The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #137267 Message #3184574
Posted By: MorwenEdhelwen1
09-Jul-11 - 06:16 PM
Thread Name: A very uncomfortable question- perform other trads
Subject: RE: A very uncomfortable question- perform other trads
Matt, Lord Executor's parents were originally from Venezuela, he was born in Trinidad. So he was ethnically Venezuelan. And not to say anything against him, but Richard Bridge *seems* to believe that if you are an outsider to a culture (which includes ethnicity) you can't sing their songs authentically/traditionally/with respect to the culture. I could be reading some of his comments on other posts, on similar threads wrong, reading something that isn't there, but that is what I read it as. Maybe he thinks of it in terms of the superficial, like (say) what would happen if someone from a rich Western country went to Jamaica for four months, studied with a few mento artists, and claimed to be a totally authentic mento performer. That would be total nonsense. I agree with him on that if *that's* what he's saying. If I've read his posts wrongly, I apologise.
But to me, whether someone sounds authentic as a performer in another tradition has almost nothing to do with their background. True, it will take them longer to learn it than people who were born/raised around that tradition, but it can be done by immersing yourself into the culture and taking care to learn from and respect the culture so that you will gain acceptance. And that *is* what I'm going to do.