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Cultural appropriation
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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 RE: Cultural appropriation (in reply to chester)
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quote:
Come on Bill, surely you can see this isn't a black and white issue. There is a version of this "cultural appropriation police" right here on the foro. Just post a Jesse Cook video, or mention a harmonica, and see who rears their head and starts lecturing about "authenticity".
There is a difference between leveling the charge of "cultural appropriation" and questioning "authenticity." Those who level the charge of "cultural appropriation" mean that you have no business playing music, dancing, or engaging in other activity originating with a particular ethnic group or nationality if you are not a member of said ethnic group or nationality.
To question "authenticity," however, doesn't mean you think the person in question shouldn't be engaging in the activity under scrutiny. For example, someone might be playing a "Spanishy" sounding guitar piece without compas or of a known palo and calling it flamenco. He has every right to play it even though he is from, say, Finland, but anyone who knows flamenco can certainly question the "authenticity" of it being called flamenco.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jul. 18 2020 20:58:34
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Cultural appropriation (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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I would say there have been examples of cultural appropriation, even in the music business. But I think the term is employed loosely these days.
It's well known that Fletcher Henderson (a black man) was one of the chief originators of the big band swing style. His band gained some popularity, but was never a financial success. Henderson eventually gave up and disbanded his outfit.
When Benny Goodman, a classically trained white man decided to venture into the popular music business, he bought Henderson's arrangements for use by his own band. Goodman was a great popular and financial success. Goodman got his start with his band playing literally off the same sheets of paper produced and used under Henderson's direction.
Of course, a major factor in Goodman succeeding where Henderson failed was systemic racism. So while Goodman has been accused of cultural appropriation, he succeeded due to the complicity of white society at large. Henderson's failure wasn't due to Goodman, it was due to lack of support from the people who had money, the white music and entertainment business.
Black big bands were not totally frozen out. Count Basie swung well into the 1950s. Duke Ellington has been hailed as one of the greatest American musicians of all time. But there were a lot more all-white big bands than the two successful black ones, and the cards were certainly stacked against black musicians.
Accusations of cultural appropriation these days are usually asserted by people more concerned about political issues, not the actual interplay of cultures. Has anyone ever heard of Tejano conjunto musicians being accused of cultural appropriation of the polka from 19th-century German and Bohemian Czech immigrants?
Coming a little closer to cultural appropriation in flamenco would be the case of Jose Greco, born in Italy, moved to Brooklyn at age 10. During his active period he likely made more money than any other flamenco artist. But did this take bread out of the mouths of the auténticos? I don't know. He employed a lot of Spaniards, including La Argentinita and her sister Pilar Lopez in starring roles. He was in movies, played Sadler's Wells in London, etc. etc. Might these gigs have gone to Spanish troupes? I simply don't know. Though there certainly was anti-gitano racism in Spain at the time, I was not aware of it to any extent in the USA.
One of my good friends, now deceased, grew up in a Roma compound in Southwark, a low income area of London. He went on to get a PhD in Physics from Cambidge, and became a Group Leader at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the USA. I never had any idea of his Roma origins until I had known him for at least 20 years. There was certainly anti-Roma racism in England during Greco's heyday. Did this play to Greco's advantage in England?
My musical interests were in Mexican music and the northern European/American brass band genre until I was twelve years old. Then I got deeply interested in European ("classical") art music. After I took up the guitar I began to study flamenco. After traveling to Bali and Java I developed an interest in gamelan. I grew up with Spanish as my second language. I feel like I have been multi-cultural all my life, but I don't think I have appropriated anyone's cultural property.
RNJ
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Date Jul. 18 2020 23:20:28
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Cultural appropriation (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
Coming a little closer to cultural appropriation in flamenco would be the case of Jose Greco, born in Italy, moved to Brooklyn at age 10. During his active period he likely made more money than any other flamenco artist. But did this take bread out of the mouths of the auténticos? I don't know. He employed a lot of Spaniards, including la Argentenita and her sister Pilar Lopez in starring roles. He was in movies, played Sadler's Wells in London, etc. etc. Might these gigs have gone to Spanish troupes? I simply don't know. Though there certainly was anti-gitano racism in Spain at the time, I was not aware of it to any extent in the USA.
A very young Paco de Lucia played for awhile with the Jose Greco troupe, both in the United States and abroad.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jul. 18 2020 23:39:02
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Paul Magnussen
Posts: 1805
Joined: Nov. 8 2010
From: London (living in the Bay Area)
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RE: Cultural appropriation (in reply to TonyGonzales84)
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quote:
But yes, I agree with what I infer to be your disgust, astonishment and disappointment.
Well, I must admit that there a a few cases that even I had trouble swallowing (such as Pat Boone’s singing Little Richard’s songs with — apparently — no idea of what the lyrics were about).
