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Ripping Off Black Music
It is jarring and most distressing to walk into a room one has considered private and find it ringed with cameras, spotlights, and insistent strangers claiming long acquaintance and making plans to move in and redecorate without being invited. Black music and with it the private black self were suddenly grossly public—tossed onstage, dressed in clown white, and bandied about with a gleeful arrogance that just yesterday had chosen to ignore and condescend.
Blacks, it seemed, had lost the battle for mythological ownership of rock, as future events would prove.
Written more than 40 years ago with astonishing prescience, celebrated critic and memoirist Margo Jefferson’s Ripping Off Black Music—her first published essay—is at once unflinchingly honest and dead-on in its critique of appropriation in popular music, from Chuck Berry to Elvis, Jimi Hendrix to the Beatles.
Features an introduction by the author.
Ripping Off Black Music was originally published in Harper’s, January 1973.
Cover design by Adil Dara.
Blacks, it seemed, had lost the battle for mythological ownership of rock, as future events would prove.
Written more than 40 years ago with astonishing prescience, celebrated critic and memoirist Margo Jefferson’s Ripping Off Black Music—her first published essay—is at once unflinchingly honest and dead-on in its critique of appropriation in popular music, from Chuck Berry to Elvis, Jimi Hendrix to the Beatles.
Features an introduction by the author.
Ripping Off Black Music was originally published in Harper’s, January 1973.
Cover design by Adil Dara.
15 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 18, 2016
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275 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 7, 2017
"Has a young admirer ever attached himself to you? He dogged your footsteps, dressed as nearly like you as possible, acquired your mannerisms and expressions, and told everyone how wonderful you were. At first you may have been amused, even flattered. But you became uneasy, then annoyed. You were being caricatured, your individuality undermined and cheapened. You felt used, fed off of, and your admirer took on the lewdness of the voyeur. You were being appropriated for his needs, used as raw material in his efforts to divert or remodel himself. Finally, you despised him. Imitation is a form of cannibalism. And the imitator is never content merely to nibble; oh no, every so often, when life becomes dull or frustrating, he becomes greedy. Nothing will satisfy him but the whole, body and blood."
Jefferson writes with a straightforward approach and lack of apology I find missing in many who discuss things such as this. More worried about offending the fragile white ego than putting forth the truth, she is not.
Jefferson writes with a straightforward approach and lack of apology I find missing in many who discuss things such as this. More worried about offending the fragile white ego than putting forth the truth, she is not.
November 24, 2022
“Imitation is a form of cannibalism. And the imitator is never content merely to nibble; oh no, every so often, when life becomes dull or frustrating, he becomes greedy. Nothing will satisfy him but the whole, body and blood."
“The white minstrel has an endless supply of incarnations: playing nigger is first-rate theater. It has laughs, tears, cheap thrills- a bargain catharsis. The performer's white skin, like an actor's curtain call, is an ingenious safety device, signaling that the show is over and nothing has changed. Aristotle neglected to mention that the aftermath of a catharsis is the viewer's smug satisfaction with the capacity for feeling, a satisfaction that permits a swift and comfortable return to business as usual. You can't lose playing the White Negro, because you are in the unique position of retaining the material benefits of being white while sampling the mythological ones of being black.”
no sé para que la gente hoy escribe tantas banalidades sobre apropiación cultural cuando margo jefferson ya lo hizo, hace cincuenta años, con furia parca y fulminante. mejor referirlos a este ensayo, no hay mucho más que decir.
“The white minstrel has an endless supply of incarnations: playing nigger is first-rate theater. It has laughs, tears, cheap thrills- a bargain catharsis. The performer's white skin, like an actor's curtain call, is an ingenious safety device, signaling that the show is over and nothing has changed. Aristotle neglected to mention that the aftermath of a catharsis is the viewer's smug satisfaction with the capacity for feeling, a satisfaction that permits a swift and comfortable return to business as usual. You can't lose playing the White Negro, because you are in the unique position of retaining the material benefits of being white while sampling the mythological ones of being black.”
no sé para que la gente hoy escribe tantas banalidades sobre apropiación cultural cuando margo jefferson ya lo hizo, hace cincuenta años, con furia parca y fulminante. mejor referirlos a este ensayo, no hay mucho más que decir.
September 28, 2016
Ventriloquism
Jefferson makes the argument historically, viscerally, and convincingly as she traces the history of whites appropriating the experience, style and music of blacks from the time of black face minstrels, to the Rolling Stones. History can be seen as repeating itself even now as white artists like Eminem appropriate rap and hip hop, affecting for themselves not only the genre, but the lifestyle and trappings of "thug life" and winning the awards, recording contracts and audience's money and allegiance. From a black perspective, she writes that is like someone coming into your living room, spotlighting it and the parodying yourself to the world and gaining acclaim for the caricature...for a cultural and soul ripping ventriloquism.
Jefferson makes the argument historically, viscerally, and convincingly as she traces the history of whites appropriating the experience, style and music of blacks from the time of black face minstrels, to the Rolling Stones. History can be seen as repeating itself even now as white artists like Eminem appropriate rap and hip hop, affecting for themselves not only the genre, but the lifestyle and trappings of "thug life" and winning the awards, recording contracts and audience's money and allegiance. From a black perspective, she writes that is like someone coming into your living room, spotlighting it and the parodying yourself to the world and gaining acclaim for the caricature...for a cultural and soul ripping ventriloquism.
May 16, 2022
Written in 1973, and even more scathing today. Discussions about appropriation and exploitation in pop music must include "Ripping Off Black Music." If you can read this as a white rock music fan and not get a nauseous feeling inside-- a feeling that you're just another fucking asshole accessory in a long line of deluded "enlightened" music fans-- well... read it again? (And yeah, I know this isn't really a book-- it's an essay you can read in 10 minutes-- but Margo Jefferson's thesis is just so complete and so blistering that I think this has to count as its own thing.)
July 18, 2020
“The night Jimi died I dreamed this was the latest step in a plot being designed to eliminate blacks from rock music so that it may be recorded in history as a creation of whites. [...] Two weeks later Janis Joplin was dead. What does that mean? I asked myself, momentarily confused. It means she thought she was black and somebody took her at her word.”
July 5, 2020
Despite the age of this essay, it's never been more timely.
And Jefferson has few peers as a writer.
Did I agree with every point? No.
But the history is undeniable, man. :)
And Jefferson has few peers as a writer.
Did I agree with every point? No.
But the history is undeniable, man. :)
January 3, 2021
A short read, but an extremely powerful one. I wish there was more! The historical precedent the author describes is one I had not realized went so far back, though I am, sadly, not surprised.
July 19, 2018
I HATED this. I'm super liberal. A socialist, to be exact. But cultural appropriation is not something I can understand. No matter how many people I talk to of various cultures, I can never see the problem.
Art (music, fashion, art in the classical sense, speech) should be universal. Nothing should "belong" to anyone. It should be shared by everyone to bring us all together. I feel like this fear of cultural appropriation will keep us all separate, rather than bring us all together. Only together can we truly thrive.
On Hendrix: "To blacks he was the pimp of a cheap acid rock craze; to whites he was a sacred whore"
On Joplin: "Janis was a white woman using a black woman’s blues to get to her own."
For the record, this white chick prefers Chuck Berry over Elvis. By a long shot.
Art (music, fashion, art in the classical sense, speech) should be universal. Nothing should "belong" to anyone. It should be shared by everyone to bring us all together. I feel like this fear of cultural appropriation will keep us all separate, rather than bring us all together. Only together can we truly thrive.
On Hendrix: "To blacks he was the pimp of a cheap acid rock craze; to whites he was a sacred whore"
On Joplin: "Janis was a white woman using a black woman’s blues to get to her own."
For the record, this white chick prefers Chuck Berry over Elvis. By a long shot.
December 24, 2017
A great piece of writing, with a solid point.
May 11, 2024
An extremely elegant, educational, and emotional look into Rock 'n' Roll's origins and the cannibalism of black musical culture by white people.
Very well written, but difficult to follow if you don't go into it with a well developed preexisting knowledge of music history.
This was especially interesting to me since I just taught my students about Rock 'n' Roll a couple weeks ago, and we talked about a lot of the topics Jefferson discusses here.
Full of powerful language and metaphors that will open your eyes to the horrors and origin of modern minstrelsy.
Very well written, but difficult to follow if you don't go into it with a well developed preexisting knowledge of music history.
This was especially interesting to me since I just taught my students about Rock 'n' Roll a couple weeks ago, and we talked about a lot of the topics Jefferson discusses here.
Full of powerful language and metaphors that will open your eyes to the horrors and origin of modern minstrelsy.
October 14, 2016
Interesting article. I especially appreciated the author's contemporary reflection in the forward which provided another layer to the issue.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews