Fascinating article and questions you raise, Richard. I walked into the article ignorant of the music, but found your article fascinating. You also raise some good points and interesting questions about places, tourism, and authenticity. I wonder if it's somewhat similar to seeing tribal art in a gallery or museum? One can be transported into the dimly lit Rockefeller Room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, which houses hundreds, if not thousands, of Pacific Islander art pieces, especially Papua New Guinea. This setting and environment make the viewer feel intimidated and overwhelmed as we are surrounded by these significantly powerful objects. However, because they are stripped of their surroundings and context, and we view them from Western norms and culture, they lose their power and become subjects for Western eyes to romanticize and even fetishize.
Very different from what you pose in your post regarding the "would be Adventurer," they need not leave their home as they can experience Portugal from their living room in Topeka, Kansas.
Yet, in some respects, the museum exhibitions are similar.
I always walk away from your articles feeling educated and introduced to new thoughts and ideas, and they leave me with many open-ended questions. Thank you!
Thank you, Michael. Yes, I can see the points you make here. I think I've often thought that about so-called 'world music' or even more scholarly ethnomusicological recordings, that sense of being removed from context and placed on pedestals, walls, concert stages, LP records. There is definitely a fetishization that comes with fencing off 'global', 'world' or 'ethnic' music, and that's something I've long struggled with in my research and teaching. I even stopped teaching a successful class called 'Global Pop' because I felt I was in danger of fetishizing the global. Classic case of overthinking there, and I subsequently regretted refocussing the class. That's a story for another time, one that I'm actually getting the opportunity to write about for a scholarly book on the pedagogy of global music history, so I may rehearse some of those ideas in future posts here.
I think the difference with the recordings of 'April in Portugal' that I write about here, and also the holiday records that I'm writing about for my next post, is that they are often blatant forgeries which nevertheless pass themselves off as being authentic to the original source material or culture that they're pastiching. Another way of putting it would be that perhaps they are serious about doing justice to the source material but they still engage with a playful notion of authenticity. Which is what a lot of pop does, and something that us pop fans may embrace about it, but it can still feel weirdly unsettling at times.
You are so right! I have heard Colin Turnbull's ethnographic recordings of the pygmies, and I also have a few ethnographic records of Native Americans, Inuit, and African peoples. I don't want to get rid of them as they are so different from anything else I own, yet to play that music completely out of its context is such an injustice. And, to be honest, if I had the opportunity to take that class you once taught, I would have enrolled in it!
That said, I always had a hard time with the rock band 'Goat' for somewhat similar reasons that you make about the 'April in Portugal' recordings. They are all Swedish (white) musicians, yet they wear masks and clothes that are clearly inspired by African regalia. Their music also borrows much from African music, but then gives it the "cool" factor by drenching it in '70s wah-wah and psych elements. But their cultural appropriation not only doesn't feel right, it also lacks soul and simply becomes a surface-level pastiche relying too heavily on being "cool" rather than anything authentic.
Yes, clearly lots of clever signifiers going on with them (calling an early album (their first?) 'World Music'), playing around with post-postmodern 'who takes authenticity seriously?' irony. I had an email recently about a Goat collaboration with one of the artists from Nyege Nyege, so again that connection to 'cool' and on trend sounds is there. I do own the 'World Music' LP and at least one early 12-inch I think, but I've struggled to find them compelling over the years. Everyone says they're great live, but I haven't had the opportunity/inclination to check that out.
I have the opposite experience with Goat. I have heard some of the music, but I don't own any of their records. However, I did see them live in 2014, and yes, the show was definitely quite the performance; there was something that never quite felt right about it. It felt like a shallow, culturally insensitive pantomime.
Fascinating article and questions you raise, Richard. I walked into the article ignorant of the music, but found your article fascinating. You also raise some good points and interesting questions about places, tourism, and authenticity. I wonder if it's somewhat similar to seeing tribal art in a gallery or museum? One can be transported into the dimly lit Rockefeller Room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, which houses hundreds, if not thousands, of Pacific Islander art pieces, especially Papua New Guinea. This setting and environment make the viewer feel intimidated and overwhelmed as we are surrounded by these significantly powerful objects. However, because they are stripped of their surroundings and context, and we view them from Western norms and culture, they lose their power and become subjects for Western eyes to romanticize and even fetishize.
Very different from what you pose in your post regarding the "would be Adventurer," they need not leave their home as they can experience Portugal from their living room in Topeka, Kansas.
Yet, in some respects, the museum exhibitions are similar.
I always walk away from your articles feeling educated and introduced to new thoughts and ideas, and they leave me with many open-ended questions. Thank you!
Thank you, Michael. Yes, I can see the points you make here. I think I've often thought that about so-called 'world music' or even more scholarly ethnomusicological recordings, that sense of being removed from context and placed on pedestals, walls, concert stages, LP records. There is definitely a fetishization that comes with fencing off 'global', 'world' or 'ethnic' music, and that's something I've long struggled with in my research and teaching. I even stopped teaching a successful class called 'Global Pop' because I felt I was in danger of fetishizing the global. Classic case of overthinking there, and I subsequently regretted refocussing the class. That's a story for another time, one that I'm actually getting the opportunity to write about for a scholarly book on the pedagogy of global music history, so I may rehearse some of those ideas in future posts here.
I think the difference with the recordings of 'April in Portugal' that I write about here, and also the holiday records that I'm writing about for my next post, is that they are often blatant forgeries which nevertheless pass themselves off as being authentic to the original source material or culture that they're pastiching. Another way of putting it would be that perhaps they are serious about doing justice to the source material but they still engage with a playful notion of authenticity. Which is what a lot of pop does, and something that us pop fans may embrace about it, but it can still feel weirdly unsettling at times.
You are so right! I have heard Colin Turnbull's ethnographic recordings of the pygmies, and I also have a few ethnographic records of Native Americans, Inuit, and African peoples. I don't want to get rid of them as they are so different from anything else I own, yet to play that music completely out of its context is such an injustice. And, to be honest, if I had the opportunity to take that class you once taught, I would have enrolled in it!
That said, I always had a hard time with the rock band 'Goat' for somewhat similar reasons that you make about the 'April in Portugal' recordings. They are all Swedish (white) musicians, yet they wear masks and clothes that are clearly inspired by African regalia. Their music also borrows much from African music, but then gives it the "cool" factor by drenching it in '70s wah-wah and psych elements. But their cultural appropriation not only doesn't feel right, it also lacks soul and simply becomes a surface-level pastiche relying too heavily on being "cool" rather than anything authentic.
Yes, clearly lots of clever signifiers going on with them (calling an early album (their first?) 'World Music'), playing around with post-postmodern 'who takes authenticity seriously?' irony. I had an email recently about a Goat collaboration with one of the artists from Nyege Nyege, so again that connection to 'cool' and on trend sounds is there. I do own the 'World Music' LP and at least one early 12-inch I think, but I've struggled to find them compelling over the years. Everyone says they're great live, but I haven't had the opportunity/inclination to check that out.
I have the opposite experience with Goat. I have heard some of the music, but I don't own any of their records. However, I did see them live in 2014, and yes, the show was definitely quite the performance; there was something that never quite felt right about it. It felt like a shallow, culturally insensitive pantomime.