2008 Pop Conference Bios/Abstracts

Peter Scholtes

Peter Scholtes has written about race, culture and hip hop for City Pages in Minneapolis, MN, for ten years. He is preparing a book on local R&B and hip hop.Panel(s):
Colorism
Friday, April 11, 2008, 11:00 - 12:45Abstract:

"Hi Yo Silver, Purple Rain: The Color of Minneapolis Rock and Roll, From Integrated Bands to Segregated Clubs"
After Barack Obama''s primary victory there in February, Minnesota was described as "snow white" in the national media--but the immigrant gateway of Minneapolis-St. Paul has always been more complicated. Aside from Bob Dylan and ''80s punk, the city''s deepest claims on the national pop-music imagination have been ''60s garage rock (the Trashmen, the Castaways), underground hip hop (Atmosphere, Brother Ali), and Prince, along with his old friends Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis of the Time. My paper will tell the largely unknown racial stories behind these phenomena: the black and Mexican American origins of local rock before the class coding of "garage" kicked in, the semi legal segregation in clubland overcome by Prince and the Time, and the integrated ideals (and culturally segregated realities) of contemporary rap.