I didn't know who Sabrina Carpenter is, but the recent incident brings up something just a touch puzzling. She heard something she didn't recognise as an Arabic call of celebration and thought it was yodeling. She said she didn't like it. The person was offended, saying "But it's part of my culture," and a lot of her fans were offended as well, and chastised her the next day.
I don't think "It's part of my culture" is quite the blanket excuse that pop fans think, but I do think it is on balance better to be polite. It's better to be polite in the opposite direction, too, however. If I were to go to an Arabic musician's performance and kept interjecting "Hallelujah! ...Glory, glory!...Amen, sister!" throughout the concert I would not be surprised if people found it intrusive and took it amiss. I wouldn't expect the artist and the rest of the audience to understand. I don't applaud during Romanian Orthodox prayers. If I am doing something that I should know will makes others uncomfortable, I should at least have a better reason than "It's part of my culture." There's an arrogance to that.
It is similar to complaints about cultural appropriation, which I identified over a decade ago as more about snobbery than protecting another culture: I know more about Indonesian cuisine than you do. That style is more the province of liberals. Conservatives have different "shoulds."
Donna B and Texan99 discuss Mexican vs Tex-Mex at the link, which was fun.
2 comments:
I suspect her thought process went something like "hear odd vocalization" > want to make a joke to get this performance back on track > "find funny sounding word for odd vocalization" > YODEL!
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