Maybe listen to other perspectives?
the case of Elvis is particularly infuriating because for many black people he represents the most successful white appropriation of a black genre to date…
in the face of much black criticism of Elvis, some writers have offered their own theories as to why the singer should be awarded more, not less accolades. Michael T Bertrand’s Race, Rock and Elvis contends that the arrival of Elvis and rock’n’roll helped white Southerners to rethink their attitude to race and gave as yet unacknowledged impetus to the burgeoning civil rights movement. And this week the Daily Mirror’s Tony Parsons imagined a world without Elvis as a cultural armageddon. “Elvis changed the soul of modern music,” he argues. “Without him, Madonna would be a teacher in Detroit.” He also quotes John Lennon’s remark that “before Elvis there was nothing”. An Elvis-free world would have seen black music remaining “underground” and “segregated”, Parsons suggests.
But the reality is, black music never stays underground. White people always seek it out, dilute it and eventually claim it as their own. From Pat Boone’s Tutti Frutti to current boyband sensations N Sync and Blue. This is fine, but be honest about it.
but then music industry exploitation is hardly a phenomenon unique to culturally appropriated music, the problem there isn’t related to the transfer of culture, it’s orthogonal to that.
Orthogonal? Um no, I’d say “part and parcel” is a better way to describe yet another common white form of theft.
