[Artist/Group/Scene/Movement] - Eclectic Music or Cultural Imperialism

I'm pretty pro- appropriation/mutation/sampling/theft/meme-dissemination/rearrangent/remixing/editing/channeling/etc etc etc, if it's done in the spirit of creativity and respect. Ironically, in my opinion it's more respectful to those you are influenced by, if you take aspects or ideals that you like or admire, but then bastardize them and creatively transmutate them to the point that it would almost seem as if you have no respect at all for the "purity" of their art and aesthetic. It's healthier creatively I think. Being influenced by things that you like, respect, or find inspiring is unavoidable, but out of respect for them you shouldn't be a carbon copy, but carry on elements that you find fruitful, and then disseminate or re-appropriate these elements or aspects into something noticably different; or perhaps be influenced by having a feeling of "spiritual" affinity, but express and carry forth this spiritual influence by your own unique take, composed of your own personal combination or influences, experiences, idiosyncrasies, etc.

I too tend to have my biases that determine whether I think something is creatively-influenced, or unoriginal imitation or cultural imperialism. Of course it's very subjective and reveals my ideals. For instance, I was also put-off by rap-metal because I hated the way a style which was forged by arty-wierdos like Faith No More (not that I'm a big fan, but...) was hijacked by meatheads. It's not that I hate jocks, plenty of them are decent people I'm sure, it's that I find their culture idiotic, boring, stupidly aggressive, etc, and to me that makes for idiotic, boring, stupidly agressive music. But I'm admittedly a Romantic, aesthetic-idealist, with countercultural biases, so that's going to deeply affect the way I enjoy and assess music.

Sometimes there are bands which manage to sneak past my aesthetic or idealogical guidelines though, who are blatantly unoriginal imitation yet fucking brilliant at it. There's this early-90s psych band Sun Dial, and I'm all for continually re-interpretting psychedelia, I think it's ephemeral and experimental nature suggests endless possibilities, and I think it has solid idealogical and cultural implications (by my definitions) too... but this band, unlike a lot of great early-90s psych bands, does NOTHING new with the genre. They just sound uncannily like a fuzzed-out, psych-rock band from 1968. And even though, as I listen to them, my internal aesthetic-policeman is saying "but... but... but.. they're unoriginal retro-pastiche!!!", it's fucking brilliantly-executed unoriginal retro-pastiche... heavy, epic, and stoned in the best possible way, so I let 'em pass. Of course I have no problem with actual bands from '68 that sound like that though... Time-specificity is a crucial aspect to art's formation and relevance, and if something does draw so heavily from the past in such a blatant manner, it'd usually better do so by reorienting the sound within a current cultural context or perspective, or by manifesting or carrying a meme-complex or lineage which still has creative or cultural relevance or potential, or maybe is tastefully, or perhaps more importantly distastefully, and wrong-rightedly re-awakening a useful creative element...

I think a lot of stuff gets unfairly hit with the racial exploitation stick because of what it says about the audience rather than the music.

F'rinstance, the fact that it's traditionally taken a white face to market black music. This says bad things about the society that is recieving the music, but a lot of people tend to carry those things over to the person making the music - who may well just be someone who really loves the music and wants to work in that tradition.

Slothrop said:

I think a lot of stuff gets unfairly hit with the racial exploitation stick because of what it says about the audience rather than the music.

F'rinstance, the fact that it's traditionally taken a white face to market black music. This says bad things about the society that is recieving the music, but a lot of people tend to carry those things over to the person making the music - who may well just be someone who really loves the music and wants to work in that tradition.

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Yeah, agreed... but sometimes I wonder if there is something wrong in an artist getting all of the attention and fame for another culture's style when they copied the style so closely. Like you said, the artist really isn't to blame... but sometimes more interesting results happen when the artist appropriating a style gets it wrong enough, intentionally or not, for it to become a new genre. Like how Zeppelin, despite all of the compaints about them ripping off Robert Johnson, ultimately weren't really stealing the thunder of his legacy, because their music was qualitatively different enough (even despite the structural similarites) as to (help) invent a new genre. Unlike Elvis, the "king of rock n roll," who, while he was more country-influenced than the black artists he was influenced by, still dominated the spotlight "on the same stage," so to speak, in a time when they never stood a chance to get the same level of attention. I'm not exactly sure where my point is going though, because it would seem to suggest that people should stay out of other cultures' genres, and I certainly don't believe that... :slanted:

I thought rihanna's song, which blatantly ripped of soft cell, was great, no matter whether "respect" was shown or not.(on a side note: why is this respect issue allways used for white people appropriating black music and never the other way around?)

