Appropriation = Good!

the difference is there you would be harming your own reputation because the posthumous kafka industry is more powerful than you

the kafka industrial complex crushes would-be superseders like scarabs before an implacable executioner

It's about treating your source material with respect i guess. but yeah on the whole i agree that cultural assimilation is generally a good thing so long as you're not seen to be taking the piss out of the culture you're appropriating. Trying to gatekeep certain ideas because they belong exclusively to yours or another's culture seems like its own version of bigotry in a way.

Really there need to be examples mentioned here. Food's a big one - you wouldn't have kedgeree or Baltis if it weren't for two cultures colliding. How much fashion is inspired by combining cultures?

Surely a lot of it is a case of doing it well or doing it badly. I think people are annoyed at Kanye West not for simply using them, but the way he used them.
Check out Diamanda Galas talking about Timbaland...
http://diamandagalas.com/writings/diamanda-vs-timbaland/

I've wanted for quite a long time to see a discussion of this since I saw a thread of people criticizing David Byrne not only using foreign elements in his own music but also for releasing foreign artists on his own label; I just cant get my head around the second being a bad thing.
Accusations of cultural imperialism have really interested me lately. I think even metalheads feel that is what is happening to their music when indie rock starts taking elements of metal. Or people speculating that a celebrity probably doesnt know who the band on their t-shirt is (why shouldnt they be fans?).

I think there are serious things to consider about the way you handle what you take. I really like seeing someone's foreign fetishized fantasy idea of a place they have never been that you might see in a work of fiction. It mutates into something really interesting. Some people are really sensitive about western people fictional fantasies of east and I agree it can be racist but I think some people are oversensitive and think it is all racist. I havent read that much about "orientalism" though.
There is some people who worry about western rock/pop poisoning other cultures, but generally I think most people think rock/pop is for anyone who wants it, globally.

I really dont think most old religions and cultures would be any less guilty of appropriation.

It wasnt so long ago I found out the Nazi's appropriated the swastika and now it is totally tarnished. Possibly the biggest disaster of appropriation I can think of.

Some cultural systems that weren't appropriated.

The rhetoric around appropriation still implies a paternalistic relation between a cultural center and "protected" outgroups, whereas the world really is becoming flat. South Korea was an impoverished, war-torn nation just 50 years ago, and now has global hit-single assembly lines. Musicians in Luanda are using the better technology to sample Western music than Byrne/Eno had in 1980. I can hear (and be influenced by) a Polish band more easily than a band playing across town.

Were the rhetoric taken seriously, our descendants would be worse off for it. Cultural appropriations are fertile ground for entirely novel genres, and this is most true when the borrowers (from conmingling, distillation, confusion, irreverence or ineptitude) misinterpret their sources. Would our collective inheritance be richer had Roman literati frowned upon stealing the whole pantheon and mythos of the Greeks? Had Buddhism been denied an opportunity to transmogrify on its journey across China to Japan? Had British skiffle musicians not borrowed African-American blues, and gotten it wrong?

@RAG: Hindus seem rather keen on reclaiming the swastika, and given enough time, probably will. Who among us finds the Mongolian black banner repulsive, when only 700 years ago it heralded more death and brutality than National Socialists could muster. There will be new icons of evil to supplant Hitler & pals, and I'd like to think that 700 years hence, he'll be as obscure to schoolchildren as Tamerlane.

Two booming posts

The issue isn't so much 'protecting' cultures as recognising and addressing power imbalances. You as an individual may listen to and be influenced by Polish bands but the culture that you are part of, on the whole, does not. I'd be willing to bet that no Polish musicians are currently playlisted on US radio and i'd be surprised if any made it into influential music publications this year (despite the UK having hundreds of thousands of Poles, i'm only aware of three mainstream press articles over the last couple of years talking about Polish pop and i wrote two of them myself). If a British or American band had the uncharacteristic good taste to release a record heavily influenced by Kapela Ze Wsi Warszawa they'd probably have a much easier time getting attention than a band called Kapela Ze Wsi Warszawa would.

