Readers react to SLAV controversy

After widespread protests, the Montreal International Jazz Festival last week cancelled a planned 19-day run of SLĀV, “a theatrical odyssey based on slave songs.” Critics of the show denounced its predominantly white cast for appropriation of black culture. But since the cancellation July 4, controversy about the show has raged on. Was the show really cultural appropriation or was the decision to cancel cowardly political correctness? Montreal Gazette readers told us what they think.

Shaming tactics a strategy by the left

Actors in the production SLĀV have taken to social media in an attempt to defend themselves for choosing to work on this production. The character of director Robert Lepage has been attacked in the media, with pundits stating he should admit he made a mistake and has blind spots. He is accused of racism, intolerance, cultural appropriation and bigotry, all shaming tactics employed by the left to attack the character of people they want to shut down.

The cognitive dissonance and weak-mindedness it takes to argue cultural appropriation is matched only by the entitlement of people too ignorant or too brainwashed by post-modernist ideology to know just how good they have it and just how decent the majority of people really are.

Steve Hague, Pincourt

What about Mick Jagger, Eminem?

One of the joys I have in my life is playing the guitar. Growing up I was inspired by a bunch of English kids who culturally appropriated African-American rhythm and blues. Mick Jagger owes his career to African-American musicians (so do Eminem and countless others). Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters would never have had any tangible success in the wider world but for the devotion of these kids.

I now play bossa nova, music that was culturally appropriated by white Brazilian college students from Afro-Brazilian samba.

This is nonsense. Jazz fest organizers should never have cancelled the show, nor apologized. People have to stand up to political correctness. It’s ridiculous and infantile.

Gary James Smith, Matheson, Ont.

Spiritual songs inspired students

When I was a little girl in Brooklyn, N.Y., in my culturally uniform Jewish neighbourhood, I attended PS 225, where we all sang what was considered folk music: no Christmas carols, given the clientele, but lots of what at the time were called “Negro spirituals.”

We loved them and considered that they told our story. In fact, I’m not sure that your average first grade pupil really understood the difference between Jewish history and black history.

In any case, when we sang “Go down, Moses / Way down in Egypt land / Tell old Pharaoh / To let my people go,” we were singing both our stories. That sweet chariot we saw swinging low, “coming for to carry me home,” was the same one that carried the prophet Elijah off to heaven.

So please give your cultural appropriation mantra a rest: some situations are so universal that it is irrelevant. In any case, it is out of place in any consideration of theatre. Theatre is cultural appropriation. Literature gets translated, and men used to play women’s roles, and today women play men’s roles, and no sane person objects when Condola Rashad portrays Juliet in New York City. Or are you going to insist that the actress be Italian?

And then there’s the musical Hamilton, which to me represents the rightful appropriation by blacks of a part of American history they deserve — as much as a U.S. citizen who is the grandchild of Eastern European Jews has the right to consider the American Revolution her own.

But the more one thinks about SLĀV, the more complicated the issue seems. Should white performers be forbidden to play the part of black slaves, or does such immersion in the lives of others lead to greater empathy and fellow feeling ? Would black performers be humiliated once again if asked to play the role of slaves?

I have no idea what the answer is, and suspect that there are as many answers as there are people concerned with the question, but I know what isn’t an answer: claiming outrage over cultural appropriation.

Let me give it to you straight: black culture has appropriated a Jewish story, a story that offered black slaves hope for release from slavery, and we Jews don’t feel that we have been robbed of our heritage in any way by having it borrowed by those who need it.

Marcia L. Barr,

Town of Mount Royal

Everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day

One can only hope the highly incensed and insulted victims of SLĀV have the integrity to not be Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, gay during Pride festivities, West Indian at Carifiesta, and more. James Le Voguer, Plateau Mont-Royal

Is acting considered appropriation?

Just when it seemed that our sins (and those of previous generations) have been atoned for, along comes a new one: cultural appropriation.

So in the spirit of continuing this argument: Paul Robeson’s rendition of Je suis un canadien errant is beautiful but he was neither un canadien nor errant.

Sean Penn plays a gay activist in Milk. Sexual orientation appropriation?

Cate Blanchett, an Australian actress, plays Bob Dylan the folk singer from Minnesota in I’m Not There. Gender and patrimonial appropriation.

Then there are the trouser roles in opera such as Cherubino in Figaro and Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier, in which a woman plays a man pretending to be a woman. Some sort of appropriation seems to be going on, but how to define it is a bit obscure.

I could go on, but the words I retain are “playing ” and “role.” Unless the actor, or the show, uses the actual people depicted, some form of appropriation is going on.

We are so easily insulted and feeling betrayed over seemingly very little. Good intentions become propaganda and objections become censorship. So lighten up everybody and look for the next sin to come down the road.

I think I’ll watch Mister Ed, equine appropriation notwithstanding.

Charles Mackay, St-Eustache

Show gives voice to ‘long gone slaves’

By presenting these songs created by African slaves in the American South and collected by the white ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, the show was giving voice to those long gone slaves.

While there were descendants of African slaves in Montreal, in the St-Antoine community in particular, they have long since been greatly outnumbered by immigrants from the Caribbean and from French Africa. It is statistically likely that few, if any, of those protesting the lack of African American singers on stage were, in fact, descendants of slaves.

I can only speculate, but it seems to me that if I were a young African American whose ancestors actually were slaves, I might resent hearing those protesters claim the same relationship to slavery as I have. I may resent their having felt entitled to shut down those voices.

If we are going to address cultural appropriation, we might want to consider how it may cut across colour lines. Yves Saint-Pierre, N.D.G.

White privilege is part of the problem

I am less than impressed by Boris’s cartoon making light of “cultural appropriation” (Montreal Gazette, July 11). It attempts to trivialize a sensitive issue for cultural communities and shows a lack of understanding and respect. White privilege is real and should not be perpetuated or disguised as “free speech” or “artistic licence.”

Equality of opportunity and a level playing field should always trump bigotry and racism.

Brian Powell, Westmount