A traveler’s view on cultural appropriation

Cultural appropriation – taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission.

Let me tell you a story…

Sitting at a cafe in Medellin, Colombia, I was eating the classic Italian dish of Lasagna, accompanied by salad and a croissant, typically French but actually Austrian in origin, although in all likelihood copied from an Egyptian pastry dating back to ancient times. A French cultural organisation was promoting a day of free music so I was listening to a local act playing Balkan flavoured, ska punk. Balkan music itself blends influences from European, Slavic, Turkish and Gypsy music, which in turn originates in Rajasthan, India. One member played the accordion, an instrument introduced to Latin America by German immigrants in the 19th century. The clarinetist, his instrument invented in Germany, used jazz, an African American art form to improvise on the melody of Tequila, a song written by an American, using a Cuban mambo rhythm to celebrate a Mexican drink. Shortly after, the guitarist threw in a snippet from The Entertainer, a Rag Time song, another African American music form. Ska is a Jamaican music that originally combined elements of Caribbean mento, calypso, jazz and rhythm and blues, all of which trace their roots to Africa but involve some kind of interaction with European traditions. Punk, as a style formed in England but was heavily influenced by a number of American acts that had only recently predated it.

Admittedly I was a bit drunk, having gotten on so well with some local punks I’d been plied with Jamaican rum and aguardiente (the local firewater flavoured with the Mediterranean plant anise). The rum provider had his own permaculture plot, a farming system developed by Tasmanians, inspired by a Japanese man, and earned money selling dream catchers, a cultural artifact of native North Americans.

Among the hairstyles in the crowd were dreadlocks, (principally thought of as Jamaican and linked to Ethiopia but probably originating in India and also worn by Vikings) and mohicans, a particular Native American, tribal hairstyle, albeit with an example discovered on a body in Ireland dating to around 300BC, popularised by American soldiers during WW II, then adapted by English punks in the 1970’s.

Tattoos were popular among the crowd, including tribal designs from numerous cultures, Art Nouveau flowers and the Hindu god Ganesh. T shirts pledged allegiance to American thrash metal bands or displayed the iconic image of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, from a photo taken by a Cuban of an Argentinean who espoused the politics of Marx, a German who lived and developed his theories in England, that were taken up by Russians who spread it globally. A black man wore a paisley shirt, its classic teardrop shapes are Persian in origin, adopted into Islamic art in Mughal India, popularised and exported by Europeans across the world and named after a town in Scotland.

Now tell me, can you really own culture?

At some point, someone or other thought they and their people owned virtually all of the cultural examples above, despite the fact that someone else had probably previously thought the same way. No matter how precious and intimately entwined to your own history a facet of your culture may be, if someone else likes it they are going to copy it. Then, someone else will develop it, quite possibly by mixing it with another cultural element from elsewhere. I’m not for one moment suggesting that all these things can be thought of cultural appropriation, just that there is an inevitability to the transfer of cultural artifacts and practices between different groups of people. So, to police that movement becomes something bordering on an absurdity. Not only would you be trying to close the stable door after the horse has bolted but the said horse would have shagged a penguin and together, with their mutant love child gone off to join the circus, made their fortune and returned to buy the stable and converted it into a block of luxury apartments, selling it to an Uzbek businessman.

However, to say that the policing of the process is an impossibility is not to legitimise flagrant cultural theft for personal gain or the crass insulting of rich cultural heritage. Once you get into the nitty gritty of a rule book for cultural appropriation in individual cases though, it can at times get to a point when a hundred different people would draw the line in a hundred different places. To take a country like Colombia where a large portion of the population are of mixed heritage, indigenous, black African and white European – who “owns” what? Most would probably agree that having parents of different cultures gives one a claim to both but what about grandparents? I have a friend with a black grandfather but nothing about her appearance would indicate that, not that she has tried to claim any inherent blackness but would such  a claim be tied to skin colour only, DNA, upbringing, social environment? Maybe the use of one cultural practice, like a hairstyle, could be deemed inappropriate in this case but another, such as a wedding dress could be acceptable. I make no judgement beyond expressing the potential complications.

Of course there are plenty of more clear cut examples. Pop stars taking a different religion’s iconography to sell their records is hardly going to endear them to followers of that religion and at the very least demonstrates a brash ignorance and insensitivity. However, in Bangladesh I discovered that some young Muslim women wore a bindi, the Hindu, red spot on the forehead, as a fashion. What Bengali Hindus thought about it I never got to discover but Hindus elsewhere have both condemned the practice and supported it as a sign of embracing the culture . Not to endorse these practices but historically, religions have always borrowed or stolen features of other religions and cultures. The veiling of women in Islam was taken from Byzantine and Persian traditions, originally only by privileged families close to the Prophet and not intended for the more humble. Its association with wealth and power was what made its use eventually become more widespread.

Even gods and stories in sacred texts are taken from one culture to another: the Norse god Odin can be traced back to Indian roots and the Bible’s story of Noah and the flood is directly taken from the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. Just to take two of thousands of examples. When religion blatantly does its own stealing, aren’t individual’s appropriations only a microcosmic reflection of that process?