In the same way, Miley Cyrus releasing an r&b record is not a problem. Miley Cyrus getting 50 times as much airplay as K.Michelle for her r&b record is a problem. The same goes for 'Snoop Lion' and any number of Jamaican reggae acts. The question shouldn't be "was Elvis racist", it should be "was a structure that allowed Elvis to thrive at the expense of black performers doing the same sort of music racist?" and the answer would clearly be yes.

A guy from New York who goes to Tokyo to compete with ramen joints on their own terms would be a substantially different form of appropriation to a wealthy venture capitalist opening US-wide chain of faux-Japanese restaurants and putting hundreds of family-owned places out of business. Katy Perry putting on a geisha-themed show for a Japanese audience would be different to Katy Perry putting on a geisha-themed show for a primarily white audience in a country where Japanese-American women are still routinely stereotyped, etc, etc, etc. It's about power and the internet hasn't radically changed that.

tamerlane is still hated or revered in iran the caucusus etc, not everywhere is so semiotically blasé

good post sv

I think you have to approach it with a kind of Marxist cultural ontology / critique. Appropriation isn't always the same thing as profiteering, but they're often connected. Somebody (with a low profile) writing like Kafka with the edges sanded off doesn't demean Kafka's work because Kafka's work is established, recognised, and successful, and it's unlikely that the new writer will ascend to great commercial heights from doing so (though they may). Paperchase shamelessly ripping-off individual designers with tiny stores on Etsy and making profit on the back of stolen original ideas is problematic though.

Likewise appropriating ideas from African (or wherever) musicians and becoming very famous and successful, whilst those African musicians remain relatively unheard of in your audience. Byrne's attempted to give something back by releasing records, taking people on tour, collaborating etc, but I doubt any of them enjoy the success and cache he has achieved. Neo-liberalism might say that's OK, because people wanted to buy his product and not the product of the people he was inspired by, but understanding market forces allows you to take advantage, and just by being raised within the (US pop music) market Byrne's at an advantage.

So it's not just that anti-appropriation people are also pro-cultural-segregation, although it can often come across like that. Appropriation is probably semantically the wrong term. I don't think it's about respect for the source material so much as it's about not making yourself rich off someone else's idea while that someone else lives in penury. So I think it's about people, not product. I'm not sure I'm expressing myself as clearly as I'd like here.

I'm not sure that our concern with market success is necessarily aligned w/ Marxist concerns. Certainly we can note that someone is being exploited and someone is doing the exploiting but when we start talking about who is achieving chart success -- as though that it something that matters and is important to the development of human culture -- I take exception. Especially when we start conflating economic exploitation and racism, the latter of which is used to justify the former, but not really vice-versa. "Miley Cyrus getting 50 times as much airplay as K.Michelle for her r&b record is a problem." But why? In 100 years they'll both be dead and neither will likely be remembered. Because it's unfair that one musical artist makes more money than another musical artist, and it seems race has something to do with it? Marxism is overkill for explaining why one person makes more money than another particular human being. It's much better for explaining why 1% of humanity makes more money than the other 99%. I can't help but see this other appropriation conversation a bastardization of that ideological - or worse, an 'appropriation' of Marxism for the sake of post-colonialism (about which I have complained prolifically already on ilx).

eg christianity + islam - the two biggest religions in the world - are both appropriations of judaism, and both are presented as 'elevations of' or 'perfections of' jewish religion + culture. i don't think any jews are particularly upset about that appropriation though (more upset about literal persecutions from those groups) and if anything are pretty proud of their contribution to world culture + religious development. my father loves to talk about how christianity was a jewish conspiracy to teach the pagans about monotheism (he and varg would likely have a lot to talk about).

Are they really appropriations? They seem more like futurama to Simpsons than family guy to Simpsons.
Well I guess in some ways it is more like family guy to Simpsons but

You'll get no argument from me since my point is that appropriation isn't a useful concept.

when we start talking about who is achieving chart success -- as though that it something that matters and is important to the development of human culture -- I take exception. Especially when we start conflating economic exploitation and racism,

Take money out of the equation and you are still left with a situation in which minorities are taught by experience that their cultural totems are not suitable for mass consumption, or lack validity, unless presented by a white face. That surely has a psychological impact over and above the economic.

This is fascinating.

