Before I saw a picture of him, I thought Rick Astley was black. Dude sounds black!
Have these people listened to the entire Hall and Oates catalog?
Oh, and when Genesis brought in the horn section from Earth, Wind & Fire to play on No Reply At All and Paperlate, what was that?Bruno Mars found himself caught in a heated debate about cultural appropriation over the weekend after an activist accused the "24K Magic" star of being a culture vulture profiting off of traditionally black music. "Cultural appropriation," according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is "the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture." Bruno Mars' mother is Filipina and his father is Puerto Rican and Jewish. But the Grammy-winning star is known for blending elements of funk, soul, R&B, reggae and hip-hop in his music --- genres that are historically and traditionally African-American.Here's the two-minute video that started it all: "Bruno Mars 100% is a cultural appropriator. He is not black, at all, and he plays up his racial ambiguity to cross genres," writer and activist Seren Sensei said in a clip for "The Grapevine," a web series that explores African-American issues.
"What Bruno Mars does, is he takes pre-existing work and he just completely, word-for-word recreates it, extrapolates it," she added. "He does not create it, he does not improve upon it, he does not make it better. He's a karaoke singer, he's a wedding singer, he's the person you hire to do Michael Jackson and Prince covers. Yet Bruno Mars has an Album of the Year Grammy and Prince never won an Album of the Year Grammy." Some agreed with Sensei. Yeah, she makes a valid point about the appropriation of blackness and how it is now lucrative rather than taboo. Bruno Mars as an example is an awkward one because he has paid homage but that doesn't discredit that he can still benefit from the ambiguity."Yeah, she makes a valid point about the appropriation of blackness and how it is now lucrative rather than taboo. Bruno Mars as an example is an awkward one because he has paid homage but that doesn't discredit that he can still benefit from the ambiguity," one Twitter user wrote. If you're having a hard time believing this conversation is even taking place outside a mental institution, I'd be right there with you if I hadn't been paying attention to cultural trends over the course of the past few years. The cultural left has to find a way to make everything racist. If non-black people were completely disinterested in writing or recording any music that had black influence, then that would be racist. But if non-black people do want to riff off black music, there has to be a way that's racist too, so that's been turned into "cultural appropriation."
Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain
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