Should white people perform the blues?

[SimpleDon]

Unfortunately misplaced white guilt has led to giving so-called "indigenous" peoples special rights that do not exist otherwise.
Rather than refuting Methaphor's argument, it highlights how giving certain ethnicities special legal rights is wrong.

Is that supposed to address the challenge I presented to Metaphor? Are you in agreement with his quoted broad wide statement formulated in the absolute " no-one can own a culture"?

And Metaphor presented no argument supporting his broad wide statement formulated in the absolute. He only made that statement. You jump in, speculating about white guilt, further babbling about "so called "indigenous" people" when the documented I linked to developing on Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights addresses the Heritage Rights of Aborigines.

Then, you declare "special rights that do not exist otherwise" and that they are "wrong". More diluted babbling which in no way addresses the challenge I presented to Metaphor while I linked to a report which develops and expands on why the existence of Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights benefiting an indigenous group which can hardly be defined as "so called indigenous".

Reminder and again : Metaphor made a broad wide statement and in the absolute, stating " No-one can own a culture". Well there is plenty of argumentation in the documented report I linked to supporting why the Indigenous people of Australia benefit of Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights based on the value of Heritage. Care to counter argue the presented pro argumentation from the linked to report? Of course you would have to read this report. Which you did not, obviously.

I should read ahead before I reply. What Sabine said.

 

[another1]

I know what you mean, Don.

Blues = easy chords and sad BS that belongs only where someone is getting drunk. People say so many things are rooted in blues and that is wrong. They are rooted in the tired notes which are rooted in music, not the blues. As a guitar amateur I find the blues easy to impress someone with and easy to play. So easy to play that it makes me wonder why it is a genre at all. Stupid.

 

[repoman]

The Blues may be easy enough for a crappy non-creative and uninspiring musician to play. But when a master plays it and/or makes a fairly slight change in structure of standard blues the results can be very moving to me.

I think the open structure of blues allows people to use "hooks" very easily.

 

[bigfield]

Since you made a broad wide statement in the absolute that "no-one can own a culture", I will submit a report which disagrees with your contention.

http://www.frankellawyers.com.au/media/report/culture.pdf

Starting with defining the why of the recognition of " Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property" duly illustrated in the introduction of Chapter 1 :

Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights refers to Indigenous Australians rights to their Heritage. Such rights are also known as Indigenous Heritage Rights.

Heritage consists of the intangible and tangible aspects of the whole body of cultural practices, resources, and knowledge systems developed, nurtured and refined by Indigenous people and passed on by them as part of expressing their cultural identity.

Note the term "Property" which confirms the significance of "owning". I will await your counter argumentation to the above where I challenge you to demonstrate that there is no legitimate value to Heritage, no possible legitimate claim to Heritage and therefor no possible legitimate claim of Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights.

The above specifically challenges your broad wide applied statement which you formulated in the absolute :

No-one can own a culture

The report does not make an argument as why such claims of ownership are legitimate. It simply asserts that such ownership should be legally-recognised and afforded the protections offered by IP law.

It certainly does not refute Metaphor's stated position.

The notion of cultural ownership is completely antithetical to cosmopolitan society, where people freely exchange ideas and develop upon them.

 

[SimpleDon]

You cannot "appropriate" something that doesn't belong to anyone. Or, if people are 'appropriating', everyone is doing it, Black and White. So unless you think it's somehow illegitimate to appropriate across colour lines, then the term is meaningless. And if you do think it's illegitimate, you have to explain how.

If you think music is just about market share, it is you who have already lost the argument.

I didn't bring up market share, the article in the OP did, when it referred to 'stealing' from Blacks.

The question is whether the blues are still an integral part of Afro-American culture. Certainly its origins are in the oppression that they suffered for hundreds of years.

You don't have to agree with Derec that blacks are now oppressing whites to admit that the last decades have seen the oppression of Afro-Americans has eased considerably. The blues are now sung as the art that they are, not as relief from the daily oppression irrationally imposed on a people.

