• demlet@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Ha, definitely not rich, but I am a privileged white dude who adores old country blues and other related genres. Although I genuinely think early blues and jazz musicians are absolute geniuses, it has always felt a little incongruous with my own lived experience. Good to be reminded not to fetishize or romanticize things too much. I don’t know if any of that made sense. The cartoon says it much better.

    • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I think that makes sense, and every music style has a sense of culture that is a bit hard to break into. Let’s just say it’s not common for rappers to come from wealthy or suburban backgrounds. It would be pretty weird if a country musician came right out of Boston for example, it would be hard for them to break into that.

      I feel like every genre has some culture around it, and with that culture always comes some gate keeping. I mean go bring your middle aged ass to a new age punk band, and see how comfortable you feel there… but with that gatekeeping also comes a sense of community that gives that music a special home to those people.

      I also think the gatekeeping also makes music discovery extra exciting. It feels like you’re breaking into somewhere foreign when you branch out, specifically because of that new subset of culture.

      • demlet@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Well put. You really hit on something at the end there. Shared culture and community. What I admire as much as anything about blues, jazz, hip-hop for that matter, is how people in extremely repressive circumstances were able to create culture and meaning in spite of it. And yet, although I admire that strength of human spirit immensely, I can never fully be a part of it. My role is to recognize instead how I have been part of the system that created the oppression.