quoted 8 lines --- kurt <supine@bway.net> wrote:>--- kurt <supine@bway.net> wrote:
>>But what the hell was Glenn Miller supposed to do?
>> Swing was the most exciting thing to come down the pike in the '30's,
>> and he ran with it. Was his crime that his band was (unfortunately)
>> one of the successful few? Should he have restrained himself? We he
>> supposed to be Woody Guthrie instead?
>>
>How about hiring some black musicians?
sure. but the thing I'm begging you to clarify is: at what point does the incorperation of "black" musical elements by middle-class white musicians become the "rape" or "theft" of black culture?
I'm beginning to think that the point where it becomes dodgey is not when someone adopts the style or rhetoric of a genre, as for instance Glenn Miller did with swing, or legions have done with funk, house and so forth (do you really care if I learn to play sax like Charlie Parker?). the problematic stuff is when white vocalists attempt to portray a black persona, based on a demeaning idea of what it's supposed to mean to "be black".
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