Cultural Appropriation

[richardfinegold]

Dave started a thread on Culture in societies and I was going to post this there but I didn’t want to hijack his thread.
Alex Ross apparently has written somewhere (I heard it discussed on a podcast) that in the States the Classical Music industry is a manifestation of White Supremacy. Apparently there are three facets to argument.
1) Black Musicians and Composers are under represented
2) CM represents a European import (apparently Ross ignores or dismisses American Composers), and is part of a conspiracy amongst White People to assert the supremacy of White European Culture over the musical culture of non whites. Ross apparently endorses the Stanley Crouch view that Jazz can only be performed and understood by Blacks.
3) attempts by Whites to embrace “Black” Music are Cultural Appropriation, which apparently one isn’t supposed to do because she should only listen and play music according to some predetermined information in our genetic makeup...

I am obviously unable to do justice to Ross here, as I cannot describe his article, which I admit I haven’t read (I recently read his book on Wagner, which I don’t recommend, unless one is interested in studying the effects of Adult Attention Deficit Disorder on Musical Criticism). Still, Ross is the premier Music Critic in this Country, and it’s discouraging to see him adopting this tone

[Ein Heldenleben]

The article is in The New Yorker and free to view. There’s also a huge spat going on re Schenkerian analysis with accusation and counter accusation free-flowing . I don’t want to get involved in that but I have to say SA has always left me cold - I just find it too arid.
I think when you’ve read the article you probably won’t have a problem with it - it’s quite soberly written. It saddens me to see the Schenkerian row - the fact is that classical music is a tiny , almost now irrelevant part of the music world - can’t really afford to fall out .

[richardfinegold]

Here you need a subscription for the New Yorker

[Bryn]

Dave started a thread on Culture in societies and I was going to post this there but I didn’t want to hijack his thread.
Alex Ross apparently has written somewhere (I heard it discussed on a podcast) that in the States the Classical Music industry is a manifestation of White Supremacy. Apparently there are three facets to argument.
1) Black Musicians and Composers are under represented
2) CM represents a European import (apparently Ross ignores or dismisses American Composers), and is part of a conspiracy amongst White People to assert the supremacy of White European Culture over the musical culture of non whites. Ross apparently endorses the Stanley Crouch view that Jazz can only be performed and understood by Blacks.
3) attempts by Whites to embrace “Black” Music are Cultural Appropriation, which apparently one isn’t supposed to do because she should only listen and play music according to some predetermined information in our genetic makeup...

I am obviously unable to do justice to Ross here, as I cannot describe his article, which I admit I haven’t read (I recently read his book on Wagner, which I don’t recommend, unless one is interested in studying the effects of Adult Attention Deficit Disorder on Musical Criticism). Still, Ross is the premier Music Critic in this Country, and it’s discouraging to see him adopting this tone

He should listen to Linton Kwesi Johnson's "From Mento to Lovers' Rock", where he highlighted the component influence of the European quadrille on the development of Mento, for instance. For the European calssical music tradition, with friends like Ross, who needs enemas?

[Dave2002]

The article is in The New Yorker and free to view. There’s also a huge spat going on re Schenkerian analysis with accusation and counter accusation free-flowing . I don’t want to get involved in that but I have to say SA has always left me cold - I just find it too arid.
I think when you’ve read the article you probably won’t have a problem with it - it’s quite soberly written. It saddens me to see the Schenkerian row - the fact is that classical music is a tiny , almost now irrelevant part of the music world - can’t really afford to fall out .

Ross's article is mostly not too bad, but includes this which may be his own words:

At bottom, the entire music-education system rests upon the Schenkerian assumption that the Western tonality, with its major-minor harmony and its equal-tempered scale, is the master language.

I'm not American, though I have lived in the USA. I suspect that statement is bunkum - and it does appear to have racist elements.

I feel that basing an argument on Schenker is completely false, and indeed I think it is mentioned somewhere that it is possible to get through the whole of a professional music education without encountering the work of that earlier commentator.

The article is available here https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...lassical-music

There are some interesting pointers to composers and performers whose work has not been well known in the past, and some compositions which may well be worth further investigation, and that may make the article worth reading for others too, though if I suggest that we should, is that not also cultural appropriation?

I am otherwise not going to get involved.

[oddoneout]

Here you need a subscription for the New Yorker

I managed to access the article from here, https://www.therestisnoise.com/ and started reading round the privacy box, but it will need more time than I have just now to read it properly so I hope I can get to it again by the same route. The opening didn't, to me, seem to fit what is in the OP but I didn't get very far down so that may not be a correct impression.
The whole matter of cultural appropriation I find confusing and confused, but realised recently that it can be very difficult to have a sensible discussion as anything perceived as 'critical' or not fully supportive of the 'message' attracts accusations of racism.

