We understand that African Americans contributed the blues, jazz, hip hop and etc and the history of music have evolved largely and thrived, but the presenter's attitude was offending because she seemed very upset at how other artists have stole pieces of music and have given no credit to the original artists. I think she does have a point to be upset but that should not be expressed to an audience that's just learning about minstrelsy for the first time or at least for me. Facts and personal opinions should not mix because it'll alter the perspective for the audience.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Black-face Minstrelsy Response
I agree with Cath, that the guest lecture on black-face was presented with personal bias. At the beginning she remained neutral describing the history of black-face. She mentioned several honorable black-face performers such and videos demonstrating The Cakewalk, Al Jolson in Big Boy (1930) "Hooray For Baby and Me", Jim Crow, and many more and it was enjoyable and interesting. However, as the presentation went on, the guest lecturer seemed to be caught up in how black-face minstrelsy consisted of racist notion that showed severe makeup exaggerations the performers would go through to insinuate stereotypical facial features of black people.
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I think that she and others who feel strongly about that issue have every right to be upset. I thought it was a great lecture and she brought emotion and it was something she was obviously passionate about. I think it would have been boring if she didn't give her personal opinion or just talked at us the whole time. Many people have brought up the fact that white people have stolen music from black artists, Alice Walker wrote a short story about it, Eric Clapton made the song "I Shot the Sheriff" popular, thanks to taking it from Bob Marley. It still happens today and it is still as wrong today as it was back then. We are still exploiting people. It is extremely important to recognize and be conscious of this while it is happening, or else it will be unnoticed and no one will do anything about it. White people have caused hell for other races trying to live in peace in the U.S. and for the most part, people don't give white people hell for living their lives.
ReplyDeleteI also think it is important to have a lecture by a person who isn't white (because they might not be biased?) because they can be brutally honest and even though it might offend people, it's important to get the truth instead of sugar coating.
First of all Eric Clapton was heavily influenced by Bob Marley's music and gives him credit for being part of his musical inspiration, he did not TAKE Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff," he COVERED it and gave Marley recognition for it, Clapton's version just happened to be more sucessful. The same thing happened when Jimi Hendrix covered Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" and Hendrix's version just happened to be much more successful.
ReplyDeleteAs for our guest speaker, it's great that she's passionate about what she's speaking about yes, but it's a shame if she has to belittle others to make her point. No one is trying to rationalize what people did, clearly it's inexcusable but for you to say , "white pople have caused hell for other races. . .people don't give white people hell." That is just another major generalization that is offensive. There is no problem with getting the truth across and being brutally honest but there are much more professional ways of doing it.