There's just so much here! I took a music class in 7th Grade, and we studied Joni Mitchell. After hearing her music, I went straight out and bought her "Ladies of the Canyon" album. I still cherish it. The songs are so penetrating. I felt that Mitchell was speaking directly to me.
All music borrows from previous music. One of my favorite lyrics about this is from Steppenwolf's song, "Tighten Up Your Wig". It is a transparent "rip off" of "Messin' With The Kid" by Junior Wells. The verse goes:
"Just before we go, I'd like to mention Junior Wells;
We stole this song from him, and he from someone else."
There is a similarly strong reaction in the visual arts community against "cultural appropriation". An artist friend of mine (a VERY good painter) wrote about a year back that white folks shouldn't make paintings of black people. Apparently, it's not our story to tell. It's off limits. He was talking about a specific local painter who switched 100% to painting people of color, because those painting sold better. I never had the nerve to ask him what he thought of my portraits of African-Americans.
Interesting. I disagree that stories can only be told by storytellers of matching phenotype, but it sounds like the local painter was perhaps engaging in that storytelling for cynical reasons.
There's just so much here! I took a music class in 7th Grade, and we studied Joni Mitchell. After hearing her music, I went straight out and bought her "Ladies of the Canyon" album. I still cherish it. The songs are so penetrating. I felt that Mitchell was speaking directly to me.
All music borrows from previous music. One of my favorite lyrics about this is from Steppenwolf's song, "Tighten Up Your Wig". It is a transparent "rip off" of "Messin' With The Kid" by Junior Wells. The verse goes:
"Just before we go, I'd like to mention Junior Wells;
We stole this song from him, and he from someone else."
There is a similarly strong reaction in the visual arts community against "cultural appropriation". An artist friend of mine (a VERY good painter) wrote about a year back that white folks shouldn't make paintings of black people. Apparently, it's not our story to tell. It's off limits. He was talking about a specific local painter who switched 100% to painting people of color, because those painting sold better. I never had the nerve to ask him what he thought of my portraits of African-Americans.
Interesting. I disagree that stories can only be told by storytellers of matching phenotype, but it sounds like the local painter was perhaps engaging in that storytelling for cynical reasons.