Musical Culture Appropriation?
 

Does anyone else have problems with, or examples of, this sort of thing? I'm talking about a member of a race who has no idea of the culture/history of another race singing a song about them, or by them. Yeah, it might not be so easy to understand. Let me give you an example, which in fact prompted this thread.

Today I heard "Old Man River" and could easily tell it was not a black guy singing. Every other time I've heard that it's been black singers, whether it's Paul Robeson or Louis Armstrong or whoever. This time it was Sinatra. Now, I know it was written by a white man (Oscar Hammerstein) but to me there is just something disingenuous, almost grotesque about a rich white guy singing about how tough it is to be a slave. I just felt, well, creeped out by his rendition, almost as if it was an insult. I kind of wonder if it's okay for white men to sing songs about the race they've historically oppressed, in the voice of the ones they've oppressed, as if it's, I don't know, adding salt to the wounds? Sort of like maybe a German singing about how tough it was for the Jews under Hitler, or something like that?

Yeah, as usual I'm probably reading too much into it and taking it too seriously, but I feel certain songs - at least, certain subjects in lyrics - should be only performed by those who can identify with them. Like, it's their music, about their people, and we don't have a right to be appropriating that.

I'm sure nobody agrees with me, and I expect a hailstorm of "wtf dude it's just a song" but I can't help feeling uneasy and a little disturbed having heard Sinatra sing "You gets a little drunk and you lands in jail" and so on. Maybe - probably - just me, but I felt I needed to get that off my chest.

I agree with u. Das weird.

But on similar terms is it ok for Talking Heads for example to use Afrobeat influence?

I think taking influences is fine, as long as you acknowledge/respect them. Look at Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon et al, taking African ideas but involving African musicians. That's more a case of being inclusive, of paying dues. With lyrical material, especially sensitive matter, I think you have to be more careful, and like I say, Sinatra, a white, Italian, rich man whose family - like those of all white immigrants to America, at least historically - probably contributed to or at best tolerated or supported slavery, singing about how tough it is to be a slave/black worker, in a black voice? Nah. Bridge too far, methinks. Personally, anyway.

I know you can't realistically restrict music to one race or group, but there are limits I feel, and respect must be maintained and given. Maybe if Frankie had duetted with a black singer? I don't know. But him singing this on his own in a "black voice" is almost, to me, as bad as singing in blackface.

In some ways, the country matters. If a German sang Old Man River then it's not quite the same as Sinatra. The sanest argument I've heard for Cultural Appropriation was the taking of someone's culture for profit. I think something about the Oppressor Race doing it was included. And that makes sense.

It's a hard issue to parse because in some ways that Oppressor is always opening up the market for potential new listeners. I think the prime example here is Elvis. He 100% took blues music and made millions (for his manager). So here are the questions:

1. Elvis seemed to celebrate black artists in Interviews (iirc), citing Fats Domino as doing rock music better than he did in a 1957 Jet interview.
2. Because the White masses were denied black music by the white power structure through radio, and therefore thought Elvis was doing something wildly different, should we blame them?
3. Is it Elvis's job to fix this problem? Or the country?

The problem is I don't think it's Elvis's job to fix America's race problem. But if you don't blame him the problem persists. So you can't do nothing.

My 2 cents is, talking about cultural appropriation won't fix the issue. I think it's a problem reflected in music but not caused by music. If you really want to fix injustice, you need to go after the low-hanging fruit of hosuing, education, and labor policy.

I don't think it's that simple.

In Australia Midnight Oil, a band of Anglo-Australians, have recorded many songs about Australia's poor treatment of its indigenous black inhabitants. Is that cultural appropriation? Of course many aboriginal musicians such as Archie Roach sing those kind of songs as well, but the fact is that Midnight Oil have done a great deal to keep these issues in the public consciousness - in particular the consciousness of white Australians who might otherwise not hear many of these kinds of songs.

MO are not pretending they are black. They are saying "We are white, we have black and white people here, and we have these problems that need addressing."

In general I don't agree with the premise that you have to be black African to sing traditional black-African songs, that you have to be Irish to sing Irish folk songs, etc. I think it should all be fair game, as long as it's done respectfully.