I like to think that the blues are a gift to the world. A gift that should be accepted with the appreciation for what they are, beautiful art born from unbelievable grace in the face of oppression. Art that deserves to live forever, no matter who sings them.

 

[another1]

I'm not saying a drunk person floating around on scales isn't good music at all. I just don't consider that a genre per se.

 

[repoman]

Japan has its own version of the Blues - called "Enka". It also uses a pentatonic scale (I am told).



This song is a canonical example of it, but there is a fair amount of variety Enka and Enka flavored pop music. It may have come from Korean "Trot" music.

As always, Koreans are great at being dramatic:

 

[thebeave]

Pat Boone singing Tutti Fruiti is pretty comical. Yes, he rightfully should have been mocked and rejected for it...and was. But he had every right to record it and give it his best shot. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. In this case, he lost. Pat Boone singing Tutti Fruiti by Little Richard is a bit like, oh I don't know...William Shatner singing, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by The Beatles:




A lot of Elvis Presley's music and style was "appropriated" from gospel and blues popular among blacks at the time. Is what he did wrong? Should we not have had an Elvis because someone somewhere might have been offended? There is room for both. As proof of that, I present you with this:

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Everyone's missing the obvious: The blues should be performed by smurfs!

 

[another1]

My ancestors weren't enslaved in this particular region but I can get laid if I can play the blues. The blues is or are easy to play. Expressing your soul in such crude arrangements is just that. The blues could be considered tuning up of instruments before playing real music.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

My ancestors weren't enslaved in this particular region but I can get laid if I can play the blues. The blues is or are easy to play. Expressing your soul in such crude arrangements is just that. The blues could be considered tuning up of instruments before playing real music.

You don't have to like the blues, you don't have to "get" the blues. I don't like or get german Opera. It's not my story, not my glory.

And personally I prefer Jazz to the blues. Not because I feel myself superior to the blues, but as a matter of taste. But sometimes, the blues is the only thing that fits. And nothing else will do.

If your taste don't run to the blues, per se, it's ok. No one is gonna put you jail, ok?

 

[skepticalbip]

Should white people perform the blues?

Shouldn't this question be, "Should anyone perform the blues"?

There are people all over the world that enjoy the blues (not just black or white) so, in answer, I would ask why shouldn't anyone who enjoys the blues perform the blues?

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Getting Back to Pat Boone

Pat Boone is a man whose “whole shtick,” in Dok’s words, “was doing whitebread pop covers of scary black music.” Indeed, we were briefly confused when we found his Tutti Frutti on Spotify — wasn’t that Little Richard? It sure was, but did you know Little Richard was black? Thanks to Pat Boone, you don’t need to.
Read more at http://wonkette.com/544015/washed-u...-obama-out-to-destroy-him#HqO34WzCtpoLUXA7.99

Here's the thing, you can't take the experience of the people of a culture out of the music of the culture and expect that music to still live. There is a reason that the blues are referred to as the dirty low-down blues.

Sanitize it, commodify it, and mass produce it, it ain't the blues no more.

And the color of the musician doesn't have a damn thing to with it.

 

[Bronzeage]

I have a right to sing the blues,
I have a right to write the blues,
You can have my blues when you pry my cold dead finger off my blues.
I'll run you over in a rubber tired buggy
and toss you in the rubber tired hack
an haul your sorry ass to the graveyard,
but you aint never comin' back.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Should white people perform the blues?

Shouldn't this question be, "Should anyone perform the blues"?

There are people all over the world that enjoy the blues (not just black or white) so, in answer, I would ask why shouldn't anyone who enjoys the blues perform the blues?

The only prerequisite to performing the blues is having had the blues.

I think that covers everybody.

 

[Horatio Parker]

I know what you mean, Don.

