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Photo: Nés via Pexels
When is a borrowed theme homage—and when is it cultural appropriation?
As marketers in the Cultural Creative/progressive milieu, we’ve got to walk a careful line when using images, memes, sounds, etc. from cultures we’re not a part of.
Cultural appropriation is defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as “the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture.”
Paul Simon was widely accused of cultural appropriation when the Graceland album was released—but here’s why I disagree: Paul Simon gave full credit, featured his collaborating performers at his concerts, and consistently honored them for their contributions. He did it with the myriad of African artists on Graceland and with the Brazilian musicians of the later album, Rhythm of the Saints.
And judging by the sell-out crowds every time I’ve seen Ladysmith Black Mambazo perform, Simon helped build huge audiences for those musicians.
Here’s what happened to me because of the Graceland album: I listened to it constantly, and then I wanted to go deeper. So I started listening to a few other albums of South African music, and then African music in general, that I’d picked up a decade or more earlier but in some cases hadn’t played in years. And then I started buying more of it. Simon’s sharing of those infectious rhythms helped me discover—or rediscover—a dozen musical traditions from around that vast, magnificent continent, not to mention the Afropop fusion of traditional music with new sounds.
Similarly, New Age/jazz musician Paul Winter has publicly embraced music from around the world, collaborating with a Russian primitivist chorus, Brazilian percussionists, and so many others—including making music with non-human performers such as wolves, whales, and a wren. And I’ve gone out to find and listen to some of those collaborators.
Both of these amazing Pauls have built audiences for their collaborators and wider appreciation for world music generally. So do musicians who play music not of their own heritage in a way that honors the tradition rather than defiling or expropriating it—whether that’s jazz clarinetist Don Byron’s work with Klezmer Conservatory Band, Wynton Marsalis playing Bach and Mozart, or the American White Chassidic Jewish rap and reggae artist Matisyahu.
Cultural appropriation doesn’t look like Paul Simon through my eyes. What it DOES look like is Elvis Presley. I have NEVER come across any statement by Presley acknowledging the debt his sound owes to the Black R&B artists from the 1930s forward. But I’ve come across many statements by radio and recording industry key players about how exciting it was to find an ultra-promotable White artist who captured the Black sound. Would Elvis have recorded “Hound Dog” if Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton hadn’t done it first?
Appropriation also looks like the Frito Bandito ads of the 1960s-70s: using new, commercialized lyrics to “Cielito Lindo,” an old Mexican folksong and offensive visual stereotypes to sell corn chips—and being threatened with huge anti-discrimination suits for it by Mexican-American advocacy groups.
And here’s why I don’t think Mark Twain’s use of the N-word in Huckleberry Finn was racist: He wanted to reach Whites, and especially White Southerners, with a story that showed the full depth of humanity of an othered, marginalized Black man—and to do that, he needed to speak their language. If he’d written a narrative in stiff, academic language and described Jim as “a Negro,” he would not have gotten through to those Southern Whites.
Twain, in other words, made a marketing choice. He matched message to audience, something I’ve urged my clients and readers to do since the 1980s. And let’s keep in mind, that he was writing in an era that hadn’t come to grips with ismist language. The society he lived in had normalized racial slurs, ethnic slurs, gender slurs, slurs against the non-straight, the non-CIS, those with disabilities, the very old, and the very young. If he were writing today, I’m sure he’d make many different choices. But as a product of his time, we have to see him as a progressive trying to bring an anti-racist vision into a racist culture.
In our own time, we will certainly have more arguments about what is or is not appropriation. And, frankly, it’s situational. If you buy an artisan garment from the maker who eagerly sells it to you while you’re traveling in a different part of the world, or from a store such as 10,000 Villages that exists to bring quality items to people who appreciate them while pouring money and resources back into the originating community, you’re participating in local economic empowerment. If you buy an imitation of that garment from a fast-fashion chain that pays its workers slave wages and pays the original culture nothing, that’s appropriation. If you’re in the middle of the continuum, the guidelines might not be so clear.
How have you dealt with cultural appropriation questions in your business or artistic work? |