But even those cases are not black and white. For instance, the Kingston Trio in their day got a lot of stick from purists for ‘watering down’ and ‘commercialising’ folk music. But the reaction of professional folk musicians was often quite different. I quote from an interview I once did with Nick Reynolds (which is on my website):
quote:
So if I understand you aright: as regards the people who criticize you for commercializing folk music, you feel that you don’t need to defend that…
I don’t need to defend it any more! When Earl Scruggs comes up to you (because he was at the Folk Festival too) and says “Thank God you guys came along! I can work for some money now!” The greatest banjo-player in the World! And he said “I’m used to getting on the bus and making two or three hundred dollars a night, going around with Doc Watson and everybody… And now I can make a bunch of money, and send my kids through college, and do all this stuff…” He said, “Thank God for you guys!”
I’ve seen similar reactions from black musicians whose music was praised and promoted by Eric Clapton, Keith Richards et al.
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Date Jul. 19 2020 0:55:16
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Cultural appropriation (in reply to JasonM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: JasonM
I believe the kids say Woke AF
In September, 1957 I met the first black undergraduates at the University of Texas. The University managed to deny them residence in the dormitories. Private owners of apartments and rooming houses joined in the discrimination. The only place they could get a room was at the University YMCA. It was 12 years before there was a black player on the football team.
In 1962-63 in Nicaragua and Honduras I saw the difference between U.S. foreign policy in the newspapers and U.S. foreign policy on the ground.
In June, 1963 Governor George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door to keep black children out. President Kennedy sent Assistant Attorney General Katzenbach to tell him to step aside.
November, 1963 in Austin I was ironing a shirt when I heard over the radio that John Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas.
In August 1965 I watched on TV as the Watts district of Los Angeles went up in flames for five days.
From 1965 until the end of the Vietnam War I smelled the tear gas several times, and ran fast enough not to get my head beaten in by the cops.
In April, 1968 I drove home from work through East Austin on the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. I saw groups of people talking quietly on street corners, some of them with tears streaming down their faces.
In October, 1968 I was in Mexico City on the Noche de Tlatelolco when the Mexican Army massacred hundreds of young protesters, in the climax of a sequence of events that prefigured in detail the later massacre at Tiananmen Square. The next morning the article in El Universal ended, "No se sabe si hubieron muertos." Overturned busses burning in the streets had spray-painted on them, "¡Sí, hubieron muertos!"
In the bar car of the train on the way home I had drinks with three men. One of them turned out to be the author of the El Universal article. He was leaving Mexico, on his way to Los Angeles to work for a Spanish language newspaper there. He said his bosses had changed the last sentence, then he said, with tears on his cheeks, "We thought we had become civilized."
In 1970 I watched on TV as poorly trained and panicked National Guard troops killed students at Kent State University in Ohio. Two black students killed and twelve wounded by the police 11 days later at Jackson State College in the same state didn't get as much press.
In 1972 I lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Department repeatedly murdered numbers of black people in broad daylight on TV, and got away with it.
Back in Austin In 1973 I sat on the couch with my father watching the Senate Watergate hearings. I saw him gradually come to realize that the president he had voted for had betrayed the country whose service he had dedicated his life to, and for which he had repeatedly risked his life, along with his brother and seven brothers-in-law.
....and on and on and on...
Until in 1994 I watched a jury acquit O.J. Simpson because they found it entirely credible that the Los Angeles Police had falsely planted evidence against him. Long before and long after then I read or heard of black men killed by the police 3 1/2 times as often, per capita, as white men.
So I say to the people who have recently become "woke AF": Welcome to consciousness. How the F were you ever asleep? Were you deaf? Blind?
Often we have fallen prey to our worst flaws. Often we have stumbled, and sometimes strode in determination toward the ideals of our founders.
How long is it going to take?
RNJ
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Date Jul. 19 2020 1:05:25
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Cultural appropriation (in reply to RobF)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: RobF
quote:
Have you ever had a chalupa at, for example, Mi Ranchito in far South Austin—topped off with one or two home made salsas from the seven on the salsa table, maybe some pico de gallo, washed down with an agua fresca de Jamaica, made on the premises from hibiscus flowers?
I haven’t, but man, do I ever want to. That sounds so good!
Is this the place?
https://www.austinchronicle.com/food/2011-02-04/mi-ranchito-taqueria/
That's it. Been eating there since I retired and moved back to Austin in January 2010. It's a long drive from where I live, but it's worth it. My favorite is puerco en salsa verde. I usually order a half-dozen tamales to go (3 kinds of salsa free), for a couple of breakfasts later on.
Another good spot is Taqueria Guadalajara Arandas on Burnet road. There is a Taqueria Arandas chain headquartered in Houston, but this is not part of it. Tacos are great, so is horchata.
Other plates like bistec ranchero can be a bit on the economical side. I make my own at home from thinly sliced USDA Choice New York strip, chopped red onions and tomatoes, jalapeño, pasilla, chopped garlic, herbs and spices.
Is this cultural appropriation? In my defense I will mention that I was born in San Antonio, and spent every summer from ages 4 to 17 in far South Texas, where 90% of the people speak Spanish at home.
The caldo de res at La Mexicana on South First Street is great, and they are open 24/7.
Until I moved away from Austin in 1987 all you could get was poor quality fake Tex-Mex, which was hard on a San Antonio boy, but some time in the mid to late 1990s on a trip back to Texas from Kwajalein I got some actual Mexican food.
Of course, the Fonda San Miguel, an Austin institution for decades, has been one of the best restaurants on the planet for old style Mexican grand cuisine. When the owners decided to start out they contacted Diana Kennedy, hired a Mexican chef, and spent a year touring Mexico with them collecting recipes and paying to be trained to cook them. Dishes at San Miguel like pechuga de pavo en mole poblano are every bit as good as at Restaurant El Cardenal in Mexico City.
Of course San Miguel can't come up with things like escamoles al epazote. Plenty of epazote in Austin, but I don't know where you would find a reliable source of ant eggs.
As far as I know, you still have to go as far south as Nuevo Laredo to get good cabrito, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn there may be some in San Antonio.
I haven't been to Nuevo Laredo in 25 years, and may never go back, considering the narcotraficantes. But i picture the big plate glass window of the Restaurant Principal on the Avenida Guerrero as it was all my life. The iron grill floor is pretty much covered with smoldering coals of mesquite wood. Vertical spits impale the whole skinned and gutted carcasses of kid goats, slowly roasting, basted at intervals with a proprietary sauce. The 40-gallon iron pot in the corner is still replenished every night after closing time with beans, water, bacon, herbs and spices, as it has been since the presidency of Porfirio Diaz in the last quarter of the 19th century. There may be a 150-year old bean still in there. 
There's nothing wrong with good Tex-Mex. It is an authentic regional cuisine, a variant of cocina norteña. When I go to San Antonio I usually eat at Tito's on South Alamo. The enchiladas verdes make me feel right at home.
RNJ
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Date Jul. 19 2020 23:41:46
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Cultural appropriation (in reply to El Burdo)
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quote:
My point, which you won't try to understand as you're too busy fulminating, is that Cultural Appropriation is a valid accusation when exploitation is involved, otherwise, not really. You just think it's a 'snowflake' thing. In the case of the Irish dancing girl, she wasn't exploiting anyone so was not guilty of it.
What you fail to understand is that what you think is of no consequence whatsoever in this case. There are those who do consider the girl doing Irish dancing as a form of "cultural appropriation," and they are wrong. I was addressing my comment to them, not you.
Your history of commenting about others' posts on the Foro is one of mounting ad hominem attacks against those posting when you disagree with them. By doing so, you undercut any credibility you might have. I suggest you learn to discuss and debate rationally instead of making personal attacks.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jul. 20 2020 2:07:49
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Cultural appropriation (in reply to Andy Culpepper)
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Chalupas in the USA are not the same as on their home turf (surprise!)
A chalupa is a small boat. Is it the same word as "sloop?" In south central Mexico masa from which tortillas, tamales, etc. are made is put into little molds shaped like boats. The resulting little boats are deep fried, then filled with one of a variety of fillings, and topped off with chopped lettuce and salsa. There are dozens, if not hundreds of kinds of salsa. The fillings might be re-fried beans, cheese, shredded chicken or pork, chorizo,....
Chalupas in the USA are usually constructed on fried or toasted tortillas. Toasted tortillas with toppings are actually tostadas....but who's keeping track?
During my lifetime more than one dish that never would have appeared on a respectable restaurant's menu in Mexico have appeared at restaurants in the USA, and have then migrated back to Mexico.
One such dish is the flauta. A filling of some sort is wrapped tightly in a tortilla to form a slender cylinder, which is deep fried. Confusingly enough, restaurants in Austin have taken to calling them taquitos. In my youth I used to encounter flautas most frequently while riding second class trains in Mexico.
Pulling into a station there would be women on the platform with 2-gallon galvanized buckets on braziers of smoldering charcoal. The buckets would be packed almost solid with flautas submerged in boiling oil, the cooking timed to peak with the train's arrival.
The women would bring the buckets trainside, where mothers would bargain through an open window to get food for their families. They would accept none but piping hot flautas retrieved from the bubbling oil with wooden tongs, and served on a banana leaf or a piece of kraft paper.
