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Anthropology Music

Little Harmony, Plenty Colon

July 29, 2024 83 Comments

Attention, music lovers. Charlotte Gill brings thrilling news:

Decolonise Choir Workshop 

I knew you’d be keen.

Decolonise Choir is a choir for people of global majority. This project is supported by Decolonise Fest, a festival by and for punx of colour focused on programming alternative and punk musicians of colour. Decolonise Choir was formed by community musician and organiser Ishani Jasmin, aiming to create a space for our global majority community to experience the joy, the resistance, and the healing of singing together. We aim to use collective song and songwriting to exist and to coexist. 

Naturally, all this healing and coexistence, all this righteousness and resistance, necessitates certain rules, indeed a manifesto:

As Ms Gill observes, one eyebrow slightly raised:

No discrimination will be tolerated in this choir for people of colour only. 

Ah, but, you see, it’s “the radical act of collective song.” The “radical act of joy.” And the radical act of shunning white people as some kind of moral contaminant. How the time must fly.

Readers intrigued by the prospect of shaping the tapestry of their collective sound, via “somatic practice,” “singing and healing together,” and “co-creating an anthem,” can savour the results of all this radicalism below:

This is what a “Decolonise Choir” looks and sounds like. Find out more in my new piece 🚨🦄 🌈 💰 🌹 https://t.co/gFm6yv2QKo pic.twitter.com/pSaI9301Sx

— Woke Waste 💰🦄 (@WokeWaste) July 25, 2024

You may now resume your humdrum, dreary, non-decolonised lives.

Update, via the comments:

Nikw211 asks, not unreasonably,

Who is making them so miserable that they need to seek joy in a city in which the majority of the population is the Global Majority and a minority the Global Minority?

And so what is this act of joy an act of resistance against?

Certainly not the subsidised community spaces they rehearse in… Or the Arts Council England, Local Council or Mayoral grant funded Tara Theatre they perform in.

Indeed. It’s a head-scratcher.

However, as the only racial group being explicitly excluded is Old Whitey, the obvious inference is that the cause of all this alleged misery and “trauma” is the party being excluded. As if the mere proximity of People Of Pallor would inhibit and befoul any creative endeavour, any glimmer of “joy.” Given the minority status of white people in London, it seems a bit much. And ever so slightly ungrateful.

And it is, I think, worth noting that the nation’s capital, where these dramas of “resistance” unfold, has in my lifetime gone from a native white-majority city, over 90%, to a native white-minority one, around 35%. Yet it would seem that even this dramatically downsized white devil population is, for some, still too burdensome and oppressive.

A cause of “collective trauma.”

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Written by: David
Academia Free-For-All Music

Don’t Oppress My People With Your White-Ass Folk Music

June 24, 2024 232 Comments

In crushed-by-niche-culture news:

University of Sheffield researchers handed taxpayer cash to ‘decolonise’ folk singing.

A mere £1,485,400, since you ask. A gnat’s eyelash. For an issue of such fundamental importance to the turning of the world.

The project… has also been granted extra funds on top of this from bodies such as Research England. 

Whew. I was getting worried there.

Taking place at the University of Sheffield, researchers “will take an unflinching look at the white-centricity of folk music repertory, performers and audience by conducting fieldwork to shed light on long-standing vernacular singing practices of ethnic minority cultures in England.”

Obviously, activities that are chiefly indulged in by white people – in this case, folk singing – must be deemed suspect and found problematic with great urgency, and then probed for hidden wrongness. At taxpayer expense.

And all this scholarly rigour ain’t cheap:

Researchers describe one of their methods as, “ask a friend,” which “involves community researchers interviewing acquaintances.” 

And – and – a word-association game.

Interviewees were asked about their culture and arts background, their attitudes and experiences of folk singing. To give us a sense of the interviewees’ understanding of key concepts, they also took part in a word association game using seven terms common in the folk scene: ‘folk music’, ‘traditional music’, ‘folk songs’, ‘folk singing’, ‘folk singer’, ‘folk club’ and ‘folklore’. 

Those interviewed – and subjected to this no-doubt-gruelling test of word-association – included “36 women, 21 men, and 2 non-binary people.” The researchers thereby deduced that “male associations are more prevalent than female ones.” By which they mean, members of their tiny, rather incestuous sample were slightly more likely to mention Bob Dylan than Joan Baez. And to mention “beards” slightly more often than “long dresses with red trim.”

