calls to mind the paedophilic relationship between Tommy Mottola and Mariah Carey. The latter was compelled to co-sign for the benefit of a career advancement. It must not be forgotten in a hurry the R Kelly and Aaliyah saga in the early 1990s. Cassie Ventura initially viewed P. Diddy a.k.a Puffy Combs a.k.a Puffy Love, etc, as a musical mentor given the wide age gap. That relationship morphed into a decade-long episode of tortuous romance and psycho-physical abuse. Stories have been told about the Jay-Z/ Foxy Brown, Jay-Z/Beyonce and Jay-Z/Rihanna dynamics. The common denominator is an elderly Jay Z’s sexual exploitation of perceptibly younger and vulnerable women in the industry.
The next post would be an inventory of music artists whose lives were shortened by the caprices of a malevolently patriarchal music industry. Some perished under questionable circumstances, others encountered a stalled career path before their actual demise.