Scik Mouthy says "Likewise appropriating ideas from African (or wherever) musicians and becoming very famous and successful, whilst those African musicians remain relatively unheard of in your audience. Byrne's attempted to give something back by releasing records, taking people on tour, collaborating etc, but I doubt any of them enjoy the success and cache he has achieved. Neo-liberalism might say that's OK, because people wanted to buy his product and not the product of the people he was inspired by, but understanding market forces allows you to take advantage, and just by being raised within the (US pop music) market Byrne's at an advantage."

Is there anything you think he should have done differently? Do you know how well the support acts went down on those tours? I hate to think what some audiences might have been like, especially if this was at the height of Taling Heads fame (or was this in his solo era?).

Sanpaku- That list of dead languages is very interesting but I'm fairly confident that many of those will have elements that survived in a positive way.
A few months ago there was a BBC art documentary about anicent tribes that are now collectively referred to as Barbarians. It was about how Vandals, Huns and Goths and other cultures I'm forgetting were misrepresented by romans and christians and now the names of those tribes mean something entirely different now, usually in a negative way.
Then I see "Philistine" listed among those languages and think surely that is another culture mocked into a different thing entirely? I'll think twice about using that word again now.

Should Hitler really be forgotten? Or any of the previous people like him who are now largely forgotten?
I'm sick of WW2, but it probably is important that it keeps being discussed. Some might say that us not knowing about earlier warmongers and not learning about enough of the errors of the past is why the world is still shitty in so many ways? Or will the lesson of Hitler have outlived its usefulness eventually?

Mordy I think to the extent that "appropriation" is ever problematic, it depends on the context of power relations. If a conquering power takes the culture of the conquered and presents it as its own and denies it as that of the conquered, I think that's the kind of "appropriation" that is usually criticized. I think that's why the music industry of the 50s, for example, gets criticized for its "appropriation" of black music. The problem isn't that white artists were influenced by black music, it's that the entire apparatus of "rock and roll" consisted of putting forward white artists while simultaneously ignoring or minimizing the black artists who developed the music.

here is a drew friedman comic appropriated from someone's blogspot:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_W8pwMnZMNuQ/TINIzcGfauI/AAAAAAAADoA/wrlli9MgQcs/s400/slfig1.jpg

the entire apparatus of "rock and roll" consisted of putting forward white artists while simultaneously ignoring or minimizing the black artists who developed the music.

Exactly. This is why Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley are forgotten today, while we're all still listening to Pat Boone and Fabian.

Durr. Things have changed a little since the 50s.

On the other side, Hurting, those white artists in the 50s arguably opened up those sounds to a broader audience that followed up by returning to the original artists. I'm not an expert in 50s rock&roll, but I know that Byrne + Simon both inaugurated huge Western interests in African music. I listen predominately to African music in 2013 (almost 100% from non-white artists) and I think Graceland gets some credit for that. In such a case, yes, Graceland can be critiqued for exploiting Ladysmith Black Mambazo + SA afropop, but it can also be credited for the plethora of reissues + access to obscure African music now available in the US.

I take ShariVari's point that requiring a white face to normalize a style/genre can be psychologically debilitating to the original practicing group, but I also think such a thing can't be helped to a certain extent. There are language, idiom, regional, etc elements involved. And once that lacuna between two groups is bridged it opens the door to cultural influence that may have been impossible before. It would be better if ppl didn't require the stepping stone, but if it's required it's maybe misguided to condemn it?

Certainly we can note that someone is being exploited and someone is doing the exploiting but when we start talking about who is achieving chart success -- as though that it something that matters and is important to the development of human culture -- I take exception.
-Mordy

Pat Boone having commercial success with covers of Little Richard songs at the same time that African-Americans were struggling greatly with issues of segregation certainly relates to the development of human culture. K. Michelle being marginalized in 2013 similarly matters regarding culture.

Exactly. This is why Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley are forgotten today, while we're all still listening to Pat Boone and Fabian.

Chuck and Bo though had to hustle for gigs most of their lives and endured a lot civil rights -wise, but I'm hoping you know that

I have never heard of Pat Boone, nor K. Michelle before this week, so I don't feel qualified to discuss either. (I do know Little Richard, however.) Maybe I can digress for a second to talk about two musical forms that I'm very familiar with and how they might relate to the discussion of appropriation? (They're kinda pet topics.)

