{"id":570,"date":"2020-04-24T11:45:31","date_gmt":"2020-04-24T15:45:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/?p=570"},"modified":"2020-04-24T11:45:31","modified_gmt":"2020-04-24T15:45:31","slug":"appreciation-or-appropriation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/2020\/04\/24\/appreciation-or-appropriation\/","title":{"rendered":"Appreciation or Appropriation?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week has really made me think critically about the cultural exchanges we\u2019ve seen throughout the semester.\u00a0 Especially through the medium of music. Music is a really important and poignant method of self reflection and culture. But it\u2019s also really nebulous and, as artists often borrow from one another so liberally, it\u2019s hard sometimes to trace the true origins of music (and I would argue that sometimes it doesn\u2019t matter). I knew there were issues in the music industry, especially in America, over this \u201cLove and Theft\u201d idea \u2014 Elvis is the first example that comes to mind.\u00a0 There is a history of the commodification of black culture, similar to the commodification of black bodies, and a seeming \u201cvalidation\u201d of those cultural forms and subsequent success when placed in the hands of, typically, white men. And there is blatantly something wrong with that \u2014 an erasure of history and context like what we discussed with the use of \u201cChain Gang\u201d by The Commitments. What I hadn\u2019t 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\u2019m 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\u2019t recognize the people who created it? Is context that critical element that separates them? I don\u2019t know.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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 \u2014 especially as we read the appropriateness of these gestures.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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\u2019t know the nuance of the oppressions of African Americans, the relation becomes problematic. No one comes to an encounter without their history.\u00a0 In the same way artists, whether musical or otherwise, can\u2019t enact this particular black and green encounter without a consideration not only of the similar histories, but of the different oppressions as well. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week has really made me think critically about the cultural exchanges we\u2019ve seen throughout the semester.\u00a0 Especially through the medium of music. Music is a really important and poignant method of self reflection and culture. But it\u2019s also really nebulous and, as artists often borrow from one another so liberally, it\u2019s hard sometimes to … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Appreciation or Appropriation?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3672,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[413938],"tags":[446530,8878,12614],"class_list":["post-570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-placelessness","tag-different-oppressions","tag-identity","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3672"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":571,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570\/revisions\/571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}