Trollheart

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.

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Tristan_Geoff

I agree with u. Das weird.

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

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Trollheart

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.

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Frownland

*Eric Clapton's I Shot the Sherriff intensifies*

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TheBig3

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.

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bob_32_116

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.

Terrapin_Station

"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.

adidasss

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

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Ninetales

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

Terrapin_Station

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