White power music is music that promotes white nationalism. It encompasses various music styles, including rock, country, and folk. Ethnomusicologist Benjamin R. Teitelbaum argues that white power music "can be defined by lyrics that demonize variously conceived non-whites and advocate racial pride and solidarity. Most often, however, insiders conceptualized white power music as the combination of those themes with pounding rhythms and a charging punk or metal-based accompaniment." Genres include Nazi punk, Rock Against Communism, National Socialist black metal, and fashwave.
Barbara Perry writes that contemporary white supremacist groups include "subcultural factions that are largely organized around the promotion and distribution of racist music." According to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission "racist music is principally derived from the far-right skinhead movement and, through the Internet, this music has become perhaps the most important tool of the international neo-Nazi movement to gain revenue and new recruits." An article in Popular Music and Society says "musicians believe not only that music could be a successful vehicle for their specific ideology but that it also could advance the movement by framing it in a positive manner."
Dominic J. Pulera writes that the music is more pervasive in some countries in Europe than it is in the United States, despite some European countries banning or curtailing its distribution. European governments regularly deport "extremist aliens", ban white power bands and raid organizations that produce and distribute the music. In the United States, racist music is protected freedom of speech in the United States by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
White power country music
Several subgenres of white power music have been spawned, including country music — also referred to as segregationist music — which was developed in response to the American civil rights movement. The songs expressed resistance to the federal government and civil rights advocates who were challenging well-established white supremacist practices which were endemic in the American South. During the 1940s and 1950s, changes also occurred in the music recording industry that allowed regional recording companies to form across the United States, addressing small specialized markets. B.C. Malone writes: "the struggles waged by black Americans to attain economic dignity and racial justice provided one of the ugliest chapters in country music history, an outpouring of racist records on small labels, mostly from Crowley, Louisiana, which lauded the Ku Klux Klan and attacked African-Americans in the most vicious of stereotypical terms."
The artists often adopted pseudonyms, and some of their music was "highly confrontational, making explicit use of racial epithets, stereotypes and threats of violence against civil rights activists. Much of the music "featured blatantly racist stereotypes that dehumanized African Americans", equating them with animals or "using cartoonish imagery associated with "Jigaboos"". Lyrics warned of white violence on African Americans if they insisted on being treated as equals. Other songs were more subtle, couching racist messages behind social critiques and political action calls. The lyrics, in the tradition of right-wing populism, questioned the legitimacy of the federal government and rallied whites to protect "Southern rights" and traditions. The song "Black Power" includes the lyrics:
Reb Rebel Records
In 1966, businessman Jay "J.D." Miller created a niche record label for his company, the defiantly segregationist Reb Rebel Records. It was arguably the most notable of the racist country music record labels. Reb Rebel released 21 singles and For Segregationists Only, an album of its ten bestselling songs, four of which were Johnny Rebel's. The label's first single, "Dear Mr. President" (referring to then-president Lyndon B. Johnson), by Happy Fats (Leroy Leblanc), sold more than 200,000 copies. The song parodied Johnson's Great Society programs, which aimed to eliminate poverty and racial injustice.
Other songs were primarily about civil rights or the Vietnam War, "but they never really attacked black people." The studio's second release, "Flight NAACP 105" by "the Son of Mississippi" (Joe Norris), was the label's bestseller; the track was a "spontaneous skit in the vein of Amos 'n' Andy." It was the first in a series of "highly racist take-offs" of Amos n' Andy. Few of Miller's racist records were played on the radio in Louisiana.