Culture: it’s BIGGER than YOU

Disclaimer: this is my personal prospective and my opinion, so argue with your mama

🤭🤪! As we wrap up the month of June, what is known as black music month, I can help but notice all of the influence us black folk have on not just music, but on the world (but definitely music). I participate in the IG daily challenges where you pick songs based on the chosen theme and it’s caused me to do some research. I was reminded how rich in culture we actually are; it’s beautiful, we are beautiful. There’s old school bands/groups that I (thought) was black but were white! Whet?!

I could have swore the BeeGees and Michael McDonald were my uncles lol.

I love (🙄) how “culture vultures” take something they can’t duplicate on their own or traditions they don’t naturally possess and put raisins in it to make it theirs. Food, fashion, hair, makeup, home remedies, etc, you name it, we got it on lock!!! This makes me so proud to be apart of a bomb ass culture and to share it with my daughter is so exciting. It makes my heart jump when I see (positive) posts that are geared to us. The accuracy is impeccable 😂(you can’t make some of that shit up). For clarification, the definition of culture is: the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group. I believe culture is a derivative of race. Culture comes from race, but race doesn’t create culture. This explains how and why culturally inferior groups (them) take from those who are rich in culture (us). “They” take from everyone they encounter (mostly us) and put their name on it but you can’t imitate authenticity.

Now, the other side of the argument is, we can take something (bland) that they have created, and make it better. In other words, add flavor. So much so, the latter is preferred. For example, on the IG music challenge I follow (shout out to @musicsermon) day 20 asked for BLACK cover songs that’s BETTER than the original, and some of those songs that were posted, I didn’t know were covers. I thought they were the original versions. So naturally I went to listen to the original song, (🤮) just as bland as raw chicken! I was blown away.

Moral of the story: I’m glad to be apart of a culture everyone wants to imitate (whether they admit it or not)

Until next week,

✌🏽