I think you can have cultural appreciation that, like all art, is open to critique, especially as newer generations review it and see if it holds up to their more modern standards, and then we'll see if their critiques hold up to the next generations' ideas and standards, etc. Critiquing something doesn't automatically mean you're making an accusation of "appropriation". You can argue that more consideration and conscientiousness should have been given, which is always fair in any work of art you view.
Cultural appropriation v. cultural appreciation is a very heated topic, but an important one to have as I feel it'll help guide many creatives and writers on how best to proceed forward when they tackle on new material and study new pieces of art that originate from places that the author did not grow up in. I don't think quick dismissal helps anything, and I also am not arguing that every argument that something is cultural appropriation has merit either. I think this convo can be had rationally.
For me, just thinking about the topic of "Summertime" specficially brings up so many competing but also related feelings and issues....
Like, it's clear that "Summertime" has become a standard that has moved beyond the opera/musical somewhat. In the show, it's a lullaby sung by a black mother to her black baby in a story that is very much about a specific African-American experience. It was also written by New York-based creatives of mixed European and Jewish descent with their own storied histories and current realities (at the time and now). The creatives also studied the music from the areas of which they were trying to portray and the language of the communities that they were trying to portray. But then they also used a lot of stereotypical AAVE that white creatives tend to hear the most and made mistakes that every outsider without proper consultation (and not just one chosen person) would make. The musical is considered a classic, and it's also a very 1930s New York-era creation when people were bringing the American musical to new heights and creating their own American-grown "operas".
So I get why feelings would be heightened about this sort of thing from all sides (I won't say "both" because I refuse to think this only has "two" sides)...
- Those who love art and don't want to see artists feel stifled or censored or policed;
- Those who get tired of works by certain types being lauded while so many more "home grown" works are ignored and not fully appreciated by critics who also seem to come from certain backgrounds with their own biases;
- Those who are afraid of censorship (whether state sanctioned or not) because silence can lead to death or worse;
- Others who argue that people only care about censorship when it deals with certain entitled people's ability to be offensive (and why do they want to portray black people or use racist words towards blacks so badly) when other communities are quite used to self-censoring themselves out of fear of violence or losing their jobs, etc.;
- That the irony is that people are using anti-censorship to censor actual communities who are providing critique and are arguing for a change in thinking and behavior.
Back to figure skating and CarPon...it's clear these two don't know what
Porgy and Bess is or if they do, that is not what they're going for as explained by Marie-France. They're just going for a jazzy* feeling. As explained above, the song itself has taken on its own identity and people can use the song outside the context of the show. That being said, there's a reason all the best covers were mostly performed by African-American vocalists and those who were closer to the period in which the song was written (special mention to Fantasia Barrino who was from the early 21st Century). If you look at the lyrics, you'll see the connection with the community that Ira Gershwin and Dubose Heyward were trying to portray and what George Gerswhin was trying to capture with his music. Luckily, most skaters don't skate to the song with lyrics but rather the instrumental version.
There is another topic I find interesting and it's something figure skating choreographers do often. Ignoring the original meaning and message of the song to create their own story. Now, whether one wants to argue that you can take the context and origin of the song and separate it from the song now is up to the individual. I think most figure skating fans are ok, especially the vaguer the lyrics are in a song (most songs meant for the radio or dance floor will have vague lyrics).
However, when there's a song that has a storied history and it's about a community that is so specific...I do think it's weird to take away the identity of the song and sort of "white wash" it. But then, I am also super used to solo singers singing all kinds of songs that weren't written for "people like them" and music needs to be shared....cultures need to be shared and appreciated by wider audiences. I think there's a way to appreciate the origin while taking it a new direction.
As for creating a whole new story from the song that was originally written for another context...well...that's iffy, but I don't think anyone is really arguing that's what CarPon is doing here. I think CarPon playing a couple who are in New York and are hearing the song being played and are dancing to it as it instrumental is making them feel some kind of way.
So in the end, whether or not "Summertime" is a piece of music one SHOULD be able to be repurposed and ignore the original context and underrepresented community it was supposed to represent is a matter of opinion and I don't think any feelings are necessarily "wrong" about it. It just depends on how you feel and why you feel it. It's all based on how we see the world and why, I guess.
Now with that long-butt essay above written, I have to say how strange it is that we often have this conversation on this forum that centers around issues that are really touching upon a community who don't really make up a huge portion of the population here, so these conversations tend to go heavily one way. It's also an age thing thing where people from one generation will see things different from another, and we tend to have perspectives that skew a bit older rather than younger. Not saying this is a bad thing, but we aren't really getting the "best" arguments advocating for the other perspectives.
*Jazz is also an African-American created genre (evolved from a huge mixing of different kinds of music genres coming together in New Orleans from the Spanish, Native Americans, Mexican brass, Creoles, Haitians, black slave folklore and spirituals, etc.) but let's not over-complicate things because I don't think ANYBODY is saying only African-Americans should perform jazz (as a whole) as the reason New Orleans was called "The Big Easy" was because it was so "Easy" for white musicians and black musicians and others to perform together and create music.
