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| | Issue #19.24 :: 01/09/2008 - 01/15/2008 | Gangsta club music is a safety issue
| BY AUSTIN RHODES
| AUGUSTA, GA - If you build it, they will come.
Unfortunately, when they come, they tend to bring guns, knives and drugs.
In today’s world of hip-hop, gangsta-rap nightclubs, there is a fine line between running a cutting-edge, popular hangout and running a place where people get stabbed with “cutting edges.”
With almost 500 police reports generated in connection with Club Dreams in the last few years, it is inexplicable how the owners have avoided serious action from the Augusta Commission and the Richmond County Sheriff’s Department until now.
Noise ordinance violations had the club in the news a few weeks ago; then, a double shooting early Christmas morning brought the owners back before the commission with a law-enforcement request to revoke its liquor license permanently.
There are a few interesting political machinations that are underway in the effort to make sure Club Dreams never opens its doors again, but that is column fodder for another day. Right now we need to address and acknowledge that as long as a nightclub caters to the criminal element, we should not be surprised when the criminals actually show up and commit crimes.
And, according to my sources, the club does cater to the criminal element.
Lawmen tell me that Club Dreams plays one neighborhood group against another, calling for “shout-outs” by gang names over the dance music is which blasted loud enough for the neighbors up and down Washington Road to hear. It is a minor miracle that more blood wasn’t spilled on the dance floor before now, and I am more than a bit surprised that Sheriff Ron Strength hasn’t banned his people from working off-duty security there. If I were the sheriff, I wouldn’t want my people anywhere near the place.
What is it about today’s music that drives young people to such ridiculous behavior?
I can think back to some pretty dark music back in the old days by groups like Black Sabbath, KISS, Alice Cooper and others that grossed out the grown-ups of the time, but rarely if ever did the over-the-top theatrics generate real violence, particularly outside of live performances. Yeah, the old acts were hell on chickens and bats, but rarely did you hear of that music being used as a rallying cry for acts of random violence and gang warfare from coast to coast.
Isolated incidents aside, the nasty hard-rock acts of the ’70s and ’80s were as harmless as Barry Manilow when compared to the violent, misogynistic garbage that plays in places like Club Dreams.
Ironically, the nasty heavy metal (that many suggested was connected to devil worship) of those days was targeted at teenage and young-adult, white males. Today’s urban blood-thumping is aimed at young blacks, but it certainly plays well to many white kids who love to sneak the subversive material under the nose of Mom and Dad.
I will leave the music reviews to Ed Turner and Coco Rubio, but the assessment of the turmoil created in the community when dance clubs allow today’s gangsta music to serve as a pep rally soundtrack for on-premise gunfights falls to the rest of us. This is a public safety issue, pure and simple.
While minority community leaders are anxious to protect the black businessmen who are making big bucks running these establishments, need I remind them that is the blood and guts of young blacks being spilled in these ever-increasing club-related attacks?
I feel for the black leaders who are stuck between a rock and a hard place in this debate. I understand there is empowerment and great benefit in running a successful business, and these clubs (before the killings shut them down) tend to make a fortune. But at what cost?
All I can say that is that ultimately this is not a problem that white citizens and white leaders can solve. When it comes to the violence and tragedy that springs from the clubs that specialize in this music and culture, it is up to strong black men and women everywhere to fight the good fight.
If you need us, let us know what we can do for you. These are not our kids dying in these clubs. They are yours.
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