Photo by Frank Hamilton

I moved to Baltimore seven or eight years ago. The city I’d lived in for many years started to feel stagnant, and I felt myself stagnating with it. Friends began selling me on Baltimore and Brooklyn. I picked the former for a number of reasons.

Baltimore makes an artist’s life easy in ways that New York and San Francisco used to but now don’t. It’s cheap to live here. There is sometimes a sense of lawlessness and an accompanying sense of freedom. The most alluring thing about Baltimore for me was the sense of community. People I knew that already lived here spoke in near-mythological terms of the closeness and fertility of the music and arts scene. I found these things to be true. I was enchanted, and remain so.

During my first few years in Baltimore, when friends who lived elsewhere asked me about it, I said many of the same things I’d heard about it before I moved. That it was magical. That I’d never felt so at home. That the people were beautiful and purposed and supportive.

If you asked me the same thing now, I’d still tell you how much I love this city. I’d also still say that living in Baltimore affords one a sense of freedom, except to add that the sense of freedom exists almost solely for non-black artists and musicians. Whatever benefits there are for non-black artists and musicians to live in and move to Baltimore are directly indebted to the majority black population of Baltimore. Our liberties come at the cost of theirs.

-=-=-=-"You look at the social, political climate of Baltimore, it’s hard," says Abdu Ali. He’s 25, already a venerated musician, promoter, and DJ, and grew up here. "I read something like seven out of every 10 black men in Baltimore between the ages of 18 and 27 or something is unemployed. The educational system here is corrupt as fuck. Even in just the architecture and the landscape of Baltimore, we got 16,000 abandoned homes here, there’s a lot of ugly here. And that in itself has a deep psychological effect on people."

It took me several years of witnessing the contrast between my life and those of native black Baltimoreans before I started to make this connection. When I did, it became hard not to see it everywhere, in everything. It became nearly impossible to avoid thinking about it. Baltimore is a very poor city. There are a lot of white poor, but a great deal more black poor who have next to nothing. With nothing comes no hope. Into that void pours anger, sadness, and sometimes violence and drugs. Increasingly I saw my life here as parasitic. I find the rent to be cheap here because I am white in an oppressed black city. The feelings of lawlessness and freedom exist for me because I am white in an oppressed black city.

This is reflected in the attention directed toward Baltimore music. Many of the Baltimore musicians who make a national name for themselves, my group included, are mostly if not entirely comprised of white people. Ali discusses this as a not infrequent source of frustration. "Me and my music peers of color have noticed, for one, it’s always that conversation of why a lot of Baltimore musicians can’t really pop off. By pop off I mean establish a career in music, start touring around the world, sell music, play at festivals, the whole nine. Becoming a blossoming musician in a city where, music-wise, it’s culturally rich. We’re right in a good hot spot. Baltimore musicians of color don’t really make it here," says Ali. He’s right. People reading this are likely to be at least nominally familiar with Dan Deacon, Future Islands, Wye Oak, Beach House and/or Lower Dens, but that you might not also know Al Rogers, Jr., :3LON, or even TT the Artist is indefensible.