race row over oxford ball with new orleans theme … pc student idiots
on 11/25/2015 at 07:07 AM
Sorry Peiper, but I’m going to have to disagree about this about the importance of her foreign, minority status in terms of not understanding the Jazz Age. Starting with the fact that the prime movers of Jazz were in fact Blacks, who based a lot of it off of traditional songs that had been circulating in the past couple of centuries since their ancestors came to North America (usually on slave ships, thoguh a surprising number elsewhere). In fact, that was one of the reasons why the Democrat Elite that dominated politics in the old Confederate States and other “respectable” White High Society bigwigs condemned it.
But you say those are American Blacks, and this one isn’t? Well, even then it isn’t as supportive for her case.
You see, one of the things I waste my life on is this roleplay set in a sort of odd, fictional 1930’s-40’s ish universe shaded with Norse mythology and Medieval/Renaissance norms. And the thing you realize is that among other things, Jazz might have started in the US but it did NOT stay there alone.
A quick google for Jazz Venues outside the US is a good place to start, but those are just the joints that have been active today after over half a century (that included totalitarian oppression of it across half of Eurasia). The truth is that Jazz was a global phenomenon throughout the Western World and places the Western World touched. Which in 1926 amounted to basically “Everywhere Outside of the Soviet Union and the Asian Interior.” It was not as _popular_ outside the US and Europe as it was, mind; but that doesn’t mean it was not there or had its’ fans.
Judging from the first name, I’m guessing “Arushi” is somewhere from or around the Indian Subcontinent. Which is where I point out that some of the silent film footage we have from there actually have Jazz performances. By Locals. Probably in local languages. Which goes to show that again, REAL people tend to see good, entertaining things and pick them up regardless of what comes with them or where they’re from.
The main reason people don’t kno wabout it now is because Jazz fell out of style- as things tend to. Most obviously by naked totalitarain brutality. The Nazis and Soviets viewed it as heinous, Western Bourgeoise music and banned it where they saw it. Japan’s revolving juntas clamped down on it because it was Western and thus non-indigenous (these are the same geniuses who saddled their own officers with absolutely terrible swords because the good Western style cavalry swords weren’t “Authentically Japanese”, and living knowledge on how to make an authentically Japanese sword that would preform well in combat had fallen into disuse decades earlier). And so on.
But even in the free(er) parts of the world it gradually fell out. Among the Black communities of the New World and the countercultures influenced by them it was largely dulled by the rise of Bluegrass. On the general public it was replaced by the rise of first Disco and then Rock and Roll. And in the colonies and dominions it was mostly a foreign import anyway so once the Euros and Americans stopped bringing it over the fan pools stopped replenishing as fast. Especially since the rise of self-determination and decolonization (For better or worse) also resulted in people looking to their own musical traditions in varying degrees of authenticity and freedom.
But it WAS there. And it was global. And to one degree or another there are still people around doing it, and it might see something of a revival soon.
I agree there is no thread connecting her to the era, but that’s not the fault of her ethnicity or nationality. That didn’t stop plenty of Hindi speakers (or singers) from adopting it before.
I think that’s the fault of her being an elitist twat.
And make absolutely no mistake about it, the Jazz tradition is a grassroots one that they have been looking down on for about a century now. Why would we expect one of them to act differently now just because she’s from somewhere else?
Now, that doesn’t mean the festival won’t have some things even thick skinned I might object to. Subtitling it “The Era of Wonderful Nonsense” strikes me as bad, and something I would not do. Because as even this brainless loon can figure out, not all of the nonsense present in New Orleans or elsewhere was Wonderful. A lot of it wasn’t, such as Jim Crow, segregation, the strongest KKK, and the deepening rot of New Orleans corruption that brought us Nagin and Katrina.
Sticking with just “The Jazz Age” would be smarter. Or I would go for something like “The Roaring Era” (after the Roaring ‘20’s), “The Era of Roaring Jazz”, “The Era of Jazz and Fast Living”, or something like that. Less value judgement, less likely to turn into a PR nightmare. And since I’m a history nerd I would probably add information (not all of it savory) on some places like placards stuck to the wall in between photos.
But the fact remains, this is abject nonsense.
Especially for a festival designed to celebrate the one kind of popular American music that everybody KNOWS (or should know) was founded by… *Drumrolllllll* Ethnic Minorities.
Posted by Turtler
11/25/2015 at 04:02 PM
Turtler .... Have followed Jazz all my life. Have always known about black history of
that art form. My earliest heroes were musicians.
Columbia Records once gifted me with so many LPs, it was almost four years before I got the shrink wrap off the last album.The 20s were indeed also referred to as, The Era of Wonderful Nonsense.
But my beef with that girl is that she did not know the subject of which she was being critical. Like so much else that’s crazy in the world of higher education, she was treating the ball’s theme as a possible negative, and in her thoughts turned into words, she actually thinks that somehow the ball was a desire to relive every aspect of the Jazz Age. It never seemed to dawn on her that the ball was nothing more than a musical trip to revisit the sounds of that era. Oh no. Of course not. She and that other jerk mentioned at the end, have to make it a race issue. You are quite right in comment on ethnicity.
I do tend to go a bit OTT when frustrated. The ball article was perhaps the third story I came across about university students in just a couple of days, where in they were blocking some person or some event, or bitching about someone or some event, which they labeled as either Racist or Facist or both.