Trans | Lesbian | 37 | Gamedev | Co-host of @sayitinred

 


 
Currently composing music for @desiderium and writing for Become Dirt


pedipanol
@pedipanol

Cultural appropriation is all well and good, it's not a big deal, it's people from somewhere being inspired by your culture and wanted to try something out too! So cool!

Sure you get things like Bossa Nova getting popular overseas, then being carved into music for relaxing, happy, laidback soundtracks, or elevator music, if you will (because the global north wanted the rhythm but not the antifascism and protest that consisted a heavy part and greatly diversified the writing of its original repertoire), then after the genre falls in popularity in Brazil being fed back to brazilians to take that as what bossa nova is too resulting in a wave of new composers making bossa that has more in common with Jpop than Chico B-

Nah, that's reading too much into it, we gotta celebrate how globalized culture is nowadays!! They love our music!! Vai Brasil!!!


pedipanol
@pedipanol

I don't have much to add to the discussion about Orientalism itself that hasn't been said better, but I do am pissed about the argument of "cultures inspiring and influencing each other" and globalization to dismiss cultural appropriation I've seen some people talk here. As if there's an equal balance in said cultural influence in the world at all. As if the fetishization of foreign cultures (be it systemic or individual) doesn't also affect people's own perception of their own culture and life too.


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in reply to @pedipanol's post:

yeah people arguing it down to just 'bro it's cultural exchange' are at best willfully ignoring the contexts being presented -- like grabbing at wild hypotheticals like 'oh so you don't think anyone should learn japanese?' when the actual examples are right there. it's maddening

i would have said that like 95% of the gaelic, and often it is just reduced to 'celtic' and smothers brythonic celtic cultures, rep i see online is like grossly inauthentic and just... american?

like it feels like the DnD version of my culture, esp music and folklore. as tho it's part of fantasy and not like a real thing people engage with. and it's not even all that bad it's just... it drowns out everything else.

and it's like, inevitable to make constant contact with it and then it makes me bloody well feel inauthentic.

I'm guessing that your Brazilian, because otherwise this is kind of a mind-bending take for an outside to have, that Brazilian bossanova artists have essentially culturally appropriated themselves and lack agency even in that.

I think I'm glad you aren't naming names, because that kind of criticism would hurt soul-deep.

Nah, I am a brazilian and I have written jpop bossa too. I went that specific because I know I did it too before I started actually learning guitar and MPB songs and in doing so started noticing the patterns in my music and the music of my peers.

It's also not like it's bad per se or it makes their music lesser for it, it's a systemic issue and a symptom of a decades long process of assimilation. The topic is talked about at length in ethnomusicology, as bossa nova itself already had its can of worms as a "whitening" of samba with figureheads like Tom Jobim literally refering to it as a "cleaner, less primitive version of samba".

the One True takeaway from all cultural appropriation discourse is that some cultures like seeing elements of themselves used by outsiders and others do not and some may either prefer or not mind the absense of some degree of accuracy