1. Historical development of klezmer music happened simultaneously w/ development of Romani lăutari musicians. Both Jewish + Romani communities were outside the broader culture, and within their particular groups musicians were even more outsiders. Klezmer + lăutari musicians would travel together - play each others celebratory events, etc, and that mix of cultures turned out to be incredibly productive. This is a kind of ideal cross-appropriation where two groups develop along parallel lines with constant interaction + exchange. I can see how this might be viewed as different from white American culture appropriating black music, but I suspect (and believe) that this klezmer/lăutari model is paradigmatic for how music travels in general. Influence is never one direction and disparate communities have a lot to give each other.

2. This is literal appropriation - Chassidic niggunim have some original compositions, but many of the compositions came from popular songs at the time (17th, 18th, 19th centuries). Some of them are bar songs - literally songs that Polish neighbors sang in their bars. Sometimes with the lyrics intact, sometimes w/ new lyrics, and sometimes w/out lyrics at all. One really famous entry into this genre is a reappropriation of la marseillase, which is now a niggun. Again, this might be different bc it's a very niche culture appropriating from a broader, popular culture, but again, it's an example of sounds + music being lifted pretty much wholesale from one community and having a huge impact the community that borrows it. When I wrote about niggunim I would never try to contextualize this as some kind of crime against French nationalism or Polish bar drinking culture. I'd note that this is a place where Chassidic music culture was impacted + changed by these other cultures. Similarly, isn't that the far more empowering (and sensible) way of characterizing even white American appropriation of black music?

* Also, I should note that I really don't care about the Billboard charts. I don't care which musical artists get acknowledged by the charts and which ones do not. I know not everyone on ilx agrees with that but I just can't get worked up about Billboard changing their criteria for measuring plays, even if it pushes black artists off the charts. I never look at the charts, I don't think they have much of interest to say (now, or even 10 years ago), and I really don't care about which musicians are gaining fame + fortune in the broader popular culture. This might be myopic of me, but K. Michelle not getting enough attention from radio stations is never going to impress me. I'd be open to hearing an argument about why pop music charts matter (and I mean really matter - not matter as some emblematic/symbolic reflection of culture in general), but I'm very, very skeptical.

Chuck and Bo though had to hustle for gigs most of their lives and endured a lot civil rights -wise, but I'm hoping you know that

Yes.

I really don't care about the Billboard charts. I don't care which musical artists get acknowledged by the charts and which ones do not. I know not everyone on ilx agrees with that but I just can't get worked up about Billboard changing their criteria for measuring plays, even if it pushes black artists off the charts. I never look at the charts, I don't think they have much of interest to say (now, or even 10 years ago), and I really don't care about which musicians are gaining fame + fortune in the broader popular culture. This might be myopic of me, but K. Michelle not getting enough attention from radio stations is never going to impress me. I'd be open to hearing an argument about why pop music charts matter (and I mean really matter - not matter as some emblematic/symbolic reflection of culture in general), but I'm very, very skeptical.

Agreed. Temporary/current success is no sign of anything, in my eyes. Especially not in the modern era, where music from the past exists in digital simultaneity with brand-new stuff, and is always available for discovery by people who are interested in the search. And besides, people mythologize the pop charts as though they have something to say about the culture, when a lot of the canonical artists of past decades were regularly beaten on the charts of their time by cheesy shit nobody would listen to now without a gun to their head.

hmm, good point, i guess all pop music is irrelevant because some of it now sounds cheezy and people can listen to old music if they want... huh, never thought about it like that

I'd be open to hearing an argument about why pop music charts matter (and I mean really matter - not matter as some emblematic/symbolic reflection of culture in general), but I'm very, very skeptical.

― Mordy , Tuesday, November 26, 2013 1:34 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what a tantalizing proposition

am I really that fucking old that we've now crossed into a generation of parents who have no idea who Pat Boone is?

i'm 28, the only context that i've heard of pat boone is: i took a 'rock history' class in community college in which there was some blurb in a textbook about how white rockers like pat boone and elvis became more famous and wealthy than the black people whose music they performed

so... yes

I've heard of Elvis.

pat boone was ozzy's neighbor who moved and those frat guys moved into his house, and sharon got mad at them and wished their good neighbor pat boone still lived there.

