Cultural Appropriation
- Thread starter DaveP
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Scodiddly
Well-known member
DaveP said:
At some point you need experts - or maybe Sony should let customers vote on the PCB designs for their televisions?
Anyway, back to cultural appropriation. Did you all know that the banjo is actually a version of an African instrument called a "kora"? Now I'm going to view it through a fairly strong lens for you guys... imagine that you've been kidnapped, enslaved, and still manage to build a musical instrument from your homeland to help you salvage at least a tiny bit of the culture you were taken from. Now imagine that the white overseers, in addition to the occasional whipping, start doing something similar and generations later nobody even remembers that it isn't the Instrument of Ultimate White Music.
As I said, a fairly strong lens. But I did say upfront that the issue with cultural appropriation has to do with power, who has it and who doesn't.
My vote would be for a bigger buffer chip so that my Sony netflix TV would not keep "Loading" on certain sites.
Wiki says that they may have copied that from the Portugese Banza whilst still in Africa.
I don't go along with this politicization of everything. Should Africans avoid western medicine and stick to their witch doctors? Does that make them subject to western power. Boko Haram says much the same thing about western education, do you agree with them?
DaveP
I would have thought better about corporate governance (or whatever buzzwords apply) if Sony hadn't come out with the rootkit CD. Now when I hear about big companies doing bad things I just think "yeah, so what else is new."
More to the point of the thread:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pzYVgYa7EA
More to the point of the thread:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pzYVgYa7EA
I think the banjo is descended from a West African instrument too. I do t think it’s a Kora though. A Kora is a carved gourd I think. It doesn’t have a skin head.
A Kora is a multi Stringed instrument. It’s played with the strings and bridge facing the player. I believe two thumbs are used to pluck. It is more like a harp. It has a swirly ringing sound. It’s kind of trippy and mesmerizing . There are Kora players in the NYC subway.
A Kora is a multi Stringed instrument. It’s played with the strings and bridge facing the player. I believe two thumbs are used to pluck. It is more like a harp. It has a swirly ringing sound. It’s kind of trippy and mesmerizing . There are Kora players in the NYC subway.
When I was singing in a band in the 60's and we were doing covers of Four tops, Temptations, Martha and Vandellas, etc.
I wanted to sing like them, because their phrasing was so good! There is a reason that singers like Rod Stewart, Joe Cocker and Kelly Jones made it and its because they have "Black" voices.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
DaveP
Scodiddly
Well-known member
DaveP said:
Sure, there's no harm in learning other styles from other cultures.
The issue is that when you start to notice that it's not the actual artists from the original culture who make the biggest money. Never quite something you can pin down to a specific villain, but yet it keeps happening. And then you get people who just come in and wholesale steal a look or a beat and then make a huge hit on it.
I understand this point and that it's guilt driven by social media, but it never used to be.
The Beatles picked up lots of R&B from Motown artists and the Stones copied black bluesmen. Back then the artists were not outraged, they were happy that their talent and music had been recognised and greatly appreciated. Black artists in the 60's loved playing in the UK because there was no segregation or treating them like second class citizens.
DaveP
The social warriors are so excited they are attacking Disney's casting of Halle Berry for the Little Princess...
Seriously... life must be very good if people think this is important, or some kind of a problem.
JR
Seriously... life must be very good if people think this is important, or some kind of a problem.
JR
Scodiddly
Well-known member
DaveP said:
This discussion has been around a lot longer than social media.
Sure, there can be a benefit to the original artists, but they'll never make the same money as a Keith Richards. Or even as much as the many regional-act versions of Keith Richards.
This is more complicated than simple cultural appropriation. The original black blues artists were a niche market in the US, whereas the Supremes, Four tops and all the other successful black Motown artists were not, they concentrated on making hits records and nobody appropriated their work. Richards and Jagger shifted the blues genre into something more mainstream, something I guess the original guys were unwilling or unable to do. The original blues guy did benefit from the audience going back to the purist roots and buying their records after people like the Stones made them more visible.
DaveP
or simpler...DaveP said:
I rather not reopen more of our ugly history to apply modern condemnation, but early black artists didn't receive the economic success that white artist did, not to mention other obvious societal disadvantages.
Opinions vary about that... and I won't wade into the subjective debate, despite living in MS where several famous blues artists were born and came from.
"Race records" was a pretty large category by the 1920s. Perhaps the mainstream crossover recordings that were popular with white consumers and were few (Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll, etc), could be considered a niche, but not the entire category IMO.
