That statement is worth nothing, and is antisemitic victim-blaming, because it flagrantly ignores two points:
First, the fact that Jews were minority parts of the communities of those countries, sometimes for centuries, before they expelled or murdered us, and, as part of that, we used what foods were available locally. You can’t appropriate what you were involved in the creation of.
And two (especially since @orenwolf tagged me in this thread and didn’t include this aspect): appropriation is an aspect of societal-scale abusive power dynamics, where a dominant culture can pick and choose parts of a subordinate culture for their enjoyment, while the subordinate culture is marginalized, sanctioned, or endures other backlash for engaging in their own traditions. Since we Jews were murdered or expelled and sometimes the only things that we escaped with were the family recipes, I think I can guess which side was the marginalized and subordinate one.
I don’t think he learned that in the London School of Economics. I think he learned that after having to deal with Allen Klein.
Fixed.
Probably true. I’m sure having a LSE degree helped, though. 
Yeah! This is just what this thread actually needed!
So you can’t name a black Jazz artist who’s been erased from public consciousness only to be replaced by a white one? Thought not.
I think this is a case where the word “genocide” is inappropriate, hyperbolic. Culture is always changing and being influenced by outsiders: people don’t want it to remain the same, it either mutates or stagnates. And it’s not like blacks in America only listened to music from within black culture-- Charley Pride might be an outlier, but then Al Green and Ray Charles used to cover country songs too.
You would be very hard pressed to find anyone who loves jazz that’s not aware of its history, and while there are probably people who know nothing about the history of rock, serious music fans will always know this stuff. An awful lot of Americans don’t know much at all about history (or geography, or science) so not knowing about the roots of black music is simply part of the general dumbing down of America.
Maybe it’s not fair to call Elvis “The King of Rock N Roll”, but when he came on the scene “rock” was only a few years old, and he had a string of huge hits all at once, so him being called “the king” is not completely unjustifiable. Nor do I think he planned any sinister conspiracy to “rule over” black music-- it’s just what he liked to sing. Ultimately his reign was short-lived, he’s the “king” in name only now.
Buddy Bolden, to name just one.
Incorrect. He’s regarded as one of the fathers of jazz, as anyone who’s knowledgeable about the origins of jazz will know. He certainly wasn’t replaced by any similar era white musicians, if anything erased him from wider public consciousness, along with the other New Orleans originators, Bechet, Kid Ory, etc, it was the New York players of the bebop era, who were all black of course.
Yet it was the Original Dixieland Jass Band who were recorded the first jazz record ever, rather than Bolden or any of his other black contemporaries.
There are no recordings anywhere of Buddy Bolden.
We know his influence now, but back then, few did. He was influential, but not financially successful.
Of course, there are many of his contemporaries whose names we’ve never heard.
They didn’t replace trad jazz, but supplemented it.
However, symphonic jazz was a white attempt to play jazz music sanitized for white audiences, with as little black influence as possible. This was an attempt to replace black jazz.
Yes, fine, I agree with all that.
That’s not what we were talking about though, I was replying to a post that said:
…cultural genocide in Jazz and Rock and Roll where the black origins of the cultural production have been erased from popular consciousness.
No, they haven’t been erased. No-one in this thread has disputed historical issues that may have occurred, but talking about today there’s no hidden history in need of being recovered, it’s all well established, and has been for a long time now.
There’s nothing to be gained by denigrating the likes of the Elvis or the ODJB (something that’s common in the woke parts of the internet), they may have benefited from societal racism in the past, but not thanks to any malice on their part, and they played a part in overcoming that societal racism themselves, and are more than worthy of recognition for their own additions to the culture.
Also, there were lots of white jazz musicians from later eras who never got the recognition they deserved at the time, Bill Evans for one, or even more egregiously Lennie Tristano. People don’t always get the recognition they deserve, there’s not always a conspiracy behind it.
I probably would have agreed with this a few days ago, but I had to look up info on Paul Whiteman earlier in this thread, and I’m not willing to just shit all over him after reading his wikipedia page. Apparently he tried to work with black musicians when he could, but segregation made it difficult.
I’d say Paul Whiteman is less known than Ellington now, and rightfully so.
You could say this about any style of music though. The popularity of trad jazz had waned quite a bit by the 1950’s, but it was still around. If anything, the fact that Buddy Bolden never recorded would be the main reason most people don’t know him (I only knew about him because he’s mentioned in other people’s songs.)
I stand by my conviction that there’s room for all music, and nothing really gets “replaced”, it eventually comes back. How we define “popular consciousness” might be the bigger issue here-- if we randomly asked people who Sidney Bechet was, how many would know? But then how many people would know who Chiang Kai-shek or Mary Cassatt were? There’s an awful lot of history and culture that the-man-on-the-street would just call “trivia.”
…that we know of.
Various issues (some racial, some just related to the $$$ of the Music Industry) have rolled back progress in music. Talented artists have not gotten the exposure they deserve simply because other artists were considered more marketable. There were many great musicians whose names are lost to history.
Not always, but sometimes there is.
Is it? An originator of the term “genocide,” Rachel Lemkin, included cultural death in her definition. I’ll grant that it sounds extreme, but the ways with which whites in the U.S. routinely ignore concerns from marginalized groups in regards to “whitewashing” and “appropriation”- evident right here in this thread, lead me to believe that attempts to be gentle or nuanced aren’t getting the point across.
