concordia, falafel, and wanna-be colonialists

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Wed Sep 18 19:11:16 PDT 2002



>Marc Rodrigues wrote:
> >does anyone know of any other examples in history where the colonizing
> >european population attempted to co-opt the culture of the indigenous
> >population like this?
>
>Jenny Brown replied:
> > I'm trying to think of one that didn't. Obviously, to start a list, the
> > Brits in India, the Brits in the Americas, the French in the Americas,
>the
> > Americans with African slaves and again and again with Black
>culture--to
>the
> > point that Bernice Johnson Reagon of SNCC once said (to exasperated
>gasps
> > from the audience) that America is, culturally, a Black country.

Right. America's contribution to world music is jazz, a real hybrid, e.g. blacks taking songs (or the chords of songs) composed by Jews think of Charlie Parker playing the Gershwins' I Got Rhythm, the foundation of bebop), or riffing on native American culture (Cherokee), inspiring whites like Stan Getz; or the young (white Jewish) Benny Goodman sneaking off from (then white) Austin on the Southwest side of Chicago to hear Louis Armstrong play on 34th St, in Bronzeville. Or Dizzy Gillespie playing Afro-Cuban music with Machito. Or Getz scoring big with Brazilian samba. etc. Who owns jazz? The world does.
>
>And the Americans put a Native American on the penny (and a bison on the
>nickel). This isn't a subject I know much about, but it seems that all
>kinds
>of contradictory imagery concerning native peoples shows up in American
>popular culture.
>
>Also, isn't it more complicated than one people "robbing" from another? Is
>"culture" something that each ethnic or racial group needs to keep locked
>up
>in a box, and that no one else can have? No one can stop cultural
>exchanges
>from happening, anyway.

Right, see if you can stop it.

I think a lot of this borrowing happens initially at
>"street level," through person-to-person contact between ordinary people
>belonging to the oppressing and the oppressed group. Cultural
>cross-pollination of this kind is actually a good thing. Couldn't it be
>said, for example, that the "appropriation" of aspects of black culture by
>white Americans helped in some way to erode segregation?

Think of Artie Shaw hiring Billie Holiday, or Charlie Barnet playing with black and white musicians, back when this was a physicially dangerous thing to do. Or Louis bringing Jack Teagarden (white trombonist) on board the All-Stars, the most famous jazz band in the world.


>
>Anyway, I don't see what's wrong with Israelis eating falafel.

They're a Mediterranean people anyway. We like it in Chicago too.
>
>For the intermingling of cultures, Jacob Conrad

What he said.

jks

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