JR
keefaz
Well-known member
What about hip hop music, it appropriated everything from Kraftwerk to classical music, oriental songs and much more...
I think it's the artist who should define his own limits, nobody else
I think it's the artist who should define his own limits, nobody else
midwayfair
Well-known member
If anyone's interested in the history:
The term cultural appropriation is attested to from the 1970s.
https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095652789
The concept dates to the Harlem Renaissance writers in the U.S., and it's always been a complicated discussion, so really, everyone in this thread can just can the "get off my lawn" rhetoric, because the discussion's older than you farts are.
Personally, I generally roll my eyes (or cringe, depending on how bad it is) when people appropriate clothing and speech, but I have culturally appropriated the crap out of your birth country's love of tea and I will not apologize for that.
The term cultural appropriation is attested to from the 1970s.
https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095652789
The concept dates to the Harlem Renaissance writers in the U.S., and it's always been a complicated discussion, so really, everyone in this thread can just can the "get off my lawn" rhetoric, because the discussion's older than you farts are.
Personally, I generally roll my eyes (or cringe, depending on how bad it is) when people appropriate clothing and speech, but I have culturally appropriated the crap out of your birth country's love of tea and I will not apologize for that.
Some of us were adults (or what passes for adult) in the 70s...midwayfair said:
The first time I drank tea that didn't suck was in a cheap hotel room in London in the 80s. The coffee was so bad I tried the tea... ;D
I also acquired a taste for oolong while staying in Hong Kong briefly for business.
I acquired my taste for beer growing up in NJ back in the 50s (much before it was legal for me).
JR
PS: Back in the 70's the social justice warriors were just getting started, taking over college administration building, etc.
IMHO the concept is bogus and as the article shows, has it's roots in Marxism.
While there may be a few bizarre cases like the white woman pretending to be black, and Michael Jackson pretending to be white, most of the so-called appropriation is really better described as influence.
Has anyone called out Eminem for this, he has appropriated Rap and Hip Hop and what has he got to be angry about anyways, he's white?
Toulouse-Lautrec's posters were influenced by Japanese art arriving in Europe in the 1890's. Modigliani's sculptures were influenced by African art. I suppose that some would like to see Jazz confined to New Orleans and the whole idea of Jazz Fusion keeps activists awake at night. Maybe these complainers would like to impose "Cultural Apartheid" on the world.
It all boils down to the suppression of artistic expression reminiscent of Stalinist Russia.
DaveP
boji
Well-known member
Referring back to an earlier post about college English departments, here's some clear evidence that going to college actually reduces the ability to recognize one's own ideological bias:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/21/democrats-republicans-political-beliefs-national-survey-poll?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/21/democrats-republicans-political-beliefs-national-survey-poll?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
"Birds of a feather flock together". This has always been a problem for politicians, they live in their own bubble and bit by bit lose touch with their electorate, until the next election rebalances it all for a while.
The Squad is a prime example of this. Trump has drawn the media into reporting every outrage so that the mainstream democratic message (if it exists yet) is lost in the fog.
DaveP
dmp
Well-known member
boji said:
I read this link - did you read it?
Does not mention college English departments. Or going to college.
But it does show something I've seen in other polls - Republican voters agree in principle with many of the statements / proposals of the left - is racism still a problem? - free college? - free medical care? climate change.
Yet, obviously Republican's are disagreeing at the ballot box and voting for representatives that actually hurt them.
Much like the surveys that showed many Republican voters did not know the ACA was the same as Obamacare, and had positive views of ACA, while holding negative views of Obamacare.
;D ;D ;D Us dumb republicans, aren't as connected to reality as the democrats (good one)? 8)dmp said:
In my judgement most voters in either party are not very well informed, or critical thinkers, otherwise the career politicians would have been drummed out of office long ago (drain the swamp).
The new crowd is not much better. The few more sensible moderates in the new class do not get proper recognition from a media rewarded for spinning up controversy.
Politicians looking to gain mindshare are all too happy to provide the drama du jour that media craves. Keeping the low information voters busy looking at the bright shiny objects, instead of thinking for themselves.
JR
PS: Back on topic, cultural appropriation is a made up sin to fuel identity politics. At some point they will run out of people to accuse and the movement will consume itself and wither away. Kind of like the old religion (shakers) that opposed procreation, and died off due to lack of new members.
