Cultural Innovation

I still find this whole notion of opposing cultural "appropriation" to be bizarre and awful.   I am not really an expert, but in the few areas that I know, some of the greatest moments of cultural innovation have come from cross-pollination of cultures.  For God sakes, the cultural non-appropriators would never have allowed white British boys in Liverpool and London to play black American blues, but much of modern music owes its roots to this strange synthesis.  Keith Richards and Mick Jagger spent years trying to be Howlin' Wolf before anyone heard of the Rolling Stones.  I know that black musicians were resentful of the appropriation in part because the white bands made so much more money than they did and killed what market demand there was for their music.  But that just forced African Americans, some of the greatest musical innovators the world has known, to innovate again and again to keep ahead (e.g. Motown, funk, rap, etc).

In a previous post, I observed that the opposite of cultural appropriation is cultural apartheid.  I would add that the opposite of cultural appropriation is cultural stasis and stagnation.

4 Comments

  1. SamWah:

    Blacks should NEVER listen to radio or watch TV or read newspapers because Cultural Appropriation FORBIDS it. Also, Asians, plus Pacific Islanders. Whites MUST IMMEDIATELY STOP drinking Mai Tais.

  2. Nimrod:

    This is just the latest attempt at segregating society to help facilitate the neo-Marxist demographic-based version of divide-and-rule, or more accurately divide-and-conquer since the eventual goal is totalitarianism.

    Too bad almost all we have are state run schools that are never going to teach any students anything other than statism.

  3. esoxlucius:

    kiss me i'm irish. no. wait. that's cultural appropriation.

  4. Ron H.:

    I don't know about black musicians being resentful. It is the keen interest of British bands such as the Stones that exposed many white American listeners to some the great blues masters for the first time. The ensuing ground swell of renewed interest saved many of them from relative obscurity and made them well known to young music fans.