[Serial_Apologist]

It's rather a shame the OP did not wish to continue the earlier debate out of respect for Dave2002, as my #10 had attempted to steer the discussion towards jazz as being the musical genre in many ways epitomising the cultural appropriation debate. Here's the link to that earlier thread:

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?22269-Steve-Reich-race-and-cultural-appropriation&highlight=Steve+Reich

Perhaps the two threads could be merged under Richard's new heading?

[Richard Barrett]

Apparently there are three facets to argument.
1) Black Musicians and Composers are under represented
2) CM represents a European import (apparently Ross ignores or dismisses American Composers), and is part of a conspiracy amongst White People to assert the supremacy of White European Culture over the musical culture of non whites. Ross apparently endorses the Stanley Crouch view that Jazz can only be performed and understood by Blacks.
3) attempts by Whites to embrace “Black” Music are Cultural Appropriation, which apparently one isn’t supposed to do because she should only listen and play music according to some predetermined information in our genetic makeup...

I think that if and when you read the article you'll find that this is an extremely inaccurate description of its contents!

I also read the controversial Ewell article on the racism intrinsic to Schenkerian analysis which I found very thought-provoking - I've never found Schenker's work interesting or useful, largely indeed because it can only be applied to Western tonal music within a certain historical period, so that any claims it might make to universality are suspect from the start.

[richardfinegold]

, with friends like Ross, who needs enemas?

Exactly. It’s been estimated that perhaps no more than 10 American Orchestras may survive Covid. Even in the best of times it’s such a difficult profession to survive in..and then to have the leading critic in your field deny that you have any legitimacy, probably as an attempt to placate a mob that demands ideological conformity, is a betrayal.
Btw, I assume that you meant “enemies “ and not “enemas” although imo the latter does more justice to Ross...

[richardfinegold]

It's rather a shame the OP did not wish to continue the earlier debate out of respect for Dave2002, as my #10 had attempted to steer the discussion towards jazz as being the musical genre in many ways epitomising the cultural appropriation debate. Here's the link to that earlier thread:

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?22269-Steve-Reich-race-and-cultural-appropriation&highlight=Steve+Reich

Perhaps the two threads could be merged under Richard's new heading?

Permission granted...

[Dave2002]

I'm not sure that I did start a relevant thread on culture today. I did start one on the history of culture - but that goes back a long way, either to 60 million years ago, or 300 years ago. It was more about the idea of culture than specific to cultural appropriation. I did cross check to see if I posted something which would be relevant to the discussion here. I did put one posting on Richard's thread, but I don't think I started one of this nature. If I'm mistaken, perhaps someone would let me know or PM me.

I think the thread referred to was initiated by Bryn, and mentions Steve Reich. It's up to Bryn whether he feels that there is an overlap and some thread merging would make sense.

[Richard Barrett]

then to have the leading critic in your field deny that you have any legitimacy

Where in the article does he deny that orchestras have any legitimacy?

[Bryn]

Exactly. It’s been estimated that perhaps no more than 10 American Orchestras may survive Covid. Even in the best of times it’s such a difficult profession to survive in..and then to have the leading critic in your field deny that you have any legitimacy, probably as an attempt to placate a mob that demands ideological conformity, is a betrayal.
Btw, I assume that you meant “enemies “ and not “enemas” although imo the latter does more justice to Ross...

No accident, I assure you. I avoided The Rest is Noise until a bargain-priced copy turned up. It lived down to my expectations. Parochial hardly starts to describe his grasp of the world of the music that book claims to concern itself with. (Again, "world" chosen with some care). Though very different in many ways, I was nonetheless put in mind of Stormin' Norm's risible The Complete Companion to Twentieth-century Music. Where one knows even slightly more than a little of the composers it treats with, one finds Norm very far from the mark. There's also something about both Ross and Norm that brings Zappa's famous comment on rock journalism to mind. ('Google' if you don't know it. )

[Bryn]

It's rather a shame the OP did not wish to continue the earlier debate out of respect for Dave2002, as my #10 had attempted to steer the discussion towards jazz as being the musical genre in many ways epitomising the cultural appropriation debate. Here's the link to that earlier thread:

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?22269-Steve-Reich-race-and-cultural-appropriation&highlight=Steve+Reich

Perhaps the two threads could be merged under Richard's new heading?

The Reich thread quickly drifted away from one of the main concerns I raised in its original message, so amalgamation can do little harm to its particularity.

[Richard Barrett]

So are we going to discuss Alex Ross's article? (as opposed to repeating inaccurate hearsay about it, or condemning it on the basis of The Rest is Noise's shortcomings?)