I believe tobacco use is primarily related to Native American religious rites. But as far as I know, a person smoking in Paris does not diminish a tobacco offering in Window rock. Chocolate as well.
Presenting a Djinba dance as your own, in a paid performance, would be appropriation. Doing such a dance in your yard would not.
Most practices are fair game. Unless you believe that a particular group practices the One True Religion. Then, ritual practices from that religion might fall under blasphemy-type offenses, rather than appropriation.
I do not believe that just because a practice or object has a particular cultural origin, all use of it is forever âownedâ by the originating culture. Even if the originating culture took great pains to protect the knowledge from outsiders. The cultivation of silk is an example of that.
I generally feel on the side of believing that the burden of proof is on the offended. Mostly because people make appropriation arguments based on how they feel about a practice, rather than itâs objective historic origins. Also, there should be proof of harm. If someone is offended by my use of a cultural practice because they personally associate that practice with this or that culture, I am not too bothered.
As for the burrito issue that started this topic, I have not found a menu for that particular shop. But I have a passing acquaintance with burritos in general. Some of my favorite ingredients would be unknown in the Precolumbian New World: beef, chicken, cheese, sour cream, rice, wheat flour,and lettuce. Of course, I prefer bison to beef. But I am fond of flour tortillas, which would be more familiar in ancient Rome than in Tenochtitlan.
Within the context of my original comment it makes sense. Taken out of that context it appears like Iâm dismissing inequality.
This sub-argument started with me making a larger point about how all culture is interconnected, a pretty liberal and inclusive idea, and degenerated into âhey, wait a minute, heâs not angry enough about racial injustice!â
I was never addressing whether it was right or wrong how they were treated, just that popularity with a white audience was still an increase in popularity: simple math. Perhaps I could have added a caveat about the sad truth of record company BS and all this would have been avoided.
The music industry exploited anyone they could, and the less sophisticated were the most exploited whatever their color. A 22 year old rarely knows a good lawyer. Thereâs plenty of anecdotes of young white musicians making almost nothing and losing control of their copyrights, even in more recent decades.
On Motherâs Day we took my mom out for Japanese food. We had a good laugh when my wife asked the waitress what the Japanese word for the pickled ginger was and she replied she didnât know, she was Chinese. Freakonomics had a segment on whether it is racist that Asian or Mexican restaurants will not hire white waitstaff.
[quote=âorenwolf, post:53, topic:101818â]
If I start selling [hamantaschen] at a farmers market along with other baked goods, with no reference to their history or origin, thatâs appropriation[/quote]
What if it were Frankfurters? Would you have to explain their German origins? That Pizza & zeppoles are Italian? Seems to me the only distinction is the market penetration of the product. In NYC hamantaschen are relatively ubiquitous, in other areas of the continent less so. If I opened a Currywurst stand would I have to explain the origins of it being a German appropriation of a British appropriation of an Indian food?
Of course, that caricatured person would be completely unremarkable in medieval Europe, but completely alien to America at that time. (Although facial hair was not completely unknown to them)
Interesting story: Currywurst is not appropriation. English curry powder is derived from enjoying the taste and using European ingredients to bring a unique taste like Indian curry to Europe. Curry itself has existed all over the globe before written history, so making a curry powder and calling it a generic âcurryâ and not Garam Masala (the dish it is attempting to emulate) is fine - especially since no one knew what Indian curry would be like even if they were familiar with curries themselves.
It was when trade became more widespread, and the common man had more access to spices, that European cuisine turned away from the heavy use of spices. Snobbery is the reason why a lot of white people food tastes so bland.
Except there is a long history of exploitation of black artists, right up to the modern era.
And no one is saying âdonât appreciate, engage with, or buy black music.â People have been saying for a very long time that black artists (all artists) should be fairly compensated for their work. That has been a struggle from day one and in some cases, it continues to be.
Also, the less able to access the legal system fairly. So yes, black artists, historically, were indeed exploited more than white artists, even if they were aware of their rights and had the sophistication to express them. But if they were black, they legally had less rights up until the 1960s.
But the industry also functioned very differently and the first artists-songwriters able to access greater control over their copyrights were white artists. Do you think that Mick Jagger, a student of the London School of Economics, didnât know how to cut a great deal and had the cultural capital to do so?