Another dish which has appeared on restaurant menus, at least in name, is the fajita. The word means sash. Faja means skirt. In anatomy it means the diaphragm, the toughest muscle in the animal. When you killed a steer, you gave the fajita to poor people, who had to figure out how to eat it. Someone hit upon cutting it into narrow strips and marinating it in papaya juice to tenderize it. The tenderized fajita would be roasted or fried, and put on a tortilla with vegetables and salsa.
"Fajitas" of different cuts of beef, pork or chicken began to appear on menus in Texas some time in the 1970s. Until then actual fajitas were the exclusive province of the economically disadvantaged.
I still suppress a chuckle when I see "chicken fajitas" on a menu. I form a mental picture of tiny, delicate chicken diaphragms draped over a toasted tortilla.
RNJ
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Date Jul. 20 2020 6:08:29
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Cultural appropriation (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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Although they were Anglos, my mother's side of the family had deep roots in Mexico. In fact, my mother did not come to the US until she was 16 years of age, as my grandfather was superintendent of the Santa Fe Railroad in northern Mexico. They had to leave in the 1930s when Mexico nationalized all the gringo rail, oil, and other interests. They settled in Arizona, where I was born and grew up.
One of the benefits of having a bilingual mother who spent a fair amount of her youth in Mexico was we often had Mexican food at home. My mother would whip up wonderful tacos and tostadas among other delights. Even today, tacos and tostadas are my favorites, but they must have crisp, hard-shell, corn tortillas, with the tacos filled with shredded beef, potatoes, cheese, and shredded lettuce; and the tostadas slathered with frijoles refritos (refried beans), cheese, and shredded lettuce. And of course both with salsa and hot sauce.
I grew up on Mexican food and listening to my mother, aunt, and grandmother relate tales of their life in Mexico. I have photographs taken by my grandfather during the Mexican Revolution of armored trains with Mexican Government Federales riding in armored cars in front of the locomotive and in back of the train to provide protection. Also have photographs of rebels hanging from telegraph poles as a government warning to others in the rebellion. Part of Pancho Villa's area of operation was in the same area in which my grandfather and his family were living. And among our family's curiosities is a "salva-conducto" (safe conduct) pass signed by Venustiano Carranza granting my grandfather safe passage through the territory controlled by Carranza. Interesting times, those.
One piece of information that might be interesting. the chimichanga was "invented" (if one "invents" food) in Arizona, with Tucson being the most likely source of origin. (Some say it was not so much invented as it came about accidently.) It then made its way south into Sonora, and later further on into Sinaloa. Having made its way back to Mexican restaurants in the United States, it is now looked on as "Mexican" food, although it originated in Arizona. I wonder what the "cultural appropriation" police would have to say about that?
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jul. 20 2020 13:04:34
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Cultural appropriation (in reply to BarkellWH)
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Passenger trains have long been passé in Mexico, I'm sorry to say. Many an adventure began with a train ride.
Your mention of soldiers on the train reminded me of something I hadn't thought of in a long time. When I started riding Mexican trains in the late 1950s ($8.65 2nd class for 890 miles, Nuevo Laredo to Mexico City) there was always a contingent of soldiers in the first coach. It was the second car in the train, just after the baggage/mail car next to the locomotive.
The main lines, Nuevo Laredo to Mexico, Mexico to Guadalajara, etc. were hauled by diesel electric locomotives, made in the factory in Mexico City. Less important lines, like Mexico to Uruapan, through the Bajio and Pátzcuaro, were still hauled by steam locomotives, which were becoming increasingly unreliable with age. The train crews knew how to fix those locomotives, and carried spare parts.
When my first love and I took the overnight Tapatio express from Mexico to Guadalajara in 1959, the Pullman porter was an older man with white hair and Indian features. Like many Indians he spoke little, and spoke quietly when he did. On his spotless starched white jacket there were two pins. One was for 25 years of service on the Ferrocarriles Nacionales. I didn't recognize the second, and asked.
"Division del Norte," he replied. Pancho Villa's fearful unit of cowboys, bandits, wild men and ordinary citizens. One of their tactical advantages was traveling to the next battle on hijacked trains. They often got there before their opponents, a great benefit.
"¿Trabajó usted en los trenes?" "Did you work on the trains?" People spoke more formally in those days.
"Sí. Era conductor." "Yes. I was an engineer (train driver)."
He made up the bed in our gabinete with precision and finesse while we stood in the passage. As he ushered us back in, he almost whispered, "Muy buenas noches, jóvenes." The next morning he brought us pan dulce and a thermos of cafe con leche an hour before we pulled into the station at Guadalajara.
RNJ
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Date Jul. 21 2020 0:10:43
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