In The Commitments, Jimmy attempts to stop some band members from smoking weed because “drugs aren’t soul” (Doyle 66). When the band counters that American soul musicians smoked marijuana, Joey the Lips Fagan takes over, saying, “Not true, Brother. Real Soul Brothers say no to the weed. All drugs. Soul says no” (67). Of course, as the band attempts to prove, Joey is wrong; Marvin Gaye, possibly the most famous Soul musician in history, used marijuana extensively, for example. On one hand, this exchange shows Joey’s false understanding of African-American music and musicians, later shown forcefully through his dismissal of jazz. However, more broadly, it shows the inadequacy of transferring black music directly to the Irish context. As bell hooks writes, “White folks who do not see black pain never really understand the complexity of black pleasure. And it is no wonder that when they attempt to imitate the joy in living which they see as the ‘essence’ of soul and blackness, their cultural productions may have an air of sham and falseness that may titillate and even move white audiences but leave many black folks cold” (Onkey 26). Joey’s assertion that real Soul brothers didn’t smoke weed shows an inability to understand black pain of oppression and the memory of slavery. He can recognize the political resistance offered within Soul music but cannot comprehend the pain that creates this resistance. One of the main reasons for drug use in the 1960s was escaping reality yet Joey cannot envision reasons why African-Americans would attempt to escape reality in the 1960s.
Rather than acknowledging that the experiences of the African-Americans when creating Soul music and the Irish when singing it are different, Joey and Jimmy attempt to homogenize the experiences. A heroin epidemic causes this anti-drug stance in Ireland. Drug use was a real problem in the context of Ireland in the 1980s but not so condemned in 1960s Black America. The Irish cannot attempt to properly take from black culture without recognizing the distinct history of African-American oppression. Our class-wide repulsion at the singing of “Chain Gang” is the best example of this homogenizing of experience. The Irish did not experience the chain gang. Yet, like the example of drugs, this discrepancy is glossed over by the band and black experience is mapped directly onto the Irish experience. Through this lens, the Irish performance of Soul music becomes appropriation, forgoing the potential for creating solidarity through similar feelings of oppression and placeless-ness. Without recognizing the context, The Commitments remove the important distinctions between the two experiences of oppression on different sides of the Atlantic which are necessary to avoid appropriation.
I agree! It’s difficult to draw these comparisons, I think, when not all of the same experiences apply. Your discussion of the differences in drug use in African American soul and Dublin soul hit this nail on the head. There are fundamentally different experiences each of these cultures have relating to their music, and to what surrounds their music. Marijuana is a different drug than heroin, and both are experienced by the different cultures differently. Joey’s assertion that “real Soul” doesn’t need drugs, as you say, cannot be properly upheld by Joey since he hasn’t had the experience (collective, personal, or memory) to give this statement in the first place.
I agree, especially in regards to the parts about Joey. Perhaps more than any other member of the band, he clearly wishes to present himself as the source of soul for the Commitments to base their music upon in an attempt to take the racial costume of blackness upon himself. Yet, he is shown sporadically throughout the novel to be blatantly incorrect and offensive to the black body and black art. In his rejection of jazz and flat-out inaccuracy that soul musicians never used drugs, he clearly shows not only a fantastical glorification of black experience and culture, but also a wish for the realities of the music to fit his own view of it. Proclaiming himself as “the Jesus of the Ordinary,” Joey the Lips’ journey throughout the novel shows that he is indeed a false prophet of soul, especially when he is exposed as a potential fraud, going on tour with Joe Tex who has been dead for years. As the band’s early leader in his wish to create soul within The Commitments, Joey’s warped view and misuse of soul music ultimately leads to the band’s misappropriation of blackness and quick disbanding.
This is something I was thinking about too in trying to write my blog post for this week. It’s hard to separate out when borrowing music and style is just a facet of the art form and when it becomes problematic appropriation. I agree that The Commitments lack of context and recognition of the differences of their circumstances makes their gestures problematic. But how can they ever know where those differences truly lie if they will never experience what Africans Americans have experienced? Because you could argue that without experiencing it, you could never fully understand. Will there always be a gap that makes such gestures dangerous territory? I’m not sure.