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Pedantic point, but Tainted Love was originally by (the black) Gloria Jones.

But I agree with what you're saying. All music is open to all people to use and abuse as they see fit. I can't think of anything worse happening to music than having it policed by cultural studies students on the lookout for signs of inauthenticity.

Actually, I've just remembered there's one act of cultural appropriation that winds me up every time: fat rugby-shirted blokes singing Swing Low Sweet Chariot. That's where I'd draw the line.

crackerjack said:

Actually, I've just remembered there's one act of cultural appropriation that winds me up every time: fat rugby-shirted blokes singing Swing Low Sweet Chariot. That's where I'd draw the line.

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Although people singing Jerusalem while completely missing the point of it is always good...

Slothrop said:

people singing Jerusalem ...

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yeah, which of course is based on an extremely longstanding appropration based on a pathologically obsessive orientalism,

top thoughtful thread...thanks '81!

reflecting on the timbaland/arabic thread i realised that it's only on the arabic forums that people are interested about timba's looting of their heritage, not because they are particularly protective or anything, just that most of timba's listeners in Amrka/Yurp have no clue about arabic music at all & also no access, thus they have zero comment to make.
vice versa is however not true, hiphop/rnb is everywhere, early predictions of global villagism priveleging the rich world turned upside down?

(timba himself of course may just be the exception as presumably he does actually listen to the sounds he rips?)

polz said:

whenever somebody mentions respect and music in the same sentence they are sure to rattle my chain. What is wrong with shamelessly exploiting a musical style to make great music? Or are these punk values finally extinct? Whenever i hear music which is paying respect to its forebears, i almost allways fall asleep immediately. To me the idea of "respect" is very close to ideas about "musicality", "craftmanship", "real instruments", stuff like that.

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Yeah, good point... 'Respect' wasn't the best word to use in that first sentence, because I agree that piracy, "creative" theft, disrespect for the canon and tradition, etc can be a good thing... and I had meant to imply that by saying that I support sampling and "theft" etc. I had actually ill-advisedly tacked "respect" on the end of that first sentence because of the next point I was making, that if someone really does respect the distinctness and originality of an artist/band/genre, it's more respectful to that influence, themselves, and the vitality of the sound itself, not to copy it so closely; because endless, unoriginal imitation, without creative re-interpretation, quickly kills the sound. I wasn't talking about interesting ways of using influences like sampling, etc, but rather like the way all of those faux-ternative bands in the mid-90s were aping Nirvana and Pearl Jam et al... poorly, but not "wrong" enough as to actually make anything new or interesting with their influences.

polz said:

What is wrong with shamelessly exploiting a musical style to make great music? Or are these punk values finally extinct? Whenever i hear music which is paying respect to its forebears, i almost allways fall asleep immediately.

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Hear hear.

The arguments of the potentially self-righteous boil down to:

The musical heritage has been used to make music I don't like = BAD

The musical heritage has been used to make music I do like = GOOD

Plenty of points about appropriation (specifically with regards to "ghetto" beats) that would probably be of interest to this thread were made by me and others here: http://ihatemusic.noquam.com/viewto...postorder=asc&highlight=appropriation&start=0

My main problem with "appropriation" of "subaltern" genres/styles of music is when the lazy acceptance of the appropriator as the original. Or when that doesn't occur, the music is still often filtered through the "western music entrepreneur" (David Bryne, Paul Simon, Diplo, MIA, etc). I agree with the rest of you that a lot of this is more the fault of the archetypal music fan being too lazy to go beyond what is sold/presented to them.

For pure enjoyment I'm all about sampling/exploitation and the like. It often makes for good music - even if people often overvalue "fusions" for purely being fusion.

soundslike1981 said:

[*]can a member deemed "subaltern" in the global power paradigm be a culture vulture;

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Yes, most obviously:

soundslike1981 said:

MIA

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It's less explicit with say a Fela Kuti or a Jorge Ben though: both arguably marginalized and both shamelessly influenced by American Black Music. They are still culture vultures, but it doesn't have the same effect because the music they are replicating/manipulating/expanding upon was easily more popular and well known then their own music in a more dynamic and wealthy market. I know little of the listening habits of the average Nigerian in the 1970s, but those who listened to Jorge Ben or Gilberto Gil's fusions (or maybe Tim Maia's straight soul) were likely familiar with the different genres they were sampling and wouldn't so easily see them as the face of the "appropriated" music styles.