Also, the word guitar was mentioned more often than tin whistles.

It’s Earth-rumbling stuff. Heaving with import.

However, given the puny sample size, the researchers concede that “it is hard to draw conclusions” from their academic toil.

Presumably, this limitation will be more than compensated for with further “systemic reflections” on “various notions of Englishness.” By Higher Beings who wish to “decolonise” folk music, on account of its “white-centricity,” and whose motives and impartiality will therefore be utterly beyond reproach.

Update, via the comments:

Fay Hield, professor of music at the University of Sheffield, said: “The term decolonisation is often misinterpreted.”

Oh, I think it’s understood quite well, thank you. Along with the kinds of people to whom such things most typically appeal.

“Our research highlights the different under-recognised communities who have helped to establish cultural life in England. Folk music is a constantly evolving genre, which has taken influences from a diverse range of people over centuries. It is part of the UK’s cultural heritage and should be celebrated.” 

Except for the “white-centric” bit, obviously.

That will have to go.

And behind this mannered waffle is the weird implication that devotees of folk music are somehow, simply by existing, excluding racial minorities. Shooing them away. Though, again, details on this point are neither obvious nor forthcoming. Still, perhaps we can look forward to an academic interrogation of classic car shows in Nottinghamshire as some heinous bastion of “white-centricity.” Another item on the list of Things That Must Be Decolonised And Morally Corrected.

“Our aim is to break down the barriers for people to get involved in folk music. Opening up the genre to different audiences will help to sustain the nation’s folk music for decades to come.” 

Different audiences. Not the audience it actually has, mind, the one it attracts, and which is arrived at via choice and musical inclination. No actual barriers to participation are specified, of course. But the audience is nonetheless all wrong, apparently.

Update 2:

Following the quip about British classic car shows as another potential target for pointless academics, commenters svh and asiaseen caution against giving such people ideas:

Not just “white-centricity”, but judging by the photograph, “white-male-centricity.” 

That’s this photograph here. Do feel free to grip the arms of your chair.

Having covered quite a few of these “decolonisation” efforts, which generally rely on a fig-leaf of widening access and removing barriers, it’s remarkable just how rarely any meaningful obstacle to access is actually mentioned. Typically, the humdrum is depicted as gruelling and somehow agonising, and motes are inflated to the size of boulders.

We were told, for instance, that racial minorities are being “deterred” from visiting the British countryside “due to deep-rooted, complex barriers.” Barriers such as the fact that rock-climbing instructors are usually white. And apparently this unremarkable state of affairs, in a white-majority country, is something that needs fixing.

Though it occurs to me that if a person with brown skin were being deterred from trying rock climbing by the fact that the instructor is likely to be white, then it seems somewhat unlikely that said person is interested in rock climbing to any significant extent. And a person deterred by such things may also want to reflect on their own racial assumptions. But we’re not supposed to mention those, at least not in an unflattering light.

The monstrous yet invisible forces preventing racial minorities from walking down country lanes also include “a lack of culturally appropriate provisions,” though, again, details as to what these culturally appropriate provisions might be, or indeed why they should be provided, seemingly at public expense, remain something of a mystery. Perhaps we should throw a few more millions at clown-shoe academics.

As I said in reply,

If I were to move to, say, South Korea and complained in a national Korean newspaper about how I was being deterred from visiting Seoraksan National Park or Namiseom Island, on account of such places… not already having sufficient numbers of white Europeans striding about in a suitably affirming manner, you might think me a tad presumptuous.

And likewise, were I to complain about being prevented from participating in some Korean cultural activity due to the number of Korean people I’d have to encounter while doing it, you might think me dubious in other ways. You might even wonder why I’d moved there in the first place.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Reading time: 5 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Free-For-All Music The Politics of Buttocks

And In Thong-Related News

April 5, 2023 107 Comments

A project is undertaken:

The controversial style made its show-stopping fashion debut back in 1997, when low-rise jeans and thin bodies ruled both runways and television screens. Having been plus-size all my life, this created problematic body image issues for me growing up, which took years to work through.

Years of “working through” one’s state of heftiness obviously being preferable to actual, you know, weight loss. Which, one suspects, might have taken less time. But hey, we mustn’t reach for the stars.

