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“The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.”
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re: ghetto/slum/favela tourism (via scruggs)
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dedication to meditation
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very cool looking MIDI controller for iPhone; guess i need to “jailbreak” this thing
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dj fflood re: jamaica and homophobia/masculinity, house music and gender fluidity :: lots that resonates here w/ me, a dancehall devotee and 4/4 booty shaker :: h/t ripley
videyoga ::
This fem.men.ist blogpost reminds me a lot of a book by Barbara Browning called “Samba: Resistance in Motion” (thanks Ms.Polley!), which in large part discusses fluid gender boundaries, dance, and the afro-brazilian religion Candomblé in light of Brazilian culture…definitely a solid read.
I haven’t had time to read this article on “Slum Tours” yet but my initial reaction is FUCK that! I recall some friends of mine telling me about that shit when they were last down in Rio and I just wanted to puke. Stupid disconnected dupes treating a tour of a favela like a visit to the aquarium. “Wow, it looks just like in that movie Cidade de Deus!”. Seems extremely unhealthy and macabre to me…It’s bad enough having to deal with those duckboats in downtown Boston, I can’t imagine if I were 70 times poorer and they were cruising around my dilapidated neighborhood with cameras and suntan lotion.
Sometimes when I’m especially down I consider all of what I do in the music-listening world a distant, eternal slum tour. I’m not going to condemn the practice because I really don’t see what sets us appart – we’re also partaking without engaging.
Hey Birdseed. As Rupture stated in past post responses, “critical intimacy” is key to rendering this sense of distance or disconnected-ness null. A tour-bus doesn’t strike me as being an intimate means of connecting with a culture…
And with all do respect to where you’re coming from, I’ve gone to great lengths to involve myself directly with the cultures who’s music I am most involved with. Granted I can’t say that for every musical influence (I think that would be kind of silly and uber-time consuming), but I’m confident that the most important connections are there. That said, Yes, I am an outsider, I can’t and wouldn’t deny that (much like this guy MC Gringo). But the question is HOW you involve yourself with the culture at large, right?
On the Brazilian tip I’ve invested a lot of energy and therefore sometimes respond emotionally. i know I can’t respond as a surrogate for the culture, but being someone involved quite heavily in the Brazilian community here in Boston I can say that more than a few of my friends would react ambivalently to these slum tours…
It’s easy for you to say/do – I’m stuck in the cold (well, currently quite sunny actually) north with no means financial or social to go anywhere else. Plus I’m fairly shy, outsider-geeky and don’t like to bother people. I’m always going to be the gawker, unless I switch to listening to the punk/metal hybrids my friends are into.
So while I’m totally aware of the problems in every way, the metaphorical internet “slum tour” is my only strategy for getting to this type of music. As people who post here I guess you all feel the incredible power of certain poor people’s music. Should I just ignore it and find safe, middle-class music to get into?
One thing about slum tour/slum music criticism that I find fairly problematic is that a lot of it comes from precisely the safe middle classes, whose underlying agenda seems to be decreasing the interest in poor people’s music. It becomes just another aspect of prole-hate, “why are you looking at these people, they’re scum, we should be focussing on our positive middle-class achievements” kinda thing. Not defending the practice, just noting.
Interesting exchange, guys. I’m sympathetic to you both, and this is obviously tricky stuff. I have to admit that, on one hand, I feel a bit more in Kiddid’s camp: this is ultimately about being good neighbors, about engaging with otherness and closing that distance through musical but also social/interpersonal intimacy. Of course, as Birdseed points out, that’s not always so easily accomplished depending where we live; Boston is a wonderfully diverse place in its way, provincial as it can seem (though surely Sweden has its “post-colonial” neighborhoods too).
What Birdseed draws our attention to is the underlying problematic, far as I’m concerned, of the “nu world” music we’re all interested in: how do we reconcile what I’ve called “downloading at a distance” with any kind of meaningful (cultural) politics? Music mediates such distance — whether figurative or real — and can reshape our imaginations of who we and our neighbors are (and we can think of ‘neighbors’ as those in physical proximity, in our own cities, or perhaps more broadly — and poetically — as more distant ‘neighbors’ in the world and yet with connected plights and dreams and destinies all the same). In that sense, we might ask; how does music encourage/enable actual social connection (even if that connection is itself mediated by various info/communication technologies)? what are the implications for notions of race, nation, the boundaries between self and other? the kinds of vacations we take?
the policies of our (national and local) governments?
Or, is this asking too much? Of music and ourselves. I’m not sure, to be honest. But the cosmoptimist in me thinks, no.
That said, I still think slum tours are pretty easily condemnable and that embracing or engaging with poor people’s music, as you’d have it, is not really the same thing at all.
Must admit that sometimes my jaded outlook on American culture colors my responses to these issues cynical at best. I asked a close friend of mine what she thought of the idea of these tours and she balanced me out and made me think clearer, simply saying “Maybe it would be a good thing for the favela?”. She also reminded me that not all favelas are violent, that if a foreigner is able to see these environments in a different light then that might help change negative/exotic perceptions of violence + poverty for the better.
I can’t help but feel like the best way to reconcile this “downloading at a distnace” conundrum is through direct social contact with the culture who’s music is being downloaded. Maybe in some cases that seems extreme, but how else does one truly connect with a culture if not through temporal experience?
I’m fine with that approach, if only one treads very carefully and is fully aware of the power dynamics of the situation. Going in with the “we’re all brothers in the same world” attitude belies the totally different ends we’re at in the world’s economic system, and the associated resource inequality, both physical and social/discursive. There’s a good possibility our involvement will achieve the opposite of what we’re after.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from a decade in the feminist movement, it’s that sometimes a little separatism and introversion is needed in order to make the group stronger. The involvement of the privileged in a lot of activities risks merely undermining the empowerment of the oppressed group.
Just to echo off of homies…
Birdseed. It seems like sometimes your description of communities is very reductionist, whether poor or privileged. A community is not a static thing, and many times people from such communities themselves move in and out of them, just as outsiders come in. At least in the U.S. Maybe Brazil is different. I know some places I’ve been have caste structures, but those places aren’t fully participating in the global economy your referencing anyway, they have a social/economic structure less based in Western Capitalism then other places.
I’m someone who interacts with different communities outside of music as well as in music. I really believe that some of the realities of the poorer community that I work in are problems that need to be changed. Some are assets, and are a direct result of the detriments, but the work we do in community building is to get everybody to a place where they can be themselves and enjoy their assets, without destroying their own, their families, or their neighbor’s lives. Is that a strictly middle class value? Am I wrong to want to see a kid from a single parent home in the projects make it to college? If I tell myself that I’m not this kid is not my sister or brother, and position myself to be higher on the social pole than her, how would that improve my interactions with her?
And as an example of how music can play that role, I think that my knowledge of music is the most fluid entry for me to gain the respect and trust of the people that I work with. If I play a song that they like in the office they go crazy and look at me like… He’s playing THIS song! If I try to do a dance that they did, or sing the lyrics of some new local hit, they feel like even though I’m in a different position than them, I’m like them. They could be me if they wanted. Or they could be something/someone else. That commonality of music is something that goes beyond the social structures we’re placed in. Maybe I’m just a San Francisco hippie, but we are all siblings, cousins, parents, children. I can at times be as conservative/purist as the next person, but right now I think our world needs a little more movement.
Right, Evo Morales?
Again, I guess so – all coming together and crossing boundaries is a good idea. But I wouldn’t be sure that what you’re suggesting is always the case, especially when there’s race and vast socio-economic distances involved. To take an example fresh in my mind, in Michael Veal’s book Dub (which Wayne recommended, thanks, good read!) there are quotes containing a certain amount of resentment against electronica for having “stolen” dub’s techniques without (they feel) proper credit. Do the Jamaicans feel that they can be “like” the Chemical Brothers or whatever? Is it even desirable that they aspire to be like the Chemical Brothers?
Or take (again via Veal’s book) roots reggae, where the involvement of large amounts of western money and interest distorted the genre away from being something that spoke powerfully to all Jamaicans. It became conservative and traditional because that sold well in the west. Is the interest and interaction of priviliged distributors/collaborators always desirable?
Since you yourself are a kind of modern-day Don Letts (well, aren’t you?) I think it’s a good idea to see all sides of the coin. I don’t think there’s much wrong with respectful, tolerant, culturally accepting interaction on the terms of the underprivilidged, but it’s certainly not totally straightforward. I think for now I prefer to stay safely marginal, and strengthen the performers by letting them do their thing in peace. Because surely music is a “reality” that is one of the non-problematic ones?
I agree that one has to be conscious and careful of involvement within a community that “is not our own” and that’s why I responded in my initial post the way I did. It was a criticism springing from how I perceive American involvement with the culture of the favela. I also do not believe that a slum tour is the same as downloading or “touring” musical genres on the internet. So maybe that’s our biggest hang-up with all of this.
I have in part intentionally chosen to partake in Brazilian culture because of it’s notorious sense of inclusiveness…and vice versa, in part, intentionally chosen to stay away from feminist causes due to the sometimes exclusive nature of that movement! And like Boima said, the simple act of exposing ones taste in a musical form can change the way an insider might perceive an outsider. There’s no use in keeping things separate if they don’t have to be.
I’d like to close this response by saying that we may be living in privileged societies, but don’t assume that because someone uses the internet they must always come from safe middle class families. The lines become finer from the inside…
Kiddid, how is feminism “exclusive”? If you’re willing to give all sorts of communities the leeway to be complex, why not do the same for a “community” that potentially includes half of the world and is in some way contained within every other community? There’s been enough discussion of 3rd, 4th wave feminism and Global South feminisms that we don’t have to stick to the dogmatic Anglo-European stereotype of it, do we?
Birdseed, while I am sympathetic to your concerns, I wonder if you’re not getting bogged down with a form of “white guilt” or white, male, developed world guilt over privilege? I can’t quite put my finger on it yet, but there’s something about the way you classify various communities that sets off a little alarm bell. I don’t know that music consumption is ALWAYS some form of slumming. How then would you describe my teen years (and those of a lot of people of my generation, both in DR & in NYC), listening to Motown, soul, disco, early hip-hop, AOR, punk/new wave, merengue, salsa, Mexican ballads and Cuban nueva trova? I mean, it wasn’t a conscious thing, it was what circulated in the various communities I was a part of. In the DR I was middle class and here in the US I was working class. So was I “slumming” in the DR when I listened to perico ripiao made by poor rural people? Was I “aspirational” when I listened to the Rolling Stones? I just don’t think that every single listening exercise has to be as fraught and policed as you make it out to be.
Clearly some audiences are less mobile than others (think of kids, think of people for whom it’s very costly to travel, think of people with families and obligations). Does that mean they shouldn’t listen to music made in communities they cannot personally interact with? Nonsense. And some musicians are less mobile than others — not only the cost of travel, but crazy visa restrictions, which in the US has kept us from seeing all kinds of people in the last 7 years.
One of the big problems with the current state of things is that so many people who consume do so sans context. I don’t mean context of community creating music, but even the context of the record store or the zine, which used to create subcultural audiences/communities that WANTED to know about the artists, production, etc. An mp3 (potentially) seems like dropped from the sky, with no other information (liner notes, snotty record store clerk) to fill in the rest.
While you’re probably right (about the white guilt thing, I’m upper middle class in background and was all the more so when living in Africa) I do have to put in a small defense of geographically restricted listening, influences and communities. I think a lot of the music we all love draws strength from its inwardness, seeing what works well on the local dancefloor first and foremost. Sure, they get ideas from outside, but then it percolates a bit inside the community with no outside influence and it comes out startling and brilliant at the other end. Think Local, Act Global kinda thing.
I was generalizing about some personal experiences with Feminism so as to save time writing. Certainly wasn’t speaking of women as a whole. I was raised by women and had to learn to trust men a little later on in life…I’ve also had some experiences that have left me feeling alienated in a Feminist (capitalized) crowd. Perhaps that’s the Anglo-Euro stereotype you speak of. Sorry if it came off as offensive.
I think Caro’s basically saying that, at this point, feminism — if we can contain so many struggles with one word — could use as many males in the movement(s) as females, or at least that we needn’t pretend it mean one (exclusive) thing.
I also find myself more sympathetic to Caro’s model of varied listening practices and shifting subject positions and forms/moments of musical engagement that need not always be so fraught. That model rings more true to me. Whereas, to be honest, the notion that something can “percolate” in this day and age in a closed community of some sort, “with no outside influence,” seems pretty far-fetched. I don’t know any communities like that, and I wonder whether in imagining them we might continue constructing otherness in some weird ways. I don’t contest that within certain communities — which are, nonetheless, always interfacing with the “outside” — there are sensibilities, predilections, structures of feeling, etc., which can help to forge forms which are distinctive and symbolic of a certain place or socio-cultural formation, but that’s saying something more nuanced — and not at all incompatible with what Caro sketched out above.
Birdseed, I’ll be blunter than diplomatic Wayne. The “no outside influence” idea is a myth. Even in the middle of the Kalahari, there is always some contact with “outside.” And always some crazy dude or other who loves free jazz or heavy metal and eventually mixes things up.
E.g. There’s a big perico ripiao scene here in NY, and Sydney (I forget her last name) told me about an amazing young accordion player who to my ear sounded very traditional, but who said he’s trying to make his playing sound like scratching. Blew my mind, and as soon as I heard it, began to hear the scratching in his playing. At the same time I could hear it as continuity with traditional playing (which has changed a lot over the last fifty years).
Definitely we need to parse out the subtleties of listening, consumption, community, exchange, influence etc etc, but look and listen at what actually happens, don’t just make assumptions. Being physically far is an obstacle, sure, but not insurmountable.
Kiddid, I wasn’t offended, but knee-jerk rejection of “feminism” (among younger men and women) does get on my nerves a bit. The same way racism can only be effectively tackled when whites see it as their problem too, feminism can only work when, as Wayne notes, men see it as their issue too.
Well, I’m not one to clank down on outside influence as you seem to think (I think “roots” theories are dreadful), and of course I try to do my research as thoroughly as possible from a distance. All I’m saying is that a world where everyone is making music for the global (capitalist) market first and foremost is a pretty awful one, and that scenes and identity groups and communities are a good thing. (Not to mention that I think such a world is unlikely to happen. I’m just sitting down now to write a blog post to that effect.)
i guess it depends on how much of a “world system” person you are then. For some, there is no escaping the reach of global capitalism. for others, there are local pockets of resistance/off-gridness. but from a cultural standpoint, i still think it’s important to bear in mind the degree to which all societies are interpenetrating at this point. i like james clifford’s work on “traveling cultures” for informing that kind of perspective.
I feel I’m being cast as the “folk culture preserver” dope in an eighties world beat discourse here, which I think is fairly distant from my actual position. Obviously I’m either not getting my point across or I’m indeed a hopeless case, but I dearly hope it’s the latter. Lemme try to straighten it out in my head. Which of the following assertions is it that you guys disagree with? Because essentially they’re all I’m trying to put across.
1. The direct, creative involvement of people with large amounts of power in the cultural output of disposessed groups has often been negative for those cultures.
and the related
2. It is often beneficial for cultural output to be marketed towards/aimed at the cultural sphere from which the culture creator him/herself springs.
I dunno, Birdseed. These both seem like positions fraught with all kinds of assumptions and value judgments that I wouldn’t agree with. My two cents:
1. “Dispossessed”? Of what? “Negative”? In what way? I guess I’m not clear on the general case you’re trying to construct. Dispossession of actual property (land, resources, and material culture) makes sense and creates real grievances. I don’t really believe in being dispossessed of one’s culture, though. That’s like being dispossessed of one’s thoughts. Even if we want to take the side of some group in a case where its cultural forms have been “appropriated” by certain powerful others, the negative is unclear to me. Yes, someone may be profiting elsewhere, but not taking local profits, and more often than not the appropriation calls attention to the group itself and can create new opportunities for members of the group. Perhaps specific examples would help here. I suspect it is difficult to create a general theory for this sort of thing.
2) “Beneficial”? How so? I feel like you’re talking about authenticity here, but that’s in the ears of the beholder, far as I’m concerned. Plus, to take a specific (hypothetical) example, a Nigerian version of Tupac could be as marketed toward / aimed at the local cultural sphere as overseas. I don’t see how that makes it more or less beneficial for anyone in that context (or outside). Maybe my Tupac example doesn’t wash with you though because it’s not “localized” enough. In that case, again, I think you’re looking for the real and you’ve got some assumptions about what that might sound like based on ideas of cultural isolation that certainly don’t hold in the modern world, and probably never really did in any human society.
From where do I spring, as a third generation Bostonian Irish-Italian-Portuguese boy who grew up with hip-hop in my ears? To which sphere should I market my output?
Obviously the vagueness of the terms used and the cack-handed way in which I use them are partly to blame. (What’s a better word for “not having power”?) But to answer your last question, is saying “this one” too much of a stretch? Or “the people who go to your shows”? Or “your friends”? It’s getting way more complicated than it needs to be.
I’ll give it one last shot to make it as simple as I can because most of the stuff I’ve said doesn’t really matter. I’m not sure demarcation, multiple-identity problems, larger scale issues about capitalism, borderline cases, appropriation theories or even the power discussions really need to be in the equation.
For me the music of co-operating communities of artist and fans are generally preferable to that of highly individual auteurs (or I’d listen to middle-class indie rock, frankly). Outside interference that distorts the balance between artists and fans can often be very disruptive to that kind of music, aesthetically.
Typical example: Go-go was (is) a great funk-derived genre from Washington, DC in the mid-eighties. Circa 1985-86 it was “discovered” by large unrelated communities with considerable power, including those centred around British magazine NME and around major record company Island, and several compilations were released/artists were signed. Bewildered by the sudden change in audience (from all-black/local to nearly all-white/european) many artists involved in the genre started outputting total rubbish (I own a Trouble Funk album from 1987 that’s pure excrement) and the genre lost local popularity (but quickly regained it when the furore died down). Outside intereference -> rubbish music.
(I’d be happy to hear of counterexamples, of music improving greatly when it’s been tampered with by another group. Maybe I’m totally wrong)
In an attempt to simplify even further, instead of “outside influence,” how about:
commercially-motivated pandering to a mass market -> rubbish music
only problem with that, hip-hop proves it wrong.
Ah but see this is where I need to start re-introducing a teensy bit of complexity again because hip-hop’s image is still that it’s marketed towards inner-city african-americans. It may, in reality, be sold to and bought by mostly secure white audiences, but it’s not directed towards them in terms of content. At least I am hopelessly fooled into believing by the marketing machine.
I don’t think it’s an either/or question at this point. Top40 rappers are pretty savvy about speaking to several audiences at once. Moreover, I have no idea how we would definitely divine to whom they were directing their content. Would you believe them if they told you?
Your example helped to clarify your position, Birdseed. i think what rubs me still is that it sounds like you’re trying to stop a natural process that WILL occur with or without the involvement of a crowd that is conscious of the complexities of appropriation/adaptation etc.
The world is not a petri dish. You can’t isolate an element (in this case: your direct involvement with other cultures) and think because you have intentionally isolated that element there won’t be leakage (in this case: the involvement of others from outside that culture). This theory of separation is not the way things work in reality.
Also I think this last example is a little twisted. Most black hip-hop artists know that by marketing an image of urban blackness they will up their sales by acquiring a white audience. This is a choice an artist makes, and should except, if they are willing to receive the cash that flows back to their pockets.
The thing about structural theories (one of which I’m trying to ham-fistedly present) is that they’re always going to be able to picked apart because there are no 100% black-and-white cases. It becomes even more problematic when there aren’t even clear categories (Marx and Wallenstein tried their darnedest, but class/peripherality is never going to be gender/sexuality/physical status). So the liberal is always going to win over the radical in a debate about individuals, and he may be right.
Nevertheless, I do think I see a pattern and I’ve yet to see a decent counterexample. So I’m going to ask again, in a different way: Has there been a decent example where a first world musician has co-operated with a third-world musician, and the result has been significantly seen as artistically successful/authentic by the social surroundings of the latter?
Apparently your counter-example is MC Gringo. I don’t know the true view of him in the favelas, but as it’s been presented to me, he’s been pretty accepted.
But beyond that, and I’ve gotten a lot of the solid theory from reading/listening to Wayne, the Afrika Bambaata hears Kraftwerk syntheisis of electro rap that leads to 80’s miami which catches on in Brazil shows that Gemany has a bigger part in the first place than would initially seem in the Baile Funk sound.
I’m reading Barack Obama’s “Dreams from My Father,” which is helping me sort out some of my own personal cultural complexities. I found this quote this morning.
“…notions of purity-of race or of culture-could no more serve as the basis for the typical black American’s self-esteem than it could mine. Our sense of wholeness would have to arise from something more fine than the bloodlines we’d inherited. It would have to find root in… all the messy, contradictory details of our experience.”
And don’t even get my started on hip hop and image and who’s buying what, Lil’ Wayne’s Lollipop is the biggest song among young kids right now in my area. Booo!!!!
Another set of counter examples: (third world) reggae artists collaborating with (first world) hip-hop artists. It didn’t hurt Junior Reid’s popularity in Jamaica to get on “This Is Why I’m Hot” (didn’t hurt the popularity of “This Is Why I’m Hot” inna JA neither).
Nice quote, Boima.
Hope these examples won’t seem too provincial. These are the first groups that pop into my head…subjectivity is my crutch…
1) Samba Tremeterra
2) BatukAxé
I think it’s fair to say that both of these groups have gained acceptance within the local Brazilian community here in the US as well as with those who’ve heard of these groups back in Brazil.
These groups also happen to be composed of both men and women who hail from 1st, 2nd, and 3rd World Nations.
Shameless plug: BatukAxé has a debut CD coming out next month…I’ll let y’all know when it’s out and you can tell me if it sounds authentic or if we should go back to playing rock, pop, jazz, bhangra, funk, techno, taiko, tango, hip-hop, zouk, cumbia, soca, metal, salsa and classical musics from our native 1st/2nd/3rd world lands.
All decent counter-examples. I can provide a few more if you like – Cool James who recorded an album with Swedish producers and musicians that sold extremely well in Tanzania, Bombay Rockers, MC Gringo Precursor Jonas. :)
Okay, how about some (beside Wayne’s, where I think both sides see each other as equals) that were popular in both places of musician origin?
Jay Z & Punjabi MC?