"Cultural appropriation" criticism is a pet peeve of mine. I think it's deeply flawed for a number of reasons. Some of those reasons are:

It promotes thinking in racial/tribal terms, where we're making just the same sorts of reasoning errors that fuel prejudices such as racism and sexism in the first place; it sees particular cultural tropes as "belonging" to some race, ethnicity, nationality, etc. merely by virtue of people being in that categorization, and it sees people as divorced from the cultural tropes, including artistic tropes, in question merely by not belonging to racial, ethnic, nationality etc. categorization in question.

For example,even though Paul Robeson's dad had been born into slavery (from which he escaped in his teens) Paul sure as hell didn't know what slavery was like. Paul's mom was part of a very prominent Quaker family. Paul's dad, when Paul was born, was a popular reverend in Princeton, New Jersey. Paul went to Rutgers on a full scholarship. He was a football star there. He was on the debate team. He was in the glee club. He was in a fraternity. He was a Cap and Skull. He graduated valedictorian and then he went to law school at Columbia.

Meanwhile Sinatra was born in a tenement to Italian immigrant parents, including a father who was illiterate, at a time in the U.S.when Italians were often seen as an undesirable minority. By some accounts Sinatra was physically (not sexually) abused as a kid. He got kicked out of high school (for "rowdiness") and didn't finish, then he dropped out of a business vocational school. Sinatra didn't know what slavery was like either, of course, but he certainly had a harder, far less charmed upbringing than Robeson had.

Or take examples in the vein of Talking Heads or Paul Simon "appropriating" AfroBeat, South African music and the like. It could easily be the case that a white kid growing up in Iowa, say, is obsessed with Fela Kuti, Ebo Taylor, Hugh Masekela, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and so on, while a black kid growing up in Nigeria or South Africa never listens to that music at all, but instead exclusively listens to Beethoven, Mozart and so on. Yet people would have a problem with the white kid doing music heavily influenced by Kuti etc. while having no problem with the black kid doing music like that, even though the latter only listened to Kuti etc. two weeks prior to creating the music in question. The reasoning behind this sort of thing isn't merely ridiculous, it's nonexistent.

But I'm also giving too much credence to the notion of "authenticity," which is itself very misconceived. The arts, including music, are very often fictional in a broad sense, where artists are essentially acting/playing characters, where people who don't know the artist personally would never know this, and where there is nothing wrong with this fact. The whole gist of acting is that you're playing something that you're not in real life. The more you're simply being yourself, the less you're acting at all.

The problem with Warner Oland playing Charlie Chan wasn't that Oland was playing Charlie Chan, it was that Chinese actors weren't playing Sherlock Holmes. Chinese actors weren't getting work--at least not starring roles. That was the problem, not that anyone was "playing something they weren't," because that's what acting is.

This is just scratching the surface of some of the issues with "cultural appropriation" criticism, but we've got to start somewhere.

^^Well put, and also, welcome back, whoever you are...:)

This is a such bizarre, almost comical, reframing of both their lives

Sure, so per you the "correct" framing would be?

You are certainly not alone in your concern about cultural appropriation, TH. It's a tricky topic, but I thought these comments were particularly good:-

*every member of a white blues band sighs with relief*

I thought this was an excellent post, T Station.
It also moves the discussion away from cultural appropriation, and towards the connection between singing and acting. It is therefore the perfect chance to bring up this old thread of mine:-

https://www.musicbanter.com/general-...t-fiction.html

Not much analysis, but it has a few more examples and reaches the staggering conclusion that, er, we like some songs, but not others.
EDIT: A better way to say that might be: We allow ourselves to be convinced by some songs, but we balk at accepting others.

It's a thorny issue for certain. I'm finding in my new country music journal that the contribution made by African-American musicians to the genre, including the introduction of the banjo, was totally erased from history until recently. This is particularly galling in what became, let's make no bones about it, one of the most racist music genres. They really wanted it to be a whites-only club, but if you dig a little there is a whole host of black men and women standing behind the so-called giants of the genre.