Blues = easy chords and sad BS that belongs only where someone is getting drunk. People say so many things are rooted in blues and that is wrong. They are rooted in the tired notes which are rooted in music, not the blues. As a guitar amateur I find the blues easy to impress someone with and easy to play. So easy to play that it makes me wonder why it is a genre at all. Stupid.

Oh yeah? Let's hear your version of "Louisiana Blues". (Beware the meter changes....)

[YOUTUBE]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dhFfJOWPzBQ[/YOUTUBE]

Wonder why Debussy imitated the Balinese gamelon, why Ives and Stravinsky incorporated ragtime, why Beethoven listened to and composed for peasant string trios...maybe they just liked getting drunk and limiting themselves to three chords....

 

[RavenSky]

To sum up, I think everybody who wants to pursue any type of music (or other artistic endeavor like dance) should by all means do so, regardless of their group membership. That is truly a liberal attitude.

Hell just froze over

And coincidentally, belly dance was the only kind of dance I was ever any good at.

 

[Nexus]

Getting Back to Pat Boone

Pat Boone is a man whose “whole shtick,” in Dok’s words, “was doing whitebread pop covers of scary black music.” Indeed, we were briefly confused when we found his Tutti Frutti on Spotify — wasn’t that Little Richard? It sure was, but did you know Little Richard was black? Thanks to Pat Boone, you don’t need to.
Read more at http://wonkette.com/544015/washed-u...-obama-out-to-destroy-him#HqO34WzCtpoLUXA7.99

Sanitize it, commodify it, and mass produce it, it ain't the blues no more.

You're not going to get an argument from me regarding how much Pat Boon sucks. But we have to acknowledge some people like his particular flavor of suck. Enjoyment of arts are entirely subjective. I think some art could be classified objectively in terms of how difficult it is to produce but the appreciation of it is still wholly subjective.

I don't support the current IP laws so I certainly wouldn't wanted it extended to "cultural rights". Besides that would be a legal nightmare, statutorily designating groups of people and telling them what they can write/sing/dance/play.

Should we also have culinary culture rights and only allow certain people to make certain food? Only latinos can own and operate Mexican restaurants? Or only Italians can make pizza? That would be as silly to me as restrictions on music.

 

[skepticalbip]

I know what you mean, Don.

Blues = easy chords and sad BS that belongs only where someone is getting drunk. People say so many things are rooted in blues and that is wrong. They are rooted in the tired notes which are rooted in music, not the blues. As a guitar amateur I find the blues easy to impress someone with and easy to play. So easy to play that it makes me wonder why it is a genre at all. Stupid.

I would say that you haven't listened to very much blues. Try some of the guitar work of the king of blues, B.B. King.



or maybe just some of his blues guitar work:

 

[another1]

If I were put in jail for not liking the blues, my main focus of defense come court day would be that the blues are not and should not be considered anything close to a "genre". If instruments could burp and moan on their own they would sound like the blues. That of course is my opinion which is usually right.

Skep... Even B.B is stuck in the blues chord progression and drunkard... archaic structure known as "the blues". He could be considered a good freestyle musician. Too bad so many musicians are held back by this assumption that the blues is so important in music. I play a blues riff every time I tune my guitar. It is a stationary and uninventive trap that some musicians fall into. I love tuning my guitar and smacking that first blues riff out. After my guitar is tuned, I play less limited music. Why is soul associated with the blues so much anyway? The only reason the blues can assume to take credit for being the backbone of any other genre is because of pentatonic scale being mutilated yet still strictly adhered to. The limitation the blues has is my problem with the assumption that anyone could consider the blues a genre. It may be a cultural byproduct of bile, yet cute as can be, but break down what is actually being played and you get nothing more than a whiney warm up for actual music to be played. That of course is my opinion. It isn't like I have ancient scales and chords that predate the blues longer than B.B can sustain a note on the thing be beats on called a guitar in real genres of music.