And flopson, while I respect your desire to be included in this obviously very interesting conversation maybe save the snarky sniping for one of multitude of asinine other threads you frequent?

I'm pretty sure you haven't exhausted the Lorde well yet. Keep plumbing!

i think as a pretty smart guy who has been posting to & reading ilm for howevermany years saying "i've never seen anyone justify pop music's cultural importance and i'm very skeptical that it's possible but i'm willing to hear the arguments now" is pretty facetious. why not engage with arguments that it is important that have already been made? why dismiss "emblematic/symbolic reflection of culture in general"? despite your serious guy earnestly posing a question tone it just seems like you are not arguing in good faith

I didn't say that I've never seen anyone justify pop music's cultural importance. I said that I haven't seen a case specifically for Billboard charts importance. Those are obviously very different things.

Like you do understand that Billboard changing their model for ranking plays was changed by a few ppl who run the magazine/organization and not by some massive democratic participation demanding that black ppl become underrepresented? Or do I totally misunderstand how that change came about?

nothing in the world is done by massive democratic participation bro

And re: emblematic/symbolic meanings of individual institutional decisions - those things are interpretive models and easily abused. Anything can mean anything. Take it from a guy who wrote about how cookie monster vocals are about queering masculine performative tropes.

flopson, as a 'pretty smart guy' do you have anything to contribute here?

woah, when i called u a pretty smart guy i didn't put it in scarequotes

neways i do think there is some kind of feedback from the charts back into radioplay, isn't that what top 40 charts are based off of?

And youtube views apparently. In 2013 it seems weird to be arguing about the relevance of radio stations + billboard charts. Haven't there already been a million articles about the end of the monoculture, the dwindling singles/radio market, etc? Focusing on these increasingly irrelevant modes of music listening as being telling cultural indicators seems like a step backwards from that realization.

And sorry, I misunderstood your post. I thought you were describing yourself as a pretty smart guy.

(They weren't supposed to be scare quotes, they were direct quotes.)

I feel less icky about things that take cosmetic features from other things that also strive for chart dominance. The playing field isn't level, but at least both parties have consented to playing the same filthy game.

Appropriators gotta appropriate.

http://aleheads.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/61ddn-ueiel-_sl500_aa300_.jpg

BLS employment and fed FRED data is done by "a few ppl who run the magazine/organization and not by some massive democratic participation" too. plenty of people say that's a rigged game, too, which is a bit more nuts

i mean, there aren't many data points available when it comes to what people are buying and listening to en masse; billboard is one of them. the fact that it's another kapitalist enterprise is just part of the game. it's not weird to still talk about it in 2013; though less powerful the billboard organization is still powerful! kind of like the US.

I think it's important to note that not only is Billboard less powerful than ever, but that we know what changed in their algorithm that created these new results. They started counting youtube streams.

Also, slightly ot, but I find the current spate of chart analysis to be one of the worst features of contemporary music criticism. It's engaging w/ the most visible and most easily approached musical objects. It seems like the kind of thing that anyone can have an opinion about - it requires no research, insight or expertise. And on ilx at least it has led to a trend where the vast majority of conversation about music in 2013 is about Lorde, Miley Cyrus, Lily Allen, etc. Can we really only talk in this one register? Why did two long paragraphs about klezmer + chassidic niggunim get totally ignored and a throwaway line about Billboard being unimportant get focused on? It's some kind of communal failing - ilm is only as good as the music discussed, and right now we're pretty much as good as Miley Cyrus ime. Some potential and a lot of spectacle.

I don't remember where I read this critique - probably in a few places - but this continued emphasis on cultural exploitation isn't good for anyone. It becomes the prism through which we view all music from any culture. It's either exploiting or being exploited. Appropriating or being appropriated. These things should have range that goes beyond this one critique.

