{"id":1243,"date":"2022-03-15T08:07:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-15T13:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/?p=1243"},"modified":"2022-03-15T08:07:00","modified_gmt":"2022-03-15T13:07:00","slug":"negrophilia-in-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/2022\/03\/15\/negrophilia-in-paris\/","title":{"rendered":"Negrophilia in Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"

Parisians were unable to love African American artists because what they actually loved was their own views reflected in African American artists. As an example, Josephine Baker, Parisians didn\u2019t love her as an African American artist. According to Grendon the <\/span>Revue<\/span><\/i> was redesigned to fit expectations, making it match French views of Africa. The entire last act was replaced with a new one titled Savage Dance, in which Josephine Baker did a stomach dance on the floor. The original dances were perceived as too precise for black people. This can also be seen in how Milhaud combines African American and African into one thing. (Retentions of African culture in African Americans is complicated, and not something I’m particularly qualified to talk about.) Writing that jazz was rooted in a “primitive African side”. He had his own vision of what blackness was. So even though Milhaud appreciated the version of black music he constructed in his mind, he couldn’t truly appreciate African American artists.<\/span><\/p>\n

With all this in mind, we turn to current music. We should be mindful of the way different cultures are signaled in media. Music can be used as a shorthand for a particular culture, which is convenient for storytelling but is problematic when based on stereotypes. In the movie Brother Bear, the song Transformation is performed by the Bulgarian Women’s Choir. Considering that the story is about indigenous Alaskans, this is an\u2026 odd choice. However the song sounds like “other” in a way that is close enough to what white audiences expect that it works. And of course, the issue of representing marginalized cultures in music isn’t easy. One could argue that there’s no way for a mega corporation like Disney to create a movie about (and therefore profit off of) a marginalized culture. And on the other hand, only creating media that centers white people isn’t the answer either. Instead we should support marginalized artists in creating the music they want to create, not requiring them to fit our expectations.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Parisians were unable to love African American artists because what they actually loved was their own views reflected in African American artists. As an example, Josephine Baker, Parisians didn\u2019t love her as an African American artist. According to Grendon the Revue was redesigned to fit expectations, making it match French views of Africa. The entire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4373,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4373"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1244,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions\/1244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}