Cultural Appropriation or Appreciation?

Lianna Haroutounian. Arianna Rodriguez. Mei Gui Zhang. Judit Kutasi. Nikola Printz. Aleksey Bogdonov. Amarthuvshin Enkhbat. Jongwon Han. This could be the list of names that Project 2025 would deport or refuse immigration to. Instead, they are over half of the featured singers in yesterday’s Opera in the Park, coming from (in order) Armenia, Puerto Rico, China, Romania, the U.S., the Ukraine, Mongolia and Korea. The Puerto Rican soprano is black, the American singer identifies as trans, the conductor Eun Sun Kim is also from Korea. They sang music in English, German, Italian, French and Russian written by Jewish American, German, Austrian, Italian, French and Russian composers. Note: Not a single artist above is from those countries and cultures. Those that would be refused immigration or even deported from the Right, would be roundly criticized from the woke Left for Cultural Appropriation. How dare they sing music from other places in other languages in a style so radically different from their own home culture’s aesthetic. 

 

Then there’s Hiromi, Grace Kelly, Gaby Moreno, Mariza, Lila Downs, Vijay Iyer, Jake Shimabukuro, the Yemen Blues band, Meshel Ndegeocello, Sona Jobarteh and yet more artists featured in the SF Jazz 2024/25 Season. Coming from Japan, China, Guatemala, Portugal, Mexico, India, Hawaii, Yemen and Israeli-Uruguayan, American with a chosen Swahili name, Gambian born in London,  most would be on Project 2025’s “not wanted” list. Again, they all might be criticized by the young folks for appropriating Black American Music, even though they are invited to that now venerable institution of SF Jazz and approved by black jazz artist director Terence Blanchard and welcomed by the jazz community. 

 

I, for one, am thrilled. I’ve lived my life with the growing conviction that all cultural expressions exist in seed form in human beings regardless of race, gender, sexual preference, ableism norms, ethnicity, country, class etc. Those seeds, naturally, are watered most fully and blossomed most extravagantly in the cultures where they grew and developed over centuries. But because we share the same bodies, nervous systems, brains, hopes, aspirations, capacity for discipline and deep need for artistic expression, all are freely available to anyone who is genuinely touched and willing to do the work. Just as a trans person might feel that they were born into the wrong body, so might some of us feel we were born into the wrong culture or time period and be profoundly shaken and awakened when we encounter who we were meant to be.

 

Take Joey Alexander. Born in Bali and moved to Java, he first heard a Thelonious Monk recording when he was 7 years old and walked over to a keyboard to figure out how to play his music. Herbie Hancock heard him play when Joey was 8 and was mightily impressed. Wynton Marsalis invited him to play at a Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra Gala when Joey was 10. He recorded his first album at 11 years old that included playing Giant Steps, one of the more challenging compositions by John Coltrane. While both Bali and Java are renowned for their complex and highly developed gamelan music, these styles are light years away from jazz. How could a young boy who never grew up in the Gospel Church absorb the rhythmic and stylistic essences of black culture as manifested in jazz? The mind boggles. But proof that there are no boundary lines to art and any attempts to force or guilt trip people to “stay in their own lanes” will fail in the face of what’s actually happening in the world. (see above Opera and SF Jazz lists).

 

Is there actually such a thing as cultural appropriation? Absolutely! Look at the history of jazz and rock and discover why you know Fred Astaire and Elvis, but not the Nicholas Brothers and Big Mama Thornton. But it is far from the simple-minded “You can’t sing opera if you’re not Italian and you can’t play jazz if you’re not a black American.” 

Meanwhile, the Republicans are rubbing their hands with glee as the Left plays into their fantasy of keeping everyone in their “proper place” and for them, that means the white folks (already a false claim and implying those of Northern Europeans descent) are at the top. They’re willing to root for the virtually all-black Olympic basketball team, play Beyonce at their Convention, maybe even go to an Opera while a Mongolian man sings Mozart, but to grant full humanity and equal rights is beyond their narrow vision. 

 

So let’s look at what is actually happening (again, see above lists), embrace the diversity that is all our human birthright, celebrate the expansion of the music (and art and dance and poetry and theater and literature) as people come into it from all different corners of the human psyche and artistic perspectives. It’s a big, wide, wonderful world and why confine ourselves to one tiny corner of it? Let’s go!