No one says it doesn’t, no one says that cultures don’t intermix, co-evolve, and produce new forms. Of course they do. What is being ignored is the dynamic of power, how white supremacy has long defined “American” culture. The existence of white allies and black stars doesn’t say much about the general state of society at all. Blacks couldn’t even perform throughout much of the segregated south in addition to being threatened with violence throughout the country . Even the name is whitewashed! Jazz comes from jass, black slang deemed too sexually explicit for white ears.
Fairness isn’t the issue. Elvis is “The King of Rock N Roll,” that’s not really a debatable point. A small handful have sold more records worldwide than Elvis, and those folks were bigger than Jesus. This is not what I’m referencing though, and I was very clear about that, I’m talking about symbolism. The cultural image of Elvis can’t be tossed aside with a shrug because Elvis was a decent person because the symbolism isn’t about Elvis as a person. It is about white culture and how it appropriates black culture.
White supremacy isn’t a conspiracy, it’s a characteristic deeply embedded within US society. It’s pervasiveness is predicated on the fact that white americans as a whole continue to deny it’s existence, manifested often through historicity i.e. “It’s all in the past.” The problem is that it’s not in the past. Many of my generation were tricked into believing that we should not see color, as if we could trick ourselves into believing the sins of yesterday could be undone by simply swapping out cultural lenses. But if I choose to not see color, which has no negative social consequences for me as a white person, I am also choosing to ignore the negative social consequences that black people still face to this day simply because they are black.
I don’t think it’s possible to separate that dynamic from white appropriation/adoption of black culture, or any minority culture for that matter. I also don’t think it’s possible to truly move forward without addressing it openly and honestly. If we want to rid our culture of white supremacy, we have to be able to see that it’s right in front of our face.
I’ve loved hip-hop and rap since I was a child. The first album I ever specifically asked for was Coolin’ at the Playground Ya Know! by Another Bad Creation; I drifted off to sleep left of the dial with the sounds of Naughty By Nature, Tribe, and the Wu. I privately think anyone who doesn’t have respect for hip-hop has a massive blind-spot (okay, not so private anymore…) I wouldn’t tell any white person not to pursue rapping if that’s what they love- but I would expect them to be cognizant not just of the objective history but specifically the subjective history, experiences, and opinions of the people that gave them rap.
Gershwin and Milhaud were attempting to erase Black music? I just though that they were classical composers who were influenced by Jazz and Brazilian popular music of the 19teens, in the case of Milhaud. It seems to me that they were combining elements to make something new. And their venues were traditional ones for a full orchestra, like Carnegie Hall.
I meant people like Paul Whiteman, not symphonic composers inspired by jazz.
You and I have a lot more in common than you realize.
There is nothing you say about black history I dispute-- this is all common knowledge (I hope)-- and there is nothing I’ve said that is historically inaccurate as well. The underlying white supremacy of America is also a given, since we are a country roughly 3/4 white. If we could completely remove racism from America what would that mean? Would “white culture” still dominate simply by the numbers involved? Is there, or will there ever be one “American culture” or will it always be many cultures, always at odds, always fearful of being co-opted by another?
I think the original questions here were: how do we define cultural appropriation, and what should be done about it? I don’t really see any clear cut answers. What one person might think is offensive, another person (of any race) might find perfectly OK, and there is ample evidence of that throughout the comments here.
Ahh, but it is. The long history of black oppression in the US isn’t going to be improved by treating Elvis as a symbol of evil; you aren’t going to make life for African-Americans more fair by being unfair to an innocent man (who in fact always gave credit to the roots of the music he sang.)
And please tell me how these two comments don’t contradict each other:
versus
Why does this hypothetical white kid get a pass, but not Elvis? (For the record I don’t even like Elvis’s music.)
I too find myself thinking about race all the time, I wish I didn’t have to, I wish more people did, unfortunately most people are completely oblivious to any deep social or philosophical debates. The nature of life means things are never going to be perfect, but that also means we can always improve.
“A lot of people seem to think I started this business. But rock ‘n’ roll was here a long time before I came along. Nobody can sing that kind of music like colored people. Let’s face it: I can’t sing like Fats Domino can. I know that.” Elvis Presley, 1957
You’re not going to get anywhere on this because the goalposts won’t stay still. Every example you raise will get a special case exception or objection. The “supplication and permission” model is full of holes, as is “it can only be bad when done by whites, people of color can appropriate all they want”. There is not a bit of consistency to argue against. I understand what upsets people about the issue, but this whole thing, as is, is a setup for arbitrary judgement because every factor cited for “respectful compliance” is not binary.
Because Elvis has passed on into Keynes’ “long run”. We can’t change what Elvis did at this point, but we can make those that would follow in his footsteps aware of what they’re doing.
What we can do with Elvis is explore him as a cultural touchpoint through many different lenses. One of those lenses (and I would say one of the important ones) is the lens of white appropriation of other cultures and “rebranding” it.
And that’s reasonable.
“Chuck D later clarified his lyric associating Elvis Presley with racism. In an interview with Newsday timed with the 25th anniversary of Presley’s death, Chuck D acknowledged that Elvis was held in high esteem by black musicians, and that Elvis himself admired black musical performers. Chuck D stated that the target of his Elvis line was the white culture which hailed Elvis as a “King” without acknowledging the black artists that came before him.”
I get it.
Let me add this, which explores ideas of race and culture better than I possibly could. I think everyone engaged in this debate would appreciate what he has to say.
