SO I WAS watching what was probably the best Six Organs of Admittance show ever, on May 20 at the wee Folk Yeah Festival lodged in a sweet little resort, motel, and roadhouse called the Fernwood Resort, perched among the redwoods on the northern edge of lovely and amazing Big Sur. Happily oblivious to the bruises and cruises going on between my fellow San Franciscans, folkish types from Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties, and the regulars, I was tripping hard on Ben Chasny's ever more accomplished raga folk-rock and trying not to get too worried about the way the walls seemed to be quivering and the mic stand was morphing into a head-chomping praying mantis, when I heard, "I feel really ethnic right now."

OK, good – that wasn't me. That emanated from a fellow Bay Guardian staffer I'll call Judy. I was worried for a second – because at that moment, I only felt really wasted. Not schizophrenic. But who knows, that could come later – once I found the right combination of meds.

Judy was serious, though, and she pulled her hoodie over her head, smiled bravely, and looked miserable. Buck up, I wanted to say. Just because most of the kids here are chalkies – twinkly bearded dudes in lumberjack wear and gorg, doelike sylphs with no ribs, boobage, or hips (boneless, fat-free chicken!) – doesn't mean they're judging you. But I was far too preoccupied with the deep crimson lights, which seemed to pulse in time to the music, above the log cabin-ish stage.

Later, we all agreed that the chill and mellow vibe in Big Sur – where the sparse population seemed psychologically equipped to handle small influxes of tourists, hippies, Esalen seekers, drum-circle rejects, and sundry weirdos – was much better than the rumored bad mojo at similar Point Reyes hoedowns. Hey, we all wanted to hug that redwood busting out of the bar's deck (well, it looked like a rippled pillar of chocolate!), although we didn't actually scamper up to the poor plant and assault it, like the chick in Gunne Sax. Still, it is interesting how – despite the come-together intentions of promoter Britt Govea (who puts on a (smog) show this week and has a bigger fest in the works at the Henry Miller Library) and the seeming hippie-fication of the S.F. music scene, as represented by members of Comets on Fire, Whysp, and Crack: We Are Rock that night – our old cliquey ties and insecurities linger, like vapor trails that never completely vanish. We watched the dance party ensue, DJed by Drag City's Zach Cowie with plenty of Ludacris and Stevie Nicks, feeling like just-off-work urbanites in black Converse, as local redneckies yelped something about the return of the hippies, like the swallows to Capistrano, while videotaping the dancers, and a African American local fella worked out some old b-boy moves on the too-small floor and tried in vain to get Judy to dance.

Which segues sweetly to my latest preoccupation, about the latest influx of indie rock bands represented by black frontmen, like Bloc Party, the Dears, and TV on the Radio. Why is that so extraordinary? Because we're so used to seeing almost completely white crowds at rock shows here – and in almost every other city in the country? Why did Asian kids come out for the recent New Order concert at Henry J. Kaiser and not for, say, the Lovemakers? Why are the black women shaking their asses and balancing their feet on the armrests of the Oakland Arena to R. Kelley and not to, oh, Train? The days of segregation are officially over, yet all too many folks stay in their places and never notice the monoculture all around them. Too busy staring at the pretty lights, methinks.

They're also in denial about the reality all around them. I'm one of the many who admire Bloc Party's punchy and ambitious Silent Alarm (Vice), but damned if you can get vocalist-songwriter Kele Okereke to talk about the subject. The band are quite happy to discuss "singing about a sense of unease, a sense of powerlessness, being aware of things being wrong, but not quite knowing what to do about it," according to bassist Gordon Moakes. But don't you dare shake that race stick at Okereke, or any of them for that matter, as I did with card-carrying Party member Matt Tong. "That's the one question that Kele never likes to answer!" the Chinese Brit drummer groaned. "He gets that quite a lot. But where he grew up, it was natural for him to do this, really. People are always surprised when they see him fronting a [rock] band, to be honest with you, but it says something really about other people more than the band."

Tell that to music writer Kandia Crazy Horse, who wrote the 2004 tome Rip It Up: The Black Experience in Rock 'n' Roll and describes herself as "a youngish black female who loves redneck rock (from the Allman Brothers to Nashville Pussy), fey charmers (Rufus Wainwright), and exceedingly loud guitars wherever they may be found." E-mailing from the east, she pinpointed some of the hurdles that Bloc Party, the Bellrays, and other bands that include "black artists that step out of the 'urban/R&B/pop/dancehall' mode" face: "In the musical realm, this gets translated into white label execs and radio determining that X artist's sound is 'not black enough,' which famously happened to Living Colour, solely because they've got lingering, erroneous ideas of what blackness is and are never introspective or aware enough to see the irony and lie in their arrogant assumption that it's these execs' divine right to frame the black aesthetic. The other chief hurdle for bands such as TV on the Radio who might be interested in garnering a black audience for their iconoclastic work is that the mythical black mass ... has largely bought into notions that rock 'n' roll is 'a white thing,' that certain sounds have irrevocably been co-opted by the Man, and that engaging in certain cultural practices diminishes one's Nubian stock.

"My generation is indeed one that's learned to stop worrying and embrace our inner metalhead, who can swing with the exalted cultural ambassador of our dreams Jimi and AC/DC...," she explained. "That's not to say there's not a good deal of unacknowledged racism in Indie-land, that those rarefied spaces ain't inhospitable to folk of color (even if the hardcore metal scene is worse) – having resided in Manhattan for 15 years, I am well aware of the extent to which I have been the sole intimate black friend of myriad young, hip, liberal, well-meaning white people who would never think to scan the crowd at a club like Mercury Lounge and remark on the lack of diversity." And Crazy Horse admits she doesn't even like TV on the Radio!

I'm right there with her – sheesh, how Peter Gabriel can you get? But one band I can get behind are the Dears. And true to form and talking on a cellie before his band's recent performance on the Jimmy Kimmel show, singer-songwriter Murray Lightburn was just as dramatically frank, with that certain salty Quebecois quirkiness, as any African Canadian inspired by U2 and Isaac Hayes and capable of producing last year's great-leap-forward debut, No Cities Left (Spinart), that cache of truly soulful indie rock catnip. "Just got here and it's surreal, dude," Lightburn rambled. "I'm on Hollywood Boulevard in front of the Kodak Theater, and there's so many freaks. It's like the Twilight Zone, and there's Rod Serling's fucking star in front of me."

He chose rock rather than funk or soul as his poison because "there was something about the rawness of rock music that I liked," he offered, adding that No Cities Left was inspired by Motown, '60s and '70s orchestral pop and soul music, and heavier rock like Led Zeppelin. "I like to rock out. I sometimes like really heavy metal, but I can still go out and make a fucking R&B or soul record. I just don't feel like I need to be culturally brainwashed, play basketball, drink malt liquor, and listen to hip-hop. I can be whatever I want to be. There's a lot of black kids out there that at this point might be pressured to be that kind of black kid, and hopefully I'm here to say, be whatever you want to be. Give a shit."

Life in indie rock, though, can be trying, he confessed. "It's all about the honkies. It's all about honkies getting or having college degrees, and it's pretty much dominated by that and run by that, and that's the people that are mostly writing about it in hardcore indie rock publications, and that's not where we live generally," he said wearily. "Do you know how many rich kids we've been on tour with? I don't have a problem with rich kids at all. They just think they're owed something, and they don't know what it's like to work for something, and the Dears have scraped and scraped for everything we've had. It just makes us stronger in a way, though sometimes I can't deal with it."

There was that time when another band bellied up to the chow line at the venue and snottily said, "I can't possibly eat that." "It wasn't the greatest food," Lightburn recalled, "but there were days I went three days without eating a fucking meal. I didn't even have bottles to return to the store – I'd literally sit in my apartment and starve, and hearing this guy say that because he's some rich West Side New York punk, it's like, you need a severe beating right now. There are people who don't even have shitty cream sauce to deal with. Fuck you."

He looked up at a giant TV screen. "Boy, Paris Hilton is hideous."

Dears play Wed/25, 8 p.m., Great American Music Hall, 859 O'Farrell, S.F. $13. Call for time. (415) 885-0750. Bloc Party perform Tues/31, 7 p.m., Slim's, 333 11th St., S.F. $10. (415) 522-0333. Also June 1, 9 p.m., Fillmore, 1805 Geary, S.F. $20. (415) 421-TIXS, (415) 346-6000. (smog) play Fri/27, 8:30 p.m., Fernwood Resort, Highway 1, Big Sur. $11-$13. (831) 667-2422. Also Sat/28, 2 p.m., Amoeba Music, 1855 Haight, S.F. Free. (415) 831-1200; Sat/28, 9:30 p.m., Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, S.F. $15. (415) 923-0923.

Paintball, anyone?

Contact Kimberly Chun at kimberly@sfbg.com.