In the wake of the recent nightclub killings in Birmingham, politicians and commentators are pointing the finger at black music, but they're way off target, writes Brian Boyd.
Who killed Latisha Shakespeare and Charlene Ellis? The two young women were shot dead after a New Year's party in Birmingham - innocent victims of a cross-fire gun battle between two violent gangs. While the British police continue their investigations, the government and media are blaming a genre of music for contributing to the young women's deaths.
Speaking after the killings, British Home Secretary David Blunkett said there was "a link between gun violence and music", while Culture Minister Kim Howells said the killings were "symptomatic of developments in rap and garage music". The Metropolitan police assistant commissioner, Tarique Ghaffur, blamed "a backdrop of music" for "encouraging young men to use weapons as fashion statements".
Whether it be The Rolling Stones "attacking the moral fabric of society" back in the 1960s, The Sex Pistols "provoking anarchy and lawlessness" in the 1970s, Eminem and Marilyn Manson being held partly responsible for the Columbine school massacre in the late 1990s or new Garage band So Solid Crew being accused of inciting "gun violence", music is a handy whipping boy for politicians and commentators who prefer to ignore the socio-economic reality of inner city drug use and crime.
There is as much, if not more, use of violent imagery in cinema, literature, drama and visual art but music has a dominant cultural position in the lives of teenagers and as such is regarded as more influential than other art forms. With the genres of "rap and garage music" being singled out as "glorifying gun culture", David Blunkett, while avoiding the term "censorship", says the British government "needs to talk to the record producers, to the music distributors, to those who are actually engaged in the music business about what is and isn't acceptable".
No longer a fringe or ephemeral scene, rap music is now outselling traditional rock music; two of the biggest selling albums of last year were by rap artists, Eminem and Nelly. Rap first became popular in the early 1980s with musicians creating sounds by repeating beats or using samples taken from other records and speaking ("rapping") over the musical accompaniment.
As the style evolved, a hardcore version of rap, known as "gangsta" rap, emerged. The US rap act, Niggaz With Attitude, released the first commercially successful gangsta rap album, Straight Outta Compton, in which the group members rapped about the inner-city slum areas of Los Angeles in which they lived. They spoke in a gritty, urban style about their daily reality: crack cocaine dens, drive-by shootings, police brutality, deprivation, poverty and gang warfare. NWA's records were bought in their millions by white, middle-class suburban kids.
As other acts followed, the gangsta rap acts started to live out their violent lyrics and during the "rap wars", two leading lights, Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., were shot dead in drive-by shootings. More recently, DJ Jam Master Jay of rap veterans Run-DMC, was shot dead at his studio in Queens, New York. The gangsta format never really made an impact on this side of the Atlantic but the genre of music currently under discussion, "Garage" - dance music with a 2/4 beat featuring diva vocals, displaying similar gritty, urban lyrical themes reflecting council estate life - did.
The leading UK Garage band, So Solid Crew, has attracted controversy over its violent image. A 30-piece musical collective from a rough area of south London, three of the group have been convicted or are awaiting trial on gun offences. In their defence, the three individuals concerned say they were illegally holding firearms because they had received specific death threats.
A spokeswoman for So Solid Crew is dismissive of the link between gun culture and Garage music: "It's poverty and crime which are escalating. Cocaine addiction is escalating too," she says, "So Solid Crew are just reflecting society just as Robert de Niro reflected American gangster society in his film roles".
The big crossover success story from Garage music, Ms Dynamite - winner of last year's prestigious Mercury Music Prize, and someone who speaks out strongly in her songs against the "gangsta" lifestyle - bluntly says that the notion that Garage music and violence are inextricably linked is "bullshit". She adds "the media have blown it up out of all proportion. Garage music is a young London scene. That's why people in power are afraid of us and try everything to shut us down - there is violence wherever you go". Ms Dynamite says she has agreed to front a police anti-gun campaign aimed at teenagers.
It's an absurdity of surreal proportions to suggest that the deaths of two young women caught up in gangland cross-fire can be linked to a series of musical notes. Certainly there is violent imagery and bravado talk of gun use in some examples of rap/Garage music but we're not talking Pop Idol-style musicians here - rap/Garage music frequently comes from "sink" estates where drug/gun use is a fact of contemporary urban life.
Inner city London Labour MP, Dianne Abbot, puts it succinctly: "Let's not pretend that ending gun criminality on the streets of Hackney or Birmingham is as simple as getting people to sing different songs".
Gun use in inner cities was prevalent before the existence of rap/Garage music and will continue after the genres have moved on. The leading Garage music disc jockey, DJ Iyare, says that those who attack the music miss the point that gun culture is a wider problem. "Films and computer games glorify guns far more than music," he says. "Will David Blunkett and the government take on Hollywood and Microsoft? This is not a musical problem, it's a social problem".