
To the matter as to whether
Bruno Mars , who is not black, is appropriating black music and an aesthetic
born of African American experience, created by talented black artists, well…I don’t
know the man’s music, let alone his version of Black Style. I will him be and
not mention him again in this harangue. Appropriation has been with us forever,
although I would suggest that the non-black musicians playing music that is
African American in origin have, for the most part, a genuine love of the
sounds they've been exposed to. Theft is theft and black creators must be
located, credited and their families paid for the use of the bodies of work
that formed the foundation for a huge amount of American culture and a
character, but at the same time it seems reductive and ironically bigoted to
suggest that only black musicians have the right, let alone the sole ability to
make authentic jazz, blues, or rhythm and blues. Forcing matters of creativity
into a any kind of requirements for acceptance is absurd and contrary to what
art is supposed to do, the process through which an individual--an
artist--experiences the world and , through the use of whatever medium moves
him enough to create objects of beauty of contemplation that hadn't existed
before. Pretty much going with Marcuse on this one, as in his bookd the Aesthetic
Dimension, where he argues that Society, The Establishment, the Powers that Be,
need to leave the artists and allow them to perform their task with their art
making, to produce joy. Otherwise, if held to aesthetic principles that are
contrary to inspiration, it ceases to be art. It is Propaganda. We do not need
an American version of Soviet Realism, no matter where it comes from. It
goes to authenticity that one writes in a style that is natural to them; whites
writing in idioms that makes sense for Mance Liscomb is clearly insulting to
black musicians and black culture in general. It is a not so subtle form of
racism: it says "I think you're exotic, not quite human, something wholly
"other" than normal. I will take your funny sounds and use them to
decorate my cosmology." Absent the absolutist argument that only black
musicians have the right to play blues and are the only ones who can have
anything authentic expression (its' a powerful argument), the bottom line of
the blues is the clear, simple, emotionally honest expression of one's
experiences. That would mean that one find their own voice, something they can
bring of themselves to the music they desire to perform and make it genuinely
personal. There is a difference, a fine one, between having a personal style
greatly influenced by black music and singers and one that slavishly tries to
impersonate the sound, causing all sorts of suspicious Rich Little-isms. Those
influenced by black artists but who have their own style, free of affectation:
Butterfield, Mose Allison, Van Morrison, Tom Waits. Those who fail : Jagger,
when he sings blues, Peter Wolfe, others galore. Wolf is listenable
and usually effective as vocalist and front man, but he never convinced me that
his style was cleverly constructed, contrived. I won't go as far as to say he's
guilty of minstrelsy, but his his banter where spews hip argot, rope-a-dope
rhymes and other offerings of hep-cat impersonation, comes off as cartoonish,
stagy, really stereotypical of black performance; whether Cab Calloway or James
Brown or an inspired preacher sermonizing from the pulpit of a black church,
Wolf's machine gun is appropriation straight out. I had often wished he'd just
keep his mouth shut and just sing.Yes , I realize the irony of the last sentence,but
I think you see my point even if you might not agree with it. J.Geils
is a band I've enjoyed a great deal over the last few decades, but there are
times when Wolf's unreconstructed enthusiasm turns into caricature and
stereotype. He reminds me of someone trying to beat his influences at their own
game rather than forging something that is really his own.