This week has really made me think critically about the cultural exchanges we’ve seen throughout the semester. Especially through the medium of music. Music is a really important and poignant method of self reflection and culture. But it’s also really nebulous and, as artists often borrow from one another so liberally, it’s hard sometimes to trace the true origins of music (and I would argue that sometimes it doesn’t matter). I knew there were issues in the music industry, especially in America, over this “Love and Theft” idea — Elvis is the first example that comes to mind. There is a history of the commodification of black culture, similar to the commodification of black bodies, and a seeming “validation” of those cultural forms and subsequent success when placed in the hands of, typically, white men. And there is blatantly something wrong with that — an erasure of history and context like what we discussed with the use of “Chain Gang” by The Commitments. What I hadn’t considered, was if this is a form of minstrelsy, a commodification of the performance of blackness? Is it a performance of blackness? I guess I’m still struggling with where to draw the lines. To what extent does music not belong to one specific people or history? What distinguishes artists that are influenced by soul music and jazz and the blues in a positive way, and those who try to remove it from or don’t recognize the people who created it? Is context that critical element that separates them? I don’t know.
I think this consideration of context can go a long way towards coming up with a true and nuanced definition of the transatlantic and the black and green — especially as we read the appropriateness of these gestures. Someone mentioned in class that The Commitments present a sort of spectrum of these gestures, from those we can see to those that are manifestly inappropriate. I really see the transatlantic as a space of encounter, and a place to try to understand the long standing histories of colonialism and what it meant to be colonized. Within that however, there must also be an understanding of where the histories diverge and the differences between class and race. When The Commitments hit upon contexts that relate, their gestures help them to understand their situation. When they erase or don’t know the nuance of the oppressions of African Americans, the relation becomes problematic. No one comes to an encounter without their history. In the same way artists, whether musical or otherwise, can’t enact this particular black and green encounter without a consideration not only of the similar histories, but of the different oppressions as well.
I think that the issue of appreciation and appropriation comes to a head in the simultaneous events of the band breaking up and also getting signed to record a single. The fact that these events occur on the same night suggest to the reader that once the band starts to explicitly profit off of their tribute to black soul music, Doyle shows the shift of their music from appreciation to appropriation. If the band were to continue performing and building upon their growing success, the appropriation would be far more obvious. Because of the band’s implosion, Doyle keeps the band from entering fully into the territory of appropriation. Yet, he raises this same issue in “The Deportees,” in which he forms a group which performs covers of Woody Guthrie and other folk songs. Although these songs are not as tied to the African-American experience as the soul songs are, their repeated use also shows their balance between appreciation and appropriation, hinting towards the repeated Irish wish to use other cultures to define themselves.