Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Composition as minstrel show

So I'm gonna dwell some more on Jeff Rice.

Race enters into Rice's writings on appropriation at several junctures. He discusses the hypocrisy of the Michigan governor's appropriation of a black coolness in the service of bringing white people back to Detroit. He also references on several occasions Amiri Baraka, who in Rice's words, "worried that appropriation would eliminate African-American voice" through an elimination of historical context.

However, a question I've been unable to resolve or shake is whether Rice is doing precisely what Baraka feared through his appropriation of hip hop terminology, methods, and mythology in order to write more coolly about composition. Clearly, Rice's appropriation is not as egregious as using rap to sell macaroni and cheese or, even more embarrassingly, to sell a republican agenda. But the university is hardly terra cognita for African Americans from the lowest socioeconomic realms. Does bringing in da funk to better understand composition represent an attempt to explode the canon, or is it just one more case of appropriation of black coolness to serve a site of white privilege?

2 comments:

Tom Biel said...

Hi Jeff,

So, I went to your link on the Rapping Rove video--too f'n funny. But, I didn't have earphones so I couldn't hear it,but just watching it was hilarious. Who's the guy on the far right? He actually has some rhythm for a white dude Republican. Thanks for that.

Elissa said...

I found myself with a lot of questions about this stuff when I took classes here on multicultural education and culturally relevant pedagogy with Gloria Ladson-Billings (*AWESOME* if you ever get the chance). I wondered then, as I sometimes still do, whether and for whom it is appropriate to use the construct of race to interrogate the system, particularly if the same people are arguing that race is an unjustly created and sustained social construct. Maybe some necessary contradictions going on there?