Whose Culture Is It?
Today I managed to squeeze in a nail day at my favorite neighborhood nail salon. The salon is filled with what I assume are the usual Asian nail salon items: price list, vibrating whirlpool chairs for pedicures, posters of beautifully lacquered nails, boards of nail designs, little Buddha statues, TV, cablebox, DVD/VHS player, etc.
The TV is always going sometimes with something in English and sometimes with something in (what I found out today is) Vietnamese. I always go in with purse, water bottle and iPod for protection from conversation with anyone in the place accept for the person doing my nails and not much with her. Today the iPod was playing The Broker by John Grisham and the TV was playing something in Vietnamese. I was glancing back and forth from the nail designs glued to the nail files to what was playing on the TV. It was pretty loud and I could hear what was playing over The Broker. The TV was playing some kind of Vietnamese awards show.
I'm going to assume it was a music awards show based on the picture that kept showing up of an old fashioned phonograph player. I watched and randomly thought how very American award shows seem to me and wondered how that had slid so easily into their culture. Little did I know what was to come. Before I knew it my head was bobbing to a really catchy tune. Then it happened. I heard rappinig coming from the TV that caused me to remove the iPod earphones and pause The Broker. Yes, it's true. There was a Vietnamese man rapping to the very catchy tunes of Moulin Rouge with Vietnamese women dancing all around. And I have to admit I didn't know whether to laugh or what.
I sat there remembering being a sixteen year old senior in high school in 1980 and dancing to Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five. Rap was really starting to be something and while I have flirted back in forth with how I feel about rap over the past 25 years, deep down it has always been part of what I totally claim as my culture as a person of African descent in America. Yes, I laughed at Vanilla Ice and accepted Eminem, but looked at them as aberrations. I decided to laugh but now I'm really confused. Whose culture is it?
The TV is always going sometimes with something in English and sometimes with something in (what I found out today is) Vietnamese. I always go in with purse, water bottle and iPod for protection from conversation with anyone in the place accept for the person doing my nails and not much with her. Today the iPod was playing The Broker by John Grisham and the TV was playing something in Vietnamese. I was glancing back and forth from the nail designs glued to the nail files to what was playing on the TV. It was pretty loud and I could hear what was playing over The Broker. The TV was playing some kind of Vietnamese awards show.
I'm going to assume it was a music awards show based on the picture that kept showing up of an old fashioned phonograph player. I watched and randomly thought how very American award shows seem to me and wondered how that had slid so easily into their culture. Little did I know what was to come. Before I knew it my head was bobbing to a really catchy tune. Then it happened. I heard rappinig coming from the TV that caused me to remove the iPod earphones and pause The Broker. Yes, it's true. There was a Vietnamese man rapping to the very catchy tunes of Moulin Rouge with Vietnamese women dancing all around. And I have to admit I didn't know whether to laugh or what.
I sat there remembering being a sixteen year old senior in high school in 1980 and dancing to Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five. Rap was really starting to be something and while I have flirted back in forth with how I feel about rap over the past 25 years, deep down it has always been part of what I totally claim as my culture as a person of African descent in America. Yes, I laughed at Vanilla Ice and accepted Eminem, but looked at them as aberrations. I decided to laugh but now I'm really confused. Whose culture is it?
posted by B-Nice at
7:18 PM
3 Comments:
It is definitely ours, but as with dam nnear everything we either start or claim, it gets bitten off of. We should just accept it and keep giving them shit to live by.
By
DramaQueen, at 1/06/2006 3:00 AM
It belongs to whoever that can make momey off it. We start it. They corupt it by taking out the conscious essence of it and making it about bitches and rims and we cosign it.
By
Max, at 1/10/2006 4:57 PM
We have definitely co-signed a bunch of that $hit and been happy to make whatever money we could off of it which is no where near the amount that they make off of it.
By
B-Nice, at 1/26/2006 10:39 AM
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