And then you have the first ever real country hit, written by a white man, sung by a white man, in which an old slave remembers his old master and mistress fondly. I don't think it's possible to be more disturbing and disgusting than that.

"Taking"? That's an odd word to use. Why would you use the word "taking"? No one owns general ideas/tropes, etc. (even if we accept copyright laws as they stand). So you're not taking anything from anyone.

Apartheid hasn't existed for awhile, by the way. (My wife is a South African who grew up as a minority under Apartheid.)

It's a larger trend enforced by the music industry, but to individualize it: Imagine that a homeless street performer in a third world country plays a song that a popular artist records on their cell phone while on vacation and takes into the studio. They use millions of dollars of funding to bring in great performers, arrangers, producers, and marketers that popularize the sound. When those campaigns work and make a lot of money, it can drive some crumbs of attention to the original artist once the sound is popularized, but it's nowhere near the level that they'd receive if they had backing that could afford to fail.

The music industry works in a more abstracted way and it's not immediately damning, but it's definitely something to be conscious of. Some artists make up for it by bringing artists from the cultures that influenced their sound onto their tours, labels, and such, which I think is a great approach for it despite still being a crumb approach. Sublime Frequencies is the plutonic ideal of that but I think the Grateful Dead are a good example too.

I want to come back and address some stuff you said here, but first I want to ask if you'd say the above has anything to do with the idea of it being okay for Frank Sintra to sing "Ol' Man River" contra Paul Robeson?

It was more on the idea of "taking" in the context of cultural appropriation. Elvis with black or Hawaiian culture would be a better example.

Sure.

So the idea is basically you feel that someone should be compensated for general ideas that someone utilizes to make a lot of money from, right?

Why would that have anything to do with cultures? For example, say that Taylor Swift has a family that doesn't at all believe in sharing wealth, and Taylor Swift has a living-below-the-poverty-line sister who actually came up with a lot of ideas that Taylor based music on. Should Taylor's sister be compensated?

Right. My post is a better representation of the idea than that framing though.

I focused on cultures because the discussion is about cultural appropriation.

Ja pay the underdog Swift.

Sure. But then it's not the notion of "cultural appropriation" really. The idea is just a general combo of:

(1) General ideas, not specific expressions, deserve compensation when they're capitalized on (which is a big can of worms even if we agree with copyright law, because provenance is so hard to establish)

combined with

(2) A general economic egalitarianism where there's a belief that (1) is a reasonable way to try to shoot for this.

It's not really a point about the ethics of cultural appropriation per se or about "ownership" relative to cultures, specifically, regardless of the financial situation involved. (For example, a lot of people who have a problem with cultural appropriation would have a problem with Taylor Swift exploiting Singaporean cultural tropes, even though Singapore is one of the wealthiest countries in the world.)

Retribution should reach all spheres of exploitation but the cultural level, especially when it falls along nationalistic lines, is one of the more obvious cases to recognize and resolve.

Singapore is wealthy but doesn't have the industry influence that an American mainstream artist like Swift would have, not really comparable imo. Even so, it'd be pretty cool if she spotlighted the Singaporean artists that influenced her if she doesn't already (not familiar with her career outside of that one single that made her big tbh).

Wouldn't it be better to achieve economic (relative) egalitarianism via some other means, like reorganizing governments/economic systems in general and even getting rid of different countries altogether?

I don't see it as either/or. Achieving what I'm looking for is pretty close to the economic egalitarianism that would eliminate the need for sovereign nations regardless.

Well, re basically copyrighting general ideas, how would you suggest that we establish provenance there? How many steps do we go back?

Five.

Probably better to do away with copyright and develop a cultural norm of seeking and promoting said influences as well as up-and-coming regional artists though.

Okay but then a lot of people who were influences are going to get screwed. For example, take your guy in Africa who was recorded by some western artist and used as inspiration for whatever album. Say the western artist promotes the guy he recorded. Well, what about the guy who influenced the guy who was recorded? And what about the guy who influenced him, and so on? (And of course this is all pretending that anyone has a small number of influences rather than hundreds.)

Pay them too.

Who is paying them and how is it regulated?

If it's not regulated, a lot of people are going to opt out, especially as we go further along the pipeline.

The labels and estates of famous artists, and I'm regulating them with my wisdom.

Why would they be responsible for paying people way down the pipeline?

For example:

Joe Schmoe, Interscope recording artist, was influenced by Betty Binghoffer, who Joe Schmoe heard play at some dive bar. Well, Betty was influenced by her brother Bubba, and Bubba was influenced by an obscure self-released cassette he heard by the Lubbernids, and John from the Lubbernids was influenced by his mom Alicia, and Alicia was influenced by a homeless guy who used to hang out in front of McDonald's and sing, and so on.

Why is Joe Schmoe and his label responsible for paying the homeless guy and not Alice?

Because I said so, duh.

btw, this is already happening, partially the point of the thread

Yeah, well that sounds really practically workable.

Fund around and find out.

This is such a weird topic coming from a guy who says he hates 1. (Irish) "Gypsies," 2. the English, and 3. American conservatives / Trump voters (which btw includes African-American and Cuban conservatives) - listed in no particular order of intensity for vehement disdain.

I have an example though not so musically ... So do you find it offensive the Leprechaun being culturally appropriated by an American college football team? Do you find the image of the Leprechaun itself offensive? Are you afraid if you fall asleep on the beach a Leprechaun will drag you into the sea? ... perhaps you could be saved by a selkie.

If you're just saying "influenced by," that's fine, but then what's the difference that you're positing?

lol this makes a lot of sense from the way he talks about the pandemic. scratch a middle of the road liberal and you'll find a eugenicist

Also, when you think of it, the fact that Sinatra sung it might've brought the song to a wider audience, and influence the thinking/feeling of people more people (even in a subconscious manner).
Also, as you pointed out the song was actually written by a white man. You could look for some sort of cultural appropriation rather here, than with Sinatra.
But really – isn't t rather a sign of good will or sensibility of the author/performer?

[Maybe you just felt creeped out by the rendition because it was bad? :bonkhead:]

Would you see a problem with that?
I wouldn't. Simply because don't really see nationalities in people (sure, there are some cultural deferences, but nothing to not be able to overcome), rather the person itself.

If some Hans Jurgen wanted to sing a song about the holocaust (not likely to happen, I'm not sure I've ever heard a pop song about the holocaust, but let's say there'd be one), I'd rather see it as a sign of that individuals grief, emotions, sensibility, etc. It's Hans singing about the WW2, and not a German singing about it. The same might apply here to Sinatra.

Then I guess those subjects would have to be written down somewhere. It's not that easy to predict what people will find disturbing.

The Beatles (and many other British groups) often used Indian instruments on their records. Should they? India had been a British colony for a long time.
Is this acceptable or not?

Or is a man singing about women's rights someone who commits appropriation of a subject?

You know where I'm getting at?


Also, today's German people are not responsible for their grandfathers' and grangrandfathers' actions. Just like Sinatra is not responsible for slavery, nor am I or you responsible for the fact that women didn't have the right to vote until 70-80 years ago.

1up

I'd also add to the racial/tribal enumeration "national"

This isn't the same thing.
This is actually "using someone" or someone's art to make yourself rich. It has nothing to do with cultural appropriation.

That's probably why it's better to address existing complaints instead of inventing future ones, right?

I glossed over the Sinatra discussion so not sure if it's been brought up, but an important note is that his version was performed the a NAACP event. If I were him I might've adapted the lyrics or introduced it along the lines of it being a shared struggle to account for him taking on a black man's perspective or something but I wouldn't call that an egregious case.

50s exotica is a better example of cultural appropriation since a good deal of it creates an alien version of what white people imagine the music of a country sounds like. That occasionally took over the public perception of what those regional musics sounded like, closing many nonwesternized traditions out of the spotlight.

It's an analogy that attempts to individualize a pretty dispersed scenario, it's not going to be 1:1.

Which black man's perspective, though? It's not as if they all have the same perspective by virtue of being black, lol. That's very transparently just the same sort of thinking error that fuels racism in the first place.