Are blackness and whiteness useful concepts in the study of popular music?

Barry Shank stated that ‘there should be no argument that the transformation in popular music that we associate with the rise and development of rock were the result of white fascination with black music’. But can this be true of today’s popular music with such genres of popular music such as bhangra, which is even played in clubs alongside r’n’b and hip-hop, who originated from India. Hebdige states that ‘since the 1950s there had always been some young white people living in the ghettoes alongside the immigrants who were interested in West Indian music’. This suggesting that blackness and whiteness are not useful concepts in the study of popular music as you cannot fix the start of popular music to one race and you cannot fix the trend of the present day to a particular race either as it is ever changing and it is becoming more multicultural with the influence of every culture in our society today.