Should white people perform the blues?

[Horatio Parker]

Horatio that is a good song. I like how Jazzy it sounds. The blues deconversion thread on the morrow I should start eh?

Ask any of those guys about blues.

 

[Juma]

14. Blues is not a matter of color. It's a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the Blues.

Bad example I think. Having your ex
a) attack you with a golf club
b) you having to pay her hundreds of millions of dollars
counts as bad luck in my book. Who knows, since he's no good at golf anymore music may be a second career for him.

that is not bad luck. that is bad judgement.

 

[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.

Rather than repeating my most recent reply to Metaphor, I will link you to it and ask you the same questions I asked him.

http://talkfreethought.org/showthre...erform-the-blues&p=80281&viewfull=1#post80281

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

I am not going to read a 380 page report to see how (or if) it challenges my assumption. I want you to make an argument that someone can own a culture.

The argument has been staring at you from the get go. Do you think that I quoted from 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.

for no reason at all?

The reason for your quote is not clear. Simply stipulating a definition of heritage is not reason for concluding that some people have ownership of some the ideas found within that heritage.

In your previous post you also ask Metaphor to note the term 'property'. Simply labelling ideas as 'property' does not make them so. Frankel do not have the authority to define IP law. The fact that 'property' implies ownership is also irrelevant.

Do you deny the legitimate value of Heritage?

I don;t know what you mean by 'legitimate value'. And without knowing that, the question is incoherent.

Do you deny that Heritage is the source of the claim for Cultural and Intellectual Property?

The report is saying that those two things are one and the same, not that one is the source of the other. That is why it states that 'Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights' is synonymous with 'Indigenous Heritage Rights'.

Do you not understand why Heritage is the source of the claim for Cultural and Intellectual Property?

You're just re-phrasing a tautology: the Heritage of Indigenous People is their Cultural and Intellectual Property. That's not an argument.

I reject the premise that anybody can own a culture.

Which means that you reject the premise that based on the legitimate value of their Heritage, Indigenous people have a claim to Cultural and Intellectual Property.

Unless you define 'legitimate value', this is incoherent.

Are you somehow in disagreement that "owning a culture" is semantically similar to " Cultural and Intellectual Property"?

I'm not.

There are at least two problems with the notion of cultural property rights/ownership of a culture:

Authorship: Preserving an idea that originated with someone else is not sufficient grounds for ownership. There is no reason why this principle should change when one is dealing with an entire collection of ideas.

Originality: Most of the ideas that are found in any given culture can also be found in other cultures. Therefore no single group can claim ownership of those ideas as those ideas exist independently of any efforts on their behalf, or on the behalf of their ancestors.

 

[credoconsolans]

Bad example I think. Having your ex
a) attack you with a golf club
b) you having to pay her hundreds of millions of dollars
counts as bad luck in my book. Who knows, since he's no good at golf anymore music may be a second career for him.

that is not bad luck. that is bad judgement.

That can be seen as the Blues. No one is forcing anyone to shoot a man in Memphis - or cheat on his wife.

 

[Playball40]

Isn't the bigger question, should white people wear dreads?

 

[Bronzeage]

Bad example I think. Having your ex
a) attack you with a golf club
b) you having to pay her hundreds of millions of dollars
counts as bad luck in my book. Who knows, since he's no good at golf anymore music may be a second career for him.

that is not bad luck. that is bad judgement.

A man makes his luck and bad judgment makes bad luck. Since Tiger's mother is from Thailand, he is allowed to sing the blues half the time, but must segue into Khon masked dance, the traditional theater of half his people.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Reading all the posts arguing for one racial culture "owning" their heritage, I have to wonder if they would say that Charley Pride was robbing whites of their C&W cultural heritage.



When will we finally accept that we are all humans sharing our human heritage?

You do realize that country music tracing its roots back not just to the folk songs of europe, but also to the reels played in slaves quarters across the south?

 

[AthenaAwakened]

that is not bad luck. that is bad judgement.

A man makes his luck and bad judgment makes bad luck. Since Tiger's mother is from Thailand, he is allowed to sing the blues half the time, but must segue into Khon masked dance, the traditional theater of half his people.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

You do realize that country music tracing its roots back not just to the folk songs of europe, but also to the reels played in slaves quarters across the south?

I think that the context of the comment would mean that the response to that would be "Who cares?". The history of a genre of music shouldn't be relevant when determining how appropriate it is for a given individual to be performing that music. The appropriateness of it should begin and end with the question "Does he or she feel like performing that music?".

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I am just shocked that people who claim to be liberals and who complain about racism would put forward the idea that people can own an idea or an activity because of their race. How can one handle that level of cognitive dissonance?

 

[Trausti]

This discussion assumes that the Blues developed in a vacuum, without influence from other musical styles. That apparently is not the case.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxzvVGlVZqE&t=49m50s

 

[skepticalbip]

Reading all the posts arguing for one racial culture "owning" their heritage, I have to wonder if they would say that Charley Pride was robbing whites of their C&W cultural heritage.

When will we finally accept that we are all humans sharing our human heritage?

You do realize that country music tracing its roots back not just to the folk songs of europe, but also to the reels played in slaves quarters across the south?

And?

Are you saying that the originators of European folk songs and slaves in the south aren't part of humanity that contributed to humanity's heritage, a heritage that we should all embrace and enjoy? Why does there seem to be a need in this thread to divide humanity into segregated tribes at odds with each other?

 

[AthenaAwakened]

You do realize that country music tracing its roots back not just to the folk songs of europe, but also to the reels played in slaves quarters across the south?

And?

Are you saying that the originators of European folk songs and slaves in the south aren't part of humanity that contributed to humanity's heritage, a heritage that we should all embrace and enjoy? Why does there seem to be a need in this thread to divide humanity into segregated tribes at odds with each other?

What are you talking about?

I have stated how I felt on the subject. Go back and look.

For three years, while in my twenties, I sang with a band. We were a jazz band by trade, but from time to time we had to expand our repertoire. In that time I sang jazz, blues, soul, rock, folk, country, western swing, funk, bluegrass, gospel, and I do believe I may have even sung Verdi's Aida, all the parts, in its entirety one night in Charleston, but I'm not sure.

All I did with my post referencing yours was point out that CW music has black roots, That CW, really all American and even all World music is an amalgamation of every culture that comes in contact with said music. That is how music is. So you see I am not arguing with you. If anything I am agreeing with you.

Now I don't know what the Charlie Pride post was supposed to prove, if it was a genuine attempt at furthering discussion or a troll to start a fight but I assure that you if it was the latter, this is not the day and I am not the one.

 

[skepticalbip]

And?

Are you saying that the originators of European folk songs and slaves in the south aren't part of humanity that contributed to humanity's heritage, a heritage that we should all embrace and enjoy? Why does there seem to be a need in this thread to divide humanity into segregated tribes at odds with each other?

What are you talking about?

I have stated how I felt on the subject. Go back and look.

For three years, while in my twenties, I sang with a band. We were a jazz band by trade, but from time to time we had to expand our repertoire. In that time I sang jazz, blues, soul, rock, folk, country, western swing, funk, bluegrass, gospel, and I do believe I may have even sung Verdi's Aida, all the parts, in its entirety one night in Charleston, but I'm not sure.

All I did with my post referencing yours was point out that CW music has black roots, That CW, really all American and even all World music is an amalgamation of every culture that comes in contact with said music. That is how music is. So you see I am not arguing with you. If anything I am agreeing with you.

Now I don't know what the Charlie Pride post was supposed to prove, if it was a genuine attempt at furthering discussion or a troll to start a fight but I assure that you if it was the latter, this is not the day and I am not the one.

The Charlie Pride link wasn't supposed to prove anything. It was to show that those who stereotype people or insist on assigning roles by some preconceived idea of race is absurd. People, all people, are simply people and have their own likes or dislikes independent of what "group" behavior others think they should live by.

I was just disappointed in your pointing out that C&W also had "black" roots. Certainly C&W had roots in many earlier music genres including "black". It originated as music of the "common folk". Isn't that enough?

 

[Horatio Parker]

I saw this album in the library of the Harlem Arts Alliance. I've always been curious about it, but it's only available in vinyl.



"Your Cheatin' Heart" (Hank Williams) - 2:59
"St. Louis Blues" (W. C. Handy) - 3:07
"Blueberry Hill" (Al Lewis, Vincent Rose, Larry Stock) - 2:43
"Country Meets the Blues" - (Ramsey Lewis) 2:27
"Memphis in June" (Hoagy Carmichael, Paul Francis Webster) - 3:05
"High Noon" (Dimitri Tiomkin, Ned Washington) - 4:46
"I Need You So" (Ivory Joe Hunter) - 3:21
"I Just Want to Make Love to You" (Willie Dixon) - 2:45
"Tangleweed 'Round My Heart" (Roy Kelley, Forrest Wyatt) - 3:24
"My Bucket's Got a Hole in It" (Clarence Williams) - 1:56

 

[Ford]

I saw this album in the library of the Harlem Arts Alliance. I've always been curious about it, but it's only available in vinyl.

And this is why we have USB turntables. Vinyl lives again!

 

[Godless Raven]

I was trying to catch reading this thread but I kept getting distracted by the Muddy Waters and BB King Youtube links! Love both of them. My dad got to play bass and some rhythm guitar with BB King performing in Vegas around 1972-73. He filled in on two practices and one performance and got invited to a party with King and his hangeroners. He said he was the only white person in the room and he felt really isolated and that there was so much weed being smoked that eventually he just mellowed out and hung out with them. I have a photo of them together and some sweet BB King swag he gave my dad.

Sorry...off on a tangent. As far as whether white people should perform the blues...well, they can't claim the blues, but as long as there is this...

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1pwnb0NpQw[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAhZpILc-Hw[/YOUTUBE]

Blues is a state of mind baby...

 

[Horatio Parker]

I saw this album in the library of the Harlem Arts Alliance. I've always been curious about it, but it's only available in vinyl.

And this is why we have USB turntables. Vinyl lives again!

True, but I can't get there. Technology wrt commercially available recordings has taken one too many turns for me...

 

[Godless Raven]

If this doesn't make your day...

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUFVR5sgbt0[/YOUTUBE]

...there's no hope for humanity

 

[Ford]

And this is why we have USB turntables. Vinyl lives again!

True, but I can't get there. Technology wrt commercially available recordings has taken one too many turns for me...

A few years ago I bought my 70+ year old mom a USB turntable as a Christmas gift. She had a whole bunch of records that she hadn't listened to in years. The first day I showed her how to transfer a record to CD - it was an album called "Jerry Lewis Sings." Not Jerry Lee Lewis. Turns out Mr. MDA telethon did an album and it wasn't half bad.


Anyway, a couple weeks later she called and said she had a long list of requests from her friends wanting to transfer their old vinyl records to digital.