[I try to keep
this blog pretty positive, as befitting a critical
optimist perspective, but once
a year it’s time to air some grievances. Leading up to one of my favorite crowd-sourced
posts of the year, so share your own non-favorites, please!]
On more obvious
and more subtle acts of cultural and continental appropriation in pop music.
Back when I
regularly taught the 1980s-focused
Introduction to American Studies course I co-created at Fitchburg State,
one of the more interesting days was when we collectively analyzed USA for
Africa’s “We are the
World” (1985). Even if we ignore that random and deeply awkard Dan Aykroyd cameo, there are a
lot of obvious ways to critique the song, from its on-the-nose and blissfully
naïve lyrics (“Send them your heart so they’ll know that someone cares/And their
lives will be stronger and free”) to the forced community and camaraderie of
its who’s who of 80s pop artists (Huey Lewis, Cyndi Lauper,
and Kim Carnes for the win!). But at the same time, the song and video
existed for one clear and compelling reason—to raise awareness and money for
the battle against African poverty and hunger, a battle that the organization has continued to wage for
the 30 years since the song’s release—and we have to make sure not to lose
sight of that crucial fact amidst the 80s excess and clichés.
The same can’t
be said for two other engagements with—or, more accurately, cultural
appropriations of—Africa in 1980s American pop music. The much more obviously
appropriative of the two is Toto’s “Africa”
(1982), which creates a literal embodiment of the Magical
Negro in its African “old man” who says to our speaker, about his search
for “salvation” in Africa’s “old forgotten words or ancient melodies,” “Hurry
boy, it’s waiting there for you.” That speaker wouldn’t be the first white man to
journey to Mt. Kiliminjaro or into the
depths of Africa in an effort to find himself (and, yes, leave behind his
lady friend), of course—but the song’s use of that cliché only amplifies just
how much Toto has given in to those stereotypical images of the continent of
Africa as a blank slate against which non-Africans can measure their own
identities. It’s got a catchy tune, does “Africa,” but I’m not sure the best
melody ever written could ameliorate lines like “I bless the rains down in
Africa” and “The wild dogs cry out in the night/As they grow restless, longing
for some solitary company.” I think both the rains and the dogs were doing just
fine without you, buddy.
Allow me to be
very clear from the outset of this paragraph that I’m not trying to equate
“Africa” with Paul
Simon’s magisterial album Graceland
(1986). Simon has been one of America’s most talented and interesting
songwriters for decades, and Graceland
represents an artist at the peak of his powers, inspired by new influences and
sounds to make some of the best music of his career. But how he found those new
influences and sounds, well, that’s a bit more troubling. At a career and
personal crossroads, perhaps “seek[ing] to cure what’s deep inside, frightened
of this thing [he’d] become” (those are quotes from “Africa,” natch), Simon
journeyed to, you guessed it, Africa. South Africa in particular, where the
nation’s rhythms and the music of artists like Ladysmith
Black Mambazo combined to provide the inspiration that led to Graceland. Because South Africa was
still under Apartheid, and thus still the subject of an artistic and cultural
embargo, Simon’s
visit caused a great deal of controversy; but even if we leave aside that
particular issue (arguing, for example, that he was supporting black South
Africans, not the regime), he was still in many ways the white Westerner
traveling to Africa for personal salvation, and focusing on his own
issues in the process (Graceland
doesn’t have much at all to do with African politics or societies). Not my
favorite move, regardless of the quality of the work it produced.
Last
non-favorite tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other non-favorites you’d share?
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