The question isn’t whether new promoters who scheduled
rapper
”
Too Short
”
for the Veterans Memorial Building made a few procedural errors
in their application. It is whether the Hollister Police Department
and city treated them fairly in laying the hammer and denying the
show without working reasonably with the applicants.
The question isn’t whether new promoters who scheduled rapper “Too Short” for the Veterans Memorial Building made a few procedural errors in their application. It is whether the Hollister Police Department and city treated them fairly in laying the hammer and denying the show without working reasonably with the applicants.
In spite of the application errors by a Hollister father-son duo and another San Jose man, nothing short of rational stopped the Hollister Police Department, or the city in general, from working with the promoters and helping them through the process. Instead, the police department cited an array of application discrepancies and offered a blanket ruling – that the show was denied – in a predictable display of lumping together a variety of minor matters to forego providing a real explanation.
The Hollister Police Department last week denied the show proposed by the three promoters. They had scheduled it for April 22 at the Veterans Memorial Building in a rare Hollister appearance for a national music act, a six-time platinum rapper with 26 years in the business. They also had promoted how it would include local hip-hip artists, another Hollister band and a dance group from San Benito High School.
The promoters had told the Free Lance they wanted to make it a community event open to everyone, and expressed interest in involving the high school and also donating some proceeds to Hollister’s Emmaus House for battered women and children.
There were some discrepancies in the application, as police noted. The promoters said they were involving the high school, but had yet to confirm its participation. They started offering tickets on a website, while the city bars it until there is an official approval. And they said the event was for “youth,” but one of the promoters used the phrase “young adults” in describing it.
Those are all really nitpicky reasons and should have been resolved without a cancellation. Police could have told promoters to briefly halt sales until a decision, while giving them a break because it’s their first time hosting a show. And it shouldn’t matter at all whether the promoters deemed the event for “youth” or “young adults” or had an official confirmation from the high school – because where in the city code does it say students’ involvement makes a concert more legally acceptable? It doesn’t, so the discrepancy is altogether irrelevant.
So why would police choose an outright denial, other than intolerance toward rap music and, by extension, black culture? And would the city have responded the same way if the new promoters had scheduled other types of more socially acceptable events – in their and the mainstream Hollister community’s eyes – such as a country music concert, a barbershop quartet, or a mixed martial arts card?
We imagine and hope the police department was more helpful with the local MMA promoter, scheduled to host a second fight night at the Veterans Memorial Building in May, when it approved those adrenaline-packed events that include sales of alcohol, which the rap show would have barred. We imagine they would be more helpful in general, if only an applicant wasn’t proposing a show that the police department and a segment of this community blindly perceive as a gathering of criminals. It is merely a music show with explicit lyrics and, last time we checked, that wasn’t a crime.
The reality is that all generations, particularly younger ones, are listening to this type of music in their iPods, whether police or other intolerant residents like it or not. Increasingly, older generations are accepting of the genre. There are categories for rap on the Grammy Awards. Rap is music and, yes, tells life stories just like other forms of music do. It is an artistic expression, albeit controversial to some – just like rock and roll was 60 years ago.
It is 2011, and it is time to end preconceived biases about rap music and black culture.