It's kind of fascinating to me how much the pop music machine continues to do essentially what it did in the 50s, i.e. pump out white artists who can make black musical/cultural tropes just slightly more accessible to white audiences. I mean the difference now is that the white artists "appropriating" black music and the black artists coexist more in the pop universe and a listener is more likely to listen to both. But I think we're so used to hearing white artists incorporate diction/vocal tics/slang/dance moves/etc. associated with black culture that we sometimes don't even notice it, e.g. Meaghan Trainor singing that she's "All About That Bass." I mean what's weird to me is that people specifically single out Miley Cyrus twerking as "appropriation" but not like 95% of white pop artists outside of country music.

I don't know that there's anything wrong with cross-cultural borrowing per se, but it seems like what is perceived as "black culture" in 2015 continues to be a space for white people to let loose, be more sexual, be more aggressive, etc. like in certain ways the role of black people in the white imagination hasn't changed much.

Yeah. I was listening to Negativland's "Dispepsi" and there is a clip from a marketing exec about marketing to stereotyping and perceived roles. It basically describes what the entertainment industry is doing now, yes, but also always doing. It isn't limited to a single industry but illustrative of a lot of unresolved cultural issues that are maybe now being more discussed and broadcasted than ever before.

The entertainment industry has always been exploitative of minorities and women, the only question is are we at an all-time high or have things really always just been this bad and not talked about bc of media supremacy?

It's certainly still constant and a serious issue but when a bunch of stars show up to support jay-z's tech venture I can't imagine we're at an "all-time high"

like macklemore is definitely on the timeline with pat boone but i don't think pat boone ever publicly apologized to little richard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ-qRSsmg10

t's kind of fascinating to me how much the pop music machine continues to do essentially what it did in the 50s, i.e. pump out white artists who can make black musical/cultural tropes just slightly more accessible to white audiences...

it seems like what is perceived as "black culture" in 2015 continues to be a space for white people to let loose, be more sexual, be more aggressive, etc. like in certain ways the role of black people in the white imagination hasn't changed much.

Tbf, the American popular music industry (which owes some of its early history to the minstrel show era) was doing this before the 50s. Cf. the Jazz Age, etc.

I'm kind of fascinated that someone could post the OP on ILM in 2001 and have several people agree with him.

I wasn't quite here yet, but wasn't Dave Q known for those kinds of posts, as a schtick? He was like the "hot takes" guy of earlier ILM, is my impression.

iirc ILM 2001 was into white boy bands doing Eurofied takes on Tony! Toni! Toné!

lol

I wasn't quite here yet, but wasn't Dave Q known for those kinds of posts, as a schtick? He was like the "hot takes" guy of earlier ILM, is my impression.

Yes, and I think my point stands.:P

This actually reminds me that last year I observed Yom Kippur for the first time in many years, and since I couldn't actually go to a Kol Nidre service (night service for beginning of Yom Kippur with special service/melodies for that night only) I listened to a really good recording of it on Spotify alone. And it struck me what an amazing, harrowing piece of music it is, but I couldn't bring myself to listen to it again on any other time, because I didn't want to disrespect its purpose.

At the same time though, I would have no problem whatsoever with a non-Jewish person (or a Jewish person for that matter) listening to Kol Nidre purely for pleasure/interest, completely stripped of its context. So appropriate away.

rules obtain: appropriation of the velvet underground = good; appropriation of procol harum = bad

Sund4r- isn't the majority of the thread mostly in agreement with the top post?

http://davidbyrne.com/archive/news/press/articles/I_hate_world_music_1999.php

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DNpUZCXXcAExoEa.jpg

I find my self more and more struck and sometimes annoyed at how much american/british pop music there is that leans heavily on trying to sound like soul and R&B music. Like I had always *known* "rock and roll is black music" but I didn't realize when I was younger how much every single fucking white rock/pop singer is imitating black singers.

any specific examples here? surely a lot of rock singers, especially contemporary ones, are imitating other rock singers?

Bob Seeger was one who struck me recently. Wasn't thinking so much about contemporary as 60s-80s.

Also, less of a singer thing, but it hit me recently that the Doors rhythm section was trying to sound like Booker T. and the MGs.

were they? I always thought Densmore wanted to play bebop and got stuck in a rock band

Tom waits embarrasses me to listen to now lol

For this reason among others

this is a good piece btw https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/09/the-question-of-cultural-appropriation