"Cultural Appropriation"

[Thumpalumpacus]

Lol, that was not cultural appropriation, but artistic mayhem. Go listen to some Howlin' Wolf and tell us again how Zep did it "better".

Oooooh, the guitars were louder!

What they did smacks of cultural appropriation, but worse than that, they lied about authorship. No one would think Page / Plant et al had actually worked on a killing floor ... but they cashed the royalty payments all the same. That's theft of intellectual property.

Yeh well my opinions on that are mixed.
I do think the songs I've heard sound better, I agree what they did was theft of intellectual property.
My comment that cultural appreciate is sometimes good because led zeppelin did it so well was half a joke.
I was about to comment that to me it seems that these things like stealing relics,  destroying graves or whatever, may or may not be cultural appropriation, but it's overall wrong because it's theft/vandalism.
Stealing someone's property is what's wrong, but not being inspired in terms of style.  I don't even know what taking someone's culture without their consent could really even mean. Or why in and of itself it would be bad.

I can see some instances of it being fair to charge. I was discussing this with my gal last night, and although I have pretty mixed feelings about the whole topic, I think my position is evolving. I used to think that there was no such thing, that all cultures borrow from each other, but between what my gal had to say last night, and what Rhythm is saying here, I think I can understand the concept -- that the culture as a whole is rejected or even snuffed out, even as this or that token of it is adopted by the victor culture for whatever reason.

I think intent really matters in something like this, but how do you measure that? My intent in playing the blues is not to make anyone think I am a sharecropper and these are my field-hollers. I just like the music, and want to hopefully play it well enough to spread that enjoyment and perhaps help keep it alive. Is that appropriation? I don't know. Maybe I'm just justifying my own behavior without examining it much. <wanders off to chew on this a little more>

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What about people who are like 1/16 Cherokee and get a scholarship to college for that even though they know nothing about the culture. I would say that's something to be offended by.

I'm 1/8 Blackfeet; my maternal great-grandmother was full-blood.

I wasn't raised in native culture at all. My maternal grandfather was deeply ashamed of his biracial self because of, well, 1920s Texas -- so he passed as white, lived as white, and his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren have no idea of this aspect of our roots beyond what we read in books.

I wouldn't dream of plying my native ancestry for any benefits at all, though I imagine I could.

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Serrano photographs a crucifix submerged in a yellow fluid and titles it “Piss Christ”.

Sorry to niggle, but that was Mapplethorpe.