[extradego]

Right on the money.

Before WW2, America was a culture desert. Europeans fleeing the war are the only reason NYC became an international culture hub.

Hip-hop is undoubtedly the most progressive Western art form. (Side note: hip-hop's genius appropriations of commercial symbolisms and it's will to collective empowerment directly underwrite and provide the language of the public engagement of today's millenials. It's influence is as deep as an ocean.) But while hip-hop is the only non-native wholly American cultural movement, it's American origins are a far cry from enlightment; more bound in shame. To say America created hip-hop would be an offense. Saying America stole it would be more accurate.

[briandear]

Jazz. Blues. Techno. Ragtime.

Blues, Jazz and Ragtime all predate WWII — and all influenced pretty much everything you hear today.

You could even argue that Breakbeat is American given its roots with the Winston’s.

American culture is vastly richer than many countries specifically because it is effectively an All Star team of traditions from everywhere. Thinking “American” is simply hot dogs and Hip Hop is to greatly undersell what has been one of the great cultural achievements in the history of the world. American culture is vastly diverse compared to, for example, France. You have Cajun/Creole in Louisiana, Tejano culture in Texas, cowboy culture in Montana, laid back “surfer” culture in California, Boston/Nee England culture, Chicago with it’s melange of Polish, Italian, African American. Where else in the world could you have sushi for lunch and watch a rodeo in the evening? To be clear, I am not saying American culture is “best,” I am just saying that to reduce American culture to Hip Hop is about like saying French culture is nothing more than Edith Piaf and baguettes. Americans even invented basketball and baseball — and most of the things I mention were in motion long before world war 2.

NYC was a culture hub long before Workd War 2. Read some de Tocqueville and learn a bit about American history before just engaging in a wholesale dismissal of America.

I am not prone to quoting Bono, but this clip is relevant: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O8aLAZ8SnvI

[rainbowmverse]

Appropriation and disproportionate credit for white people is a real and serious problem, but it's not the whole story. Most of the actual musicians who were inspired by black music fully acknowledged their inspirations and were often annoyed at how no one seemed to care about the people they looked up to.

The actual artists out on the stage doing the music know exactly what comes from where. Culture spreads like that: someone likes a piece and adds it to their own, fusing two cultures. It's how we have American Chinese food that looks nothing like Chinese Chinese food. (the xenophobic policies that led to it is another matter)

You have a very narrow and stereotyped view of American culture. The whole of it is not a few white-majority cities in the north and one over-funded region in the west.

[extradego]

I have an opinionated view of American culture, and I'm daily surrounded by other musicians, artists. These are the topics we discuss. I am opinionated as a result.

In my previous comment, please note when I say "hip-hop", I am not referring to music, but culture. Nonetheless...

I grew up in the south. My father was literally a clogger. I'm no stranger to folk. But, I am extremely skeptical of a lot of it's history. The mid-century folk-revival era did a real number on our conception of what's really there culture-wise. Behind the curtain, I am honestly afraid it's mostly puritanism, shame, and self-conflict. It's interesting but I think calling it a cultural movement is mostly romanticism. In terms of music, we could delve into details for days, and break down the whole history of hip-hop and jazz, and I do encourage that. There's a lot of good music there. But, I'm afraid it serves essentially the same end in terms of culture; a terribly familiar story. Hip-hop exhibits the whole of the cultural dynamic fairly explicitly, and is internationally renowned. Folk is mostly replicated in parody.

EDIT: Another thing to add... I think most people would be surprised how many contemporary folk musicians (young ones) would actually agree with me. They eventually are challenged with contending with things like: Did folk come from slaves? Or the working class? Or the fraught relations between the two? And is it reconcilable? Where did country music come from?

[rainbowmverse]

>> "In my previous comment, please note when I say "hip-hop", I am not referring to music, but culture. Nonetheless..."

We may have fundamentally incompatible perspectives if you see culture and art as separate things. I grew up surrounded by hip-hop (Atlanta), but I know better than to sing along with the n word as a white person. This is because the experience of the music is inseparable from one's experience with its culture.

[extradego]

Culture generally has a parental relationship to art. The art is of the culture but the culture is not of the art. I think we agree on that, but I totally see where you're coming from here because I am suggesting something else with folk.

I am basically saying that the legacy of American folk is just too mysterious to nail down, and too precarious to draw conclusions from. I wonder if this would be the case without the mid-century folk revival, which amounted to a mass-commercialization of the white American south as a suffering working-class. The older field recordings in the Library Of Congress suggest the music was predominantly made by slaves. The old radio recordings from Nashville tell a slightly different story and seem to stitch together something of an art form, likely for the very first time. Then folk-revival was a massively commercial effort that made it all look very pretty. But the culture of it all still remains vague. Touring the south and studying it's history doesn't suggest much of any concern for culture in any higher sense. Literacy was surprisingly high but they mostly read the bible. Music seems to have occupied a space more like entertainment than cultural reflection. A likely theory is that it was very much a culture for slaves, but merely entertainment for white people. Hopefully this clarifies my comprehension. Hip-hop is a full embodiment in comparison; a whole new world of unmitigated expression.

[briandear]

Opinionated is one thing, inaccurate is quite another. Reductionist and insulting is yet another.