Is it racist to speak of 'urban' music?

What is urban music?

If we look at the results that Spotify returns when we enter the word -or its translation in English,

in its search engine,

the matter appears almost like a haiku.

There are

of

latino,

'de tranquis',

arabic,

flamenco and even

Catalan.

Curiously, now that the genre, or whatever urban music is, has become something universal, transversal and amorphous enough that we can put people like Nathy Peluso, Kali Uchis, Don Patricio or Beyoncé into it without worrying about the nuances, in the US, where the label was generated, a debate has been opened regarding its suitability.

In June, two weeks after the murder of George Floyd, amidst the wave of protests over endemic police violence and with the Black Lives Matter movement taking over the streets of the country's main cities, Republic Records issued a statement announcing that it was leaving include the

category

to catalog any of your artists.

The label, home of Ariana Grande or Drake, communicated that the word was not only going to stop being used to sell certain records, but it was also going to disappear to categorize company departments or to define employee positions.

"We encourage the rest of the music industry to follow our example," the statement ended, concise but restrictive.

The term was coined in the mid-1970s by New York radio host Frankie Crocker in an attempt to create a sufficiently large umbrella under which he could shelter the eclectic selection of artists he programmed.

Soon, the label was used as the new way of grouping the black music of the time.

In the 1940s, the Harlem Hit Parade had been created with a similar intention.

The term became geographically obsolete and the dubious nomenclature

(

) was used to refer to those then novel sounds created by colored musicians.

Then they tried to group them under the heading

.

This was the sensible contribution of Jerry Wrexler, the legendary journalist who later became a music producer.

In 1953 he worked with Ray Charles, in 1967 he was chosen producer of the year thanks to his collaboration with Aretha Franlyn and in 1984 he recorded the

by Wham!

at the legendary Muscle Shoals studios.

Today Atlantic, the label Wrexler worked with for most of his career, is the only one with a black music department.

No euphemisms.

After a decade in which record company executives succeeded in introducing

as a general voice,

arrived

.

The term was used at first to be able to sell better - that is, without connotations that were excessively aggressive or realistic - black music to white people, whether they were simple listeners or executives in charge of deciding where their brands advertised.

struck them as the least black way to sell black music.

Even to sell it to African-Americans themselves, a market that in the eighties was already beginning to have appeal for brands.

But, as radio programmer Sunny Joe White stated in 1982: “Many marketing agencies still know very little about the consumer habits of the black population.

Thus, radios claim to program

music

to make themselves more attractive.

This situation causes even black radio stations to try to appear less black in order to compete for the advertising cake ”.

Black radios were no longer the test bench for the industry to determine whether a record by a colored musician could be embraced by white audiences.

The artist Janelle Monae, at the Chanel show, in Paris, last March.

Julien Hekimian Getty Images

In 2014, the BBC's Radio1XTra crowned a Halifax-born redhead named Ed Sheeran as street musician of the year.

That label was more than out of print.

Not only was it exerting a reductionist effect in the realm of black music, but it had become a huge drawer that could fit practically anyone who proposed it, or to whom it was proposed.

If you didn't sound like a tractor, you were

.

Four years later,

magazine

wondered why we still refer to

and

as

, as if they were still embryonic genres that had to be sold through subterfuge.

You spoke to key figures within the American record industry, and while some still defended the term as useful, many believed it was time to get rid of it.

“I hate the word

.

Not only is it a wrong category but it is born out of a way of stereotyping black communities, ”said Sam Taylor, an executive at Kobalt Music, the innovation giant in the music industry whose artists include Childish Gambino, Beck and Lorde.

Taylor's message was that they basically called it

because calling it a

gave them a rush.

But not all were voices against the cancellation of

as a word to bring together what, curiously, had become one of the most popular and profitable genres of 21st century music.

Within the industry, voices of employees of color emerged who felt that if urban music departments were eliminated their jobs were in jeopardy.

Mark Pitts, president of the

division

of the RCA label, declared: “I have always carried the

insignia

as something honorable.

As a black executive, I have promoted it with pride. "

Another executive from the same label, Tanki Balogun, recalled having lived through the debate on the viability of the term since its inception in the industry.

“Being an executive in this division has prevented me from working with artists outside of this area.

As I am black, I can only work with black artists who are believed to fit into the

realm

”, he complained.

Finally it seems that the word has entered its process of definitive disappearance.

Artists within the field have insisted on declaring that their thing is black music.

And period.

From Kendrick Lamar to Beyoncé, through Janelle Monáe or even Sean Combs.

If statues of Confederate generals or infamous slaveholders can fall, this very Manichean term can fall.

The problem is that

in recent years has become perhaps the most dramatic case of mistranslation in the global scheme of music.

It has been used outside the Anglo-Saxon realm to simply categorize new music that was not known where to put.

Right now, for many,

is everything that isn't rock.

Reggaeton is

.

The trap is

.

Any fusion is

.

What is

?

You are

.

It's the carbon dioxide in music.

How do we undo this knot that begins with UPA Dance and ends with Bad Bunny?

The temptation to have a drawer in which to put everything that was not understood was too great to pass up.

Saying

today is like saying

in 1989. Now we have a drawer in which it is impossible to find the pair of any sock.

It is what you have to think that the new is going to matter to so few people that it is the same what you do with it.

The dismantling process is going to be long and complicated, because our

has much more to do with

or 

than with nothing or nothing associated with the sounds of 2020.