This is how stupid people are when they debate the complexities of music appropriation. People are questioning Bruno Mars for cultural appropriation based on race, when he is half Puerto Rican and was trained to destroy pop music with real instruments by his Puerto Rican father.
I would love for one basic ass bitch of any gender to debate me while arguing against Creoles like Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and citizens of Louisiana being innovators because they weren’t black enough.
First of all the whole idea that any particular group of people on earth did not produce innovators in the field of music is not just tenuous, it’s embarrassingly stupid. And we are so lazy and cowardly as society we put up with it.
Now I know why. It’s because we live in a nation built on racial genocide and apartheid, where we have been screwing not just Black artists, but African people in this country, and taking credit as a culture where it is not necessarily due.
So we have walls of white guilt and with all this incentive to simplify History into Black & White. Yet American innovation was always so beautiful and brown; when Black & White even had a chance to take it downtown. On such occasions Africans AND Europeans exploded with cultural innovators and innovation.
Bluegrass is hillbilly music in the hands of innovative musicians like Flatt & Scruggs that found revolutionary possibilities in a traditional African instrument, because they were influenced by bounce of Jazz that was sweet as Georgia Brown.
Innovative Black sharecroppers did something along those lines with a harmonica. But they gave the Grand Ole Opry DeFord Bailey till he walked away with his principle and his pride.
Because Black artists just kept get getting screwed. White America to this very hour has romanticized and fetishized their cultural rape, until they cucked themselves into believing their own bullsh☆t.
Bach was one of the greatest innovators of all time and is as big an influence on jazz as anybody. But why was Vienna a hot bed of music?
Well for one thing it was as being constantly menaced by Mongol and Muslim colonizers. It might not have been good for the people on the countryside but cross currents of culture, like a Caribbean sea is where musical explosions happen… and keep happening.
Africa is the source. We can eat for another 1000 years on its grooves and black math of polyrhythms that bend mind and body.
But let’s trade places. Africans could have been playing orchestras in 1785 with in 10 years of training under the great masters of Vienna. It would have taken European boys and girls a bit longer than that to be playing those polyrhythms at the level of a 15th generation Djembe player in Senegal. But that’s just a reflection of a CULTURE and a society that would die for Art.
I am never going to diminish the importance of African contributions to music, yesterday, today, or tomorrow. I am sure the Tabla players of the world have some cultural connection to the Eastern Diaspora of African people over the last 5-10,000 years, in a world that has only been recording for 100, and barely wrote down anything that interesting before Bach.
But we are teaching these kids such a watered down weak tea version of Marxism and White man’s burden bullsh☆t, that somebody new Hitler is going to tear all these weak arguments apart, and twist the Truth to their culture’s gain.
We owe reparations to Black Americans as We have paid the Natives and the Japenese never enough but something. I ain’t running.
I worship at the alter of Black culture and drink of the coldest and purest waters of African rhythm. But nobody ever did it on their own.
Stop lying to these kids. Elvis was one of the best singers alive when he hit the scene, and African Americans bought over a million of his records. He was a HUGE influence on Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Murphy, and other African Americans that influenced our culture to this day.
Elvis destroyed stages. James Brown could out dance him, but he couldn’t out sing him, and Elvis could move like Otis Redding moved, when Otis was dreaming, and Otis was a boxer too.
Stop lying to these kids. Like the magic that I know exists between each chord, it was always about the Swirl.
And Bruno Mars is about as Swirl’d as you are going to get in the USA. This dude is the product of two Imperial American colonies of color, and these stupid Cultural Appropriation finger pointering fools on Twitter have no idea that Hawaii is the most influential cultural guitar tradition of the 20th century because it created the sound of Pedal steel in Country music and opened up possibilities for some of the greatest African American blues musicians that will ever live.
Well that’s what happens when you cut the arts.
But go ahead. You can lie to these kids, but maybe you can teach them something? Because there are such things as important myths.
But a culture is judged by the quality and practicality of its myths.
May all those Keyboard warriors learn the Myth of Jelly Roll Morton. It’s a myth that he invented Jazz. It’s true that he claimed he did so. He also claimed he wasn’t Black.
Like many a good myth, his own mythology had many elements of truth, even when he was lying. Even when he was passing. Even when he was pimping.
That’s only one of many reasons why he’s an enigma. He would have hired Bruno Mars in a heartbeat.
Davin’s new song has been released and is fast becoming a dancehall hit. Listen here on Reggaeville: DAVIN MICHAEL STEDMAN & ANTHONY RED ROSE – FREE YOUR MIND FEAT. SLY & ROBBIE WITH LENKY MARSDEN
– Musician and writer Davin Michael Stedman has many musical ventures and is one of the driving forces behind the Staxx Brothers. He has just returned from three weeks of networking and reporting from Kingston, Jamaica. Next stop, Lagos, Nigeria.
