it's exchanges such as this one that make me miss the BAD SUBJECTS list.
is the history of slavery american? yes. are the jim crow laws that were instituted after emancipation american? yes.
how can you have blues, jazz, gospel, honky tonk, and all the related dance forms that go with those genres without the history of slavery and jim crow? you don't have them.
those cultural practices emerged because those things happened in the american colonies and the US. they happened in the american colonies and the US for a complex of reasons.
had france or spain predominated in the colonies would we have had the same "US of A"? no.
would blues, gospel, jazz, etc. have happened under heavier french influence? heavier spanish influence? something like it perhaps, but it certainly would have been different. what about the influence of protestant christianity, as opposed to french or spanish catholocism on blues, jazz, etc? even more specifically, what about the scottish and irish variants of protestantism and catholicism that influenced southern life, and therefore, slave culture?
tap dancing, for instance, is the result of a combination of irish and highlander dance with west african dance traditions. tap dancing is unique from all the traditions, something unto its own.
it has been argued that blues was a departure from african musical traditions because it was much more individualized. the group call and response imported into blues was sifted into the individual singer. this occured _after_ emancipation, this development of blues and is said to be the result of the influence of icky western notions of the individual and the ideology of individualism and freedom as it butted up against the reality of life in Jim Crow south and later the north.
none of this means that jazz etc is american because it has so-called white influences. rather, i'm saying that your either/or is too simplistic.
let me ask you: do you have the same problem with calling rock 'n' roll american?
feeling Ripley,
kelley
At 05:34 PM 1/3/02 -0500, ravi wrote:
>Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>>ravi wrote:
>>doug, with all respect, arent you getting into the "what is" and
>>"what ought" confusion here? if you say "the U.S is too much like
>>this now" then you are conceding that "american and white are
>>synonyms", aren't you? perhaps you mean the U.S is too radicalized
>>in making the false dichotomy you state (whites claim name and
>>fortune, others are ill-paid help)? if so: