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An Introduction into American Popular Music
March 5, 2018 | Leave a Comment
The music of the United States is different from other countries because of African influence. White people tend to notoriously clap on the wrong beat. If you think about the people that settled here, they were looking for religious freedom. Music and beats is not something that they were exposed to. Notoriously clapping on the wrong beat is just a systemic issue of trying to belong and appreciate a culture that they spent years trying to quell. I believe it’s hard to come back to know how to appreciate embedded African beats in music when years was spent ignoring it.
Minstrel shows began in the 1830s. White people would blacken their face with burnt cork or greasepaint. In picture advertisements, they made the minstrel characters look like grotesque cartoonish characters. The figures would have to be cartoonish because white people had already spent years dehumanizing Africans as their slaves. Years seeing them as less than human and at the end of the day they needed to make sure that people would pay money to come see this show. It was essentially a show that played on the humanization of blacks for the amusement of white people.
The question of if the state song of Texas was weird was asked. The appeal of this song is just singing of an innate desire. There is an appreciation for the skin color of a mixed woman and it’s easily resolvable than potentially singing about a black woman. Also, the concept of blackface too just explains how enamored they were with the people but dare not admit that since they enslaved and abused them for so long.
Why was minstrel shows as a form of American music was so popular? It was popular because it was an art-form they appreciated but dare not to admit. Also, it was a stolen art-form as well. You take something not created by you and perpetuate it as your own. People would enjoy this because deep down they have been taking from the black man only to turn it around into something profitable for the white man to make money. At that time, you can admit that blacks had talent to be able to perform in the show which they couldn’t because this had become a business that they couldn’t quite give up to blacks just yet.
Culture appropriation continues today. Minstrel shows is one form of the cultural appropriations. However, we see it every day. Look at recently how hijabs were used in a fashion show by a white designer and so were turbans like these were new items on the market to make a look complete when people have been debating the use and wearing of them and how it causes oppression to the women and men who wear them. But as a fashion statement all of a sudden it’s okay to utilize them? Goes to show that cultural appropriation comes in use when it is deemed fashionable then it becomes ok. The United States casts things in binary terms. Life does not always fit into binary terms and I’m not sure that our nation will ever move away from this mindset.
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