My Foot, Yr Throat

loki-zen:

I’m not gonna reblog the actual post and I cropped out OP’s name: will still likely get in Discourse for this but oh well:

I am annoyed by a trend I see on this website to overcorrect for historical disparity in gains from art by taking things which emerged from cross-pollination between different artistic/linguistic/cultural traditions and collaboration and mutual inspiration between artists of differing backgrounds and ethnicities and denying that part of them in order to frame them as solely Black.

Yes, it sucks that Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Rosetta Tharpe etc.al. - people who made foundational contributions to rock and roll which were at least as significant as (say) the Beatles and also prior to them, such that the Beatles wouldn’t have been possible without their inspiration - achieved lesser levels of fame and fortune because they were black and the Beatles were white. If people are unaware that rock music wouldn’t have happened without Sister Rosetta and other black performers that’s bad and they should absolutely be told.

But it’s also, imo, an important and no less progressive message to make it clear that so many great things do not happen as a result of people “staying in their lane”, artistically segregated. They happen as a result of people from different backgrounds sharing their art with each other, collaborating, being inspired by each other, being part of the same artistic conversation.

This framing of “we” (the implied audience for this post is kinda specifically not black!) owe it all to “them” just doesn’t sit with me right in this context.

This OOP argument has always felt oddly reductive to me because with stuff like hip hop and techno, you’ve got Trouble Funk and Afrika Bambaataa (and so many others) all sampling/covering Kraftwerk, but it would seem ridiculous to say “We owe it all to German culture.”

“This thing wouldn’t exist as we have it without this group” often coexists with “this thing also wouldn’t exist with only this group.”