Decades later, I am now a fashion editor, constantly translating the latest clothing trends for plus-size bodies. But given the exclusionary nature of this aesthetic and my fear of it growing up, this assignment hit different. Though I have posed half naked in front of millions as a plus-size lingerie model, I had yet to try the exposed thong trend IRL — until now. And I was actually looking forward to finally rocking the hotly-debated undergarment.

Fearlessly, heroically, said garment was duly rocked. The result, needless to say, is “cool-girl style vibes” – a “body-baring sheer look,” complete with what I’m assured are a corset and “strappy, rhinestone heels.”

My first time rocking a visible thong was a complete success.

Other perspectives are available.

When not “pushing boundaries” and invoking the feminism of taking up space “unapologetically,” the author, Ms Margie Plus, is a “confidence activist” and a musician. Those with a taste for pitch correction and overstretched PVC can behold her creativity here.

Via Mr Worstall.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Written by: David
Academia Anthropology Music Politics

Have You Tried Less Tiresome Music?

March 1, 2022 163 Comments

I have questions, dear reader. Important, probing questions. Are you unenthused by hip-hop tracks about “police brutality and racialised oppression”? Does rapping about poverty and “the woes of Black Americans as artists” not render you giddy and enthralled? Do you not delight in endless repetition of the word nigga?

I ask because we’re told, by Dr Jeremy McCool and Dr Tyrone Smith, two devotees of “critical race theory,” that a failure to gush with enthusiasm is a result of “systemic bias and inherent prejudice,” and is suppressing such innovation. It is, they say,

The silencing of intellectuals in music.

This profound and damning revelation was uncovered by means of a “notional study” in which 310 participants, young adults, half of whom “self-identified” as black and the other half as white, were invited to listen to various tracks and read selected lyrics, before being asked whether they would be likely to skip said track if heard in the car, or would instead continue listening, mesmerised and ready to be educated.

In each instance, the white participants in the experiment rejected the messaging at a higher frequency than the Black participants.

Extrapolating with gusto – one might say wildly – our scholars promptly invoke “the silencing of Black narratives and perspectives.” It turns out that if a hundred or so white people are slightly less interested in rote racial narcissism expressed via the medium of rap, this could result in “artists who typically make thought-provoking music being shunned by the industry.” It’s all terribly unfair, you see. If true.

It remains unclear whether our mighty scholars considered the quality of the music as music, i.e., beyond any supposedly radical and “thought-provoking” content, those “deeper political implications.” Nor is it clear whether lyrical monotony, generic braggadocio and crass sexual references may have played a part in boring some more than others. To say nothing of many rappers’ own reliance on cartoonish racial stereotypes. Readers are, however, invited to ponder the intellectual heft of the following extract from one of the selected tracks, Da Baby’s Rockstar:

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Written by: David
Anthropology Music Politics

And In Arts News

November 29, 2021 116 Comments

In juvenile detention, she would write “really radical raps” that rattled her supervisors.

Why, yes, I am reading the Guardian. Where the paper’s Janine Israel is positively gushing over aboriginal rapper Barkaa and her “politically potent” music.

The Malyangapa Barkindji woman… is on the verge of releasing her debut EP, Blak Matriarchy,

You know you want to.

Based in south-west Sydney, Barkaa takes her moniker from the Barkindji word for the Darling River. She comes across as warm and humble,

Warm and humble. An interesting choice of words. And followed almost immediately by:

Earlier this year she played the Sydney Opera House forecourt, the lights of the harbour stretched out before her as she performed her song Bow Down: “They used to look down on me / Look who’s looking up now. Bow down.”

Regarding said ditty, our mistress of the surly pose and monotonous loop informs us,

Bow Down is one of my favourite tracks to perform because a lot of people growing up [were like]: ‘Oh you’re not going to be much, you’re just going to be a lowlife, you’re just going to be a junkie, you’re not going to get anywhere, you’re just going to be in and out of prison.’ It’s kind of like: middle fingers up to them.

Same article, seconds earlier:

Born Chloe Quayle, the 26-year-old rapper was a former teenage ice addict who did three stints in jail – during her last, five years ago, she gave birth to her third child.

Despite three children, no father, or fathers, are mentioned. Well. Perhaps we should move on.

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Written by: David
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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.