The banjo is a combination of West African and Southern European elements. Although it is a five string without a resonator, so it is an American combination. The Uke is Portugal. The Mandolin is Italian. That one is probably actually made there. The four string violin is Italian. I cannot tell what type of Guitar is being used.
But that being said, if you follow those instruments and their predecessors far enough back, You are probably going to find their origins in China or Central Asia,
Care to link to your sources? According to Wiki most of the ingredients in âcurryâ are not native to Europe, and it was most certainly brought into popularity there by British returning from India. The popular origin story of Currywurst is in 1949 a hausfrau traded booze to some British soldiers in the occupying forces for some ketchup and curry powder, neither being popular in Germany at that time.
All this begs the question of whether I can sell anything but Ashkenazi soul food like pastrami and knishes without an explanatory card pleading for dispensation.
I would say that record companies exploit everyone to the full extent that they can get away with. Obviously someone with a strong knowledge of business and economics is going to make deals with more favorable terms. It canât be as simple as just being about race, because that would not explain people like Ray Charles and B.B. King.
It appears that the top earning musicians of the 1950s were:
Elvis
Little Richard
Chuck Berry
Buddy Holly
Ray Charles
Most musicians of any heritage have always been poor. And many of those recognized as possessing real genius never really made any money. Charlie Parker and Woody Guthrie come to mind. I am sure there are real and horrific cases of exploitation due to race or other factors. But there seem to be enough exceptions to the rule that it is inaccurate to make broad simplifications.
This is not true at all, certainly not today, and not even in old fashioned English curry recipes from hundreds of years ago (which did have local ingredients you wouldnât find in traditional recipes, like apples and flour for example, but the curry powder itself was a pretty standard mix of authentic spices, itâs usually a Madras style masala, the final dish wouldnât have resembled anything traditional though).
Curry itself has existed all over the globe before written history
Wha?! The word Curry comes from a Tamil root in the 17th century, and used to refer to stew-like dishes cooked with a specific herb - which got itâs name from the dish, the curry leaf (an ingredient common to southern Indian cuisine), in its modern incarnation it refers to any Indian style dish, usually with some form of sauce. However you define it though it only existed in the Indian subcontinent until relatively recently (spreading out to south-east Asia before Europe), and evolved significantly over time, what they were eating before written history would have shared some ingredients but wouldnât have been much like what they were eating in the Mughal empire for example (which brought in a lot of Central Asian and Persian influences), and that is very different again from the modern style again (and Iâm not just referring to the British-Indian-Restaurant style, modern traditional Indian food would be unrecognisable without Chillies and other new-world ingredients as well).
so making a curry powder and calling it a generic âcurryâ and not Garam Masala (the dish it is attempting to emulate) is fine - especially since no one knew what Indian curry would be like even if they were familiar with curries themselves.
Garam Masala isnât a âdishâ itâs a particular style of spice blend (as with all blends thereâs plenty of room for flexibility with the exact ingredients - with numerous regional and familial variations, but there are usually a handful of essentials and a few spices youâd never use or mix in the same masala).
Youâre right though that âcurrywurstâ isnât an example of appropriation, but then the entire concept of appropriation with regard to cuisine (as with most everything else as well) doesnât make any sense.
I mean âEuropeanâ as in available in Europe much like chili powder is common here and has been for a long time. âCurry Powderâ is a western invention that was created to reflect the taste of garam masala, a very common dosh in India. Note that European curry is nothing like garam masala. True garam masala has a lot of regional variety, and each place had a distinct taste - but Europeans didnât really know this they just new the spices they had through trade turned into good food. And they tinkered. If you made a âcurry flavoredâ dish using curry powder and say itâs authentic people would laugh at you, the tastes are radically different.
There was a whole Good Eats and a few other few history shows talked about it, so does the manga Addicted to Curry which talks about the history of western Curry as well as the distinct local currys inane different regions. It was just something I read a lot about after reading Addicted to Curry years ago and found interesting, not something I can cite sources for on the fly.
So Currywurst being a creation based on curry powder and ketchup means that it was invented using zero (packaged) ingredients common to SE Asian curries and had a different preparation entirely.
âCurryâ is just a regional term for a sauce accompanying rice. As a preparation similar recipes existed everywhere, just the specific Indian curry dishes with the regions blend of spices didnât exist.
So yeah, you have a lot more detailed definitions for the words when Iâm speaking broadly about history and preparation. Not all foods we call curry are derived from Indian dishes, and not all foods that are similar to Indian curry are called curry.