In a more politicised example, there has been a concerted effort by Israelis to claim many elements of Middle Eastern food, such as hummus and falafels as their own. While the small population of indigenous Jews in Israel undoubtedly have these as part of their culture, its another matter for the remainder of the population to make the same claim. For Arabs and Palestinians in particular it’s a very sore point.  When even non Israelis are writing about Middle Eastern food as being Israeli without even including any Jewish examples it looks like a battle that is already lost. Every Israeli restaurant I’ve ever seen on my travels has served Middle Eastern food with no reference whatsoever to the wonderfully rich Jewish cultures, from Morocco to Uzbekistan that have contributed to the formation of the country.

One of the most common accusations of cultural appropriations concerns Afro hairstyles. Certainly, beyond the aforementioned dreadlocks there is little doubt as to the centrality and history of certain styles to African culture, where it could signify age, marital status, tribe and much more.  Later, hair took on a new relevance for African-Americans when, in the times of slavery, it could be used to encode messages or maps for escaping slaves. Being just the latest in a long line of examples of black culture being used by whites with little concern for the origins, its easy to see why people get upset. Africans, at least in my experience, seem far less bothered by the appropriation issue than African-Americans and are often genuinely pleased that someone has taken an interest, or are amused by it rather than being offended. Not that I’m speaking on behalf of an entire continent of course, just to say that policing an issue that has little consensus among those affected is no simple matter. To add further complications you then have to ask to what extent do black Americans have a claim to the vast diversity of African culture when they are mostly divorced from any particular tribal or regional identity.

While hair and fashion are common targets in the cultural appropriation battles, it is often ignored in music and sport. Musicians themselves are at times only to happy to see their musical ideas spreading elsewhere, at least up to the point one step before blatant theft for financial gain. Much of Western, popular music owes some kind of debt to black Americans but the days of Elvis Presley, where black artists were denied much financial reward and respect are long gone. Black music is not just cool, it’s a massive money earner for black artists themselves, who control their own output without having to go through white producers and executives. So, while white artists are constantly taking from black music in both legitimate ways and those less so, there is much less of an issue of doing so at the expense of black artists. If we are to condemn white rappers, why not Heavy Metal in Botswana? Any links to blues in modern metal have been long since submerged by more concrete European ideas of musical scales and harmony. So along with the studded black leather biker fashion, African metal could only be judged as cultural appropriation as it only emerged recently, without any influence of a dominant white culture.

Equally, only a cretin of a team manager would reject a talented black footballer or Indian cricketer in these globally profitable businesses. Both sports ceased to be English a long time ago because of the personal appeal to individuals in other cultures. As any sport gains popularity beyond its origins it’s for this reason, not because it had to be appropriated for financial gain.

I asked an African, Muslim friend from Burkina Faso for examples of things taken from other cultures in his community. Two he spoke of were turbans taken from Maghrebi Arabic styles and weddings that have put brides in the white dresses common to the Christian West. I have seen this in many countries, where the wonderful, colourful dresses of traditional times have been superseded by the white, Western ideal. Clearly cultural appropriation isn’t simply a crime committed by white people, it goes on everywhere. Maybe modern media has simply turned what was once a slow process and thus uncontroversial into such a rapid one that it creates tensions that are unavoidable.

When appropriation is impossible to police and no one agrees where the line between it and natural, cultural diffusion is drawn, how are we to deal with it?  Some suggest there’s no such thing, just the natural spread of culture; others wish to enforce an almost fascist regime of prohibition. Whatever I say will upset someone but for what its worth here’s my attempt.

Rap and hip hop can give us some guidance perhaps. Only the most deranged of Nazis would try and suggest that the genre is anything but a black thing, although you might be surprised to hear that there are white elements lurking in its depths. Having spread globally in only a couple of decades to become possibly the most popular form of music, its originators are known to all and respected. The current wave of black artists are still looked to as sources of inspiration to rappers from Tunis to Taipei. So without any tacit permission but by acknowledging the music’s roots and respecting its creators’ role, the issue of appropriation is sidestepped.

How about if, instead of telling Kim Kardashian or Kylie Jenner not to have cornrows or braids we get them to use their inexplicable fame and influence to acknowledge the roots of these styles, big up black stylists and contribute to African-American charities for example? Beyonce was criticised for taking Bollywood culture in a music video but even without demonstrating the appropriate acknowledgement and respect there’s a huge positive, potential power in these kind of actions. Young fans previously oblivious to Bollywood could be inspired to dig deeper and down the line someone could end up learning Indian dance or playing the sitar. Public acknowledgement of the roots of cultural borrowings by the famous can foster a climate of respect for different cultures among the young, who in this global age are more inclined that way than earlier generations anyway.

As a traveller I’ve seen the positive aspects of taking parts of other cultures almost everywhere I’ve been, as it leads to further inquiry and a greater understanding of the world. If forced to either totally accept or reject cultural appropriation I’d unquestionably accept it, despite its problems, because in my eyes the potential for good outweighs the bad. Some will always exploit other cultures but others will become inspired by them and learn to respect them. If we demand acknowledgement and respect from borrowers it will do more to spread the same values to others than by prohibition.