With someone like MIA - she is arguably geo-culturally marginalized but she is sampling musics from different marginalized subalterns and making more money/fame than the "original." Again this isn't to say that it's her fault, per se, but it is something to consider critically.

crackerjack said:

All music is open to all people to use and abuse as they see fit. I can't think of anything worse happening to music than having it policed by cultural studies students on the lookout for signs of inauthenticity.

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I think this might be worse.

Someone upthread said something about how black music needed a white face to seem valid. I think this is an oversimplification. Authenticity is at issue, but not in the sense that it's some absolute value that can be policed. Authenticity is a cultural construction as much as anything. What's worth noting is the KINDS of authenticity that get applied to different kinds of music, what definitions of authenticity certain musics/artists are expected/permitted to live up to, why those definitions exist, and how that influences culture/politics/etc.

For instance, the minstrel example: black music is "blacked up" by whites. Currently many people argue that black artists themselves "black up" for audiences of all sorts of compositions. Little Richard and Chuck Berry can be understood as performing exaggerated versions of what was understood as blackness -- wildness, sexuality, danger -- for the benefit of white (and black) audiences.

What is more interesting to me than "policing" is examining specific articulations of authenticity. For example, I keep thinking about Simon Reynolds' review of Arular in the Guardian (I think) where he said something like "she's not as brown as her skin makes you think" or something. He took a lot of heat for that, but I think he was getting at how her ethnic background gave her this bottom-up cache, and also gave her license to "borrow" third-world-musics at large, even though she was a British art school hipster. I don't think M.I.A. should be prevented from stealing baile funk (if that were possible), but I think the far worse option would be to condemn anyone who raises questions of authenticity, appropriation, etc. as missing the point, hating fun, or whatever. I think it's interesting to ponder why baile funk only gets noticed through certain channels, (Diplo-approved projects, M.I.A.) even though the music sounds great and is available by the truckload on your local p2p. Tangentially, we could ask why the female leads of CSS and Bonde Do Role play up this child-like "Happy fun party make out" line to the hilt, broken english and all. All the interviews I read make them out to be totally infantilized ethnic others in tune with "authentic" fun, even while said interviews are totally uninformative and boring. Would CSS be allowed to make the "intellectual" music of David Byrne? No, it would come off as too inauthentic based on their style/marketing/race/etc. It's the total package, and I reject anyone who implies they can live in some sort of pure auditory state where costumes/race/politics/interviews have no affect on their reception of music.

That was rambling (battery about to die, so no editing), but in summation I think appropriation should not be outlawed or condemned out of hand, but deserves a nuanced look to see what exactly is going on.

P.S. I really run scare quotes into the ground on this topic.

The problem is, at least in America, people really have no exposure to anything outside of their pop culture, so unfortunately, it's only through these self-perscribed "curators" and "diplomats" that they're going to be introduced to anything foreign. And when "outsiders" do make it in, it's usually in the form of cute (or funny, or scary) caricatures. I wouldn't blame the artists so much for playing to these caricatures though... I don't know if it's that they necessarily have a cynical understanding of pop culture semiotics which they cleverly manipulate, so much as they just fall into roles that get the best crowd response, like you were suggesting... but to flip that around, although the problem is definitely in the culture, maybe it is up to the musicians, artists, writers, film makers, etc... in other words the myth-makers and story-tellers, to craft new, fairer, more complex and realistic archetypes for the cultural imaginary. So maybe the artists are partly to blame, for aligning themselves with bad stereotypes that reinforce cultural prejudice and ignorance...

soundslike1981 said:

Kanye West's use of Daft Punk is disrespectfully bad. . .

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i'll second that

And Puff Daddy's butchering of Led Zep has already been mentioned...

This thread, like a lot of the threads in the Arts forum, makes me think there's a hell of a lot to be said for the ability to enjoy a pop song/film/TV programme without being compelled to po-facedly deconstruct it to within an inch of its life.

Some people are naturally analytical, Mr. Tea.

We don't need to start another "anti-intellectuals versus theory readers" debate about the validity of taking a critical stance toward popular culture. Do we?

polz said:

I didn't say that, but i resent the fact that when Rihanna wholesale lifts the synthline of "Tainted Love" for SOS, that is applauded as some kind of postmodern masterpiece, and nobody is speaking about the fact that Rihanna doesnt respect the situation of white art students being on the dole, but when Hadouken "appropriates" JME, out come the allegations of racism and the pictures of black face minstrels.

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Tainted Love by Softcell was itself ripped off from a black soul artist, whose name escapes me, as someone said upthread.