Cultural Appropriation – Marissa Moore

A conversation with Dr. Marissa Moore about issues of cultural appropriation in music. Topics include how Dr. Moore has theorized cultural appropriation in her research and in her teaching, as well as advice for scholars who wish to incorporate considerations of cultural appropriation into their classrooms. A reading list has been adapted from Dr. Moore’s syllabus for MUSI 183, “Cultural Appropriation and the Ethics of Musical Representation,” which she taught at Yale in Fall 2018.

Further Reading

Aran, Isha. “The Charged, Complicated Racial Dynamics of Cardi B’s ‘Bodak Yellow’ Video.” Splinter, August 22, 2017. https://splinternews.com/the-charged-complicated-racial-dynamics-of-cardi-bs-bo-1798278601.

Gray, Briahna Joy. “The Question of Cultural Appropriation.” Current Affairs: A Magazine of Politics & Culture, September 06, 2017. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/09/the-question-of-cultural-appropriation.

Keister, Jay. “Seeking Authentic Experience: Spirituality in the Western Appropriation of
Asian Music.” The World of Music 47, no. 3, The Music of “Others” in the Western World (2005): 35-53.

Locke, Ralph. 2009. “Exoticism with and without exotic style,” in Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections. New York: Cambridge University Press, 43-71.

Lott, Eric. 1993. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press.

Matthew D. Morrison, “Iggy (Azalea) pop: Is cultural appropriation inappropriate?” Oxford University Press Blog, February 26, 2015. https://blog.oup.com/2015/02/iggy-azalea-music-cultural-appropriation/.

Weiss, Bari. “Three Cheers for Cultural Appropriation.” The New York Times, August 30, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/opinion/cultural-appropriation.html?mcubz=1.

Ziff, Bruce. H. and Pratima V. Rao. 1997. “Introduction to Cultural Appropriation: A Framework for Analysis,” in Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation, edited by Bruce H. Ziff, and Pratima V. Rao, 1-30. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.