The Politics of Cultural Appropriation and Participatory CulturePart One: Appropriation

Appropriation, n. In the arts, the adoption, borrowing, or theft of elements of one culture by another culture.

Taking over another culture’s style or way of expressing itself for your own purposes.

Taking something created by another person and making it your own.

Suggested take-home projects posted.

Reading quiz next week.

Lurker/scholar apartheid.

http://www.teachingsofdrjim.com/

Appropriation, n. In the arts, the adoption, borrowing, or theft of elements of one culture by another culture.

Taking over another culture’s style or way of expressing itself for your own purposes.

Taking something created by another person and making it your own.

The Politics of Cultural Appropriation

Mei-lwun, “Sweet Home Country Grammar” (2003)

incorporating

Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Sweet Home Alabama” (1974)

Nelly, “Country Grammar” (2000)

Music and Appropriation

There are many examples of appropriation in pop music

A person models their performance or songwriting style on another person’s style.

Members of one culture adopt or adapt the style of another culture.

Imitation (style theft)

Someone steals someone else’s song or music and doesn’t give credit or pay royalties.

Plagiarism

Someone uses someone’s song or music in a context for which it was never intended – movie soundtrack, video game, advertisement, etc

“Recontext”

Someone (usually legally) does their own version of someone else’s song.Cover

Watch on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIzoWNQqnEQ

Remix

Lady Gaga, Born this Way (Bollywood Remix)

Lady Gaga, Born this Way (Liam Keegan Club Mix)

Lady Gaga, Born this Way (Chipmunk Remix)

Someone (usually legally) remixes the elements of someone’s song to create a new variation– typically an extended dance track.

Someone uses part of somebody else’s recording as part of their own song [accompaniment, chorus, rhythm track, etc]

Sampling

Watch on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM0-ZU8njdo

Someone takes two or more songs by different artists – maybe people who would never willingly be part of one another’s music – and creates a new song based entirely on these source songs

Mashup

Listen on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJv17xpatg4

Cheekyboy, Biggie’s Last Christmas

incorporating:

Wham, Last Christmas (1984)Puff Daddy, I’ll be missing you (1997)Notorious B.I.G., Juicy (1994)

Riff from “Walking Blues”COTTON FIELDS à ROBERT JOHNSON à SON HOUSE à MUDDY WATERS

MUDDY WATERS à LED ZEPPELIN

“The Last Time”TRADITIONAL BLUES à STAPLE SINGERS à ROLLING STONES à à à ?

A capsule history of appropriationin popular American 20th century musicA montage sequence from the movie we will watch later today: RIP: A REMIX MANIFESTO (2009). This sketches the mutation of two musical motifs from their origins as anonymous African American blues to their existence today as commercial successes by white groups.

Blues starts out in the late 1800s as an organic folk creation of African Americans. Songs have their origins in the cotton fields and taverns, though church music also plays an important role. Amateur musicians trade lyrics, music, and ideas around freely. No one is wholly responsible for any particular song. No one owns any song or can claim sole authorship of it. At first, nothing is published or recorded. Music is transmitted in performance alone. Each performance is a re-creation.

Episode One:Appropriation in Blues & Jazz

Authorship and ownership are not clear-cut or considered that important

Every performance is unique; little is published or recorded; songs are not “fixed” in an original or authorized version

What you do with the material is what’s important; not who created the original or who “owns” it

Appropriation in blues and jazz

Blues and Jazz Appropriation

The earliest Ragtime songs, like Topsy, “jes’ grew.” Some of these earliest songs were taken down by white men, the words slightly altered or changed, and published under the names of the arrangers. They sprang into immediate popularity and earned small fortunes. [...]

James Wheldon Johnson, Preface to The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922) :

Appropriation in the Jes’ Grew Era

Later there came along a number of colored men who were able to

transcribe the old songs and write original ones. [...]

I remember that we appropriated

about the last one of the old “jes’ grew” songs. It was a song

which had been sung for years all through the South. The words

were unprintable, but the tune was irresistible, and belonged to

nobody.

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/johnson/preface1.htm

James Wheldon Johnson

Mid-twentieth century appropriation was characterized by white musicians appropriating black styles and songs and capitalizing on them. White-owned music publishers picked up the rights to black songs, white-owned record companies recorded black artists, and white musicians adopted elements of African American style and popularized them with white audiences, sometimes making fortunes.

Episode Two: Appropriation in R&B, Rock and Roll, Electric Blues

By the second half of the century, recording is the major focus of popular music as an industry. Recordings and technology become important areas for appropriation.

Because records are mass-produced, more permanent than live performance, and major sources of wealth that are subject to copyright, legal and ethical questions about appropriation become more central.

Episode Three: Disco, hip hop, sampling, mashups

Disco re-edits (1970s - ) Remixes (1970s - ) Hip hop DJing (1970s - ) Sampling (1980s - ) Mashups (1990s - )

Technology and appropriation

Initially completely non-commercial; typically practised outdoors in parks and on the street; improvisational; for pleasure

DJs used (almost exclusively black) records, which they mixed together to create extended breakbeat backdrops for MCs to rap to and dancers to dance to

Public performances, rarely for money, almost entirely unrecorded, in which old and new records (funk, soul, jazz and disco) were used as sources for original musical experiences.

Appropriation in early hip hop

Jes’ grew. A new form of collaboratively

authored “urban folk music.”

It is only with recording and sampling that legal (and political or moral) questions of appropriation become central to hip hop practice.

Early hip hop

Pre-digital appropriation

Songs and styles are borrowed or stolen from their original context and used in a new context (typically a more commercial or mainstream one; often without much concern or understanding for the original context)

Watch on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7tOAGY59uQ

Post-digital appropriation

Elements of a person’s or a group’s actual recorded performance are lifted from their original context and used in a new context, sometimes without respect for the integrity of the original or even knowledge of the original in context

Sampling (1980s - ) Mashups (1990s - )

With digital technology, appropriation has never been easier – or more rampant.

What are the moral and political questions to keep in mind in a world where appropriation is practically effortless and ownership is hard to police?

Digital appropriation

I just said that appropriation has never been more rampant in culture than it is today.

But actually from an anthropological point of view, outside of the peculiar cultural arrangement known as late capitalism, some more organic form of borrowing, adoption of and variation on pre-existing creations – perhaps more akin to the products of genetic mutation – has probably been the norm in the production of culture throughout human history.

Rampant appropriation

RIP: A Remix Manifesto

Apart from intellectual property rights and monetary remuneration, what political issues are touched on, if any?

Appropriation in late capitalist culture.