A prominent awards show for Indigenous music in Canada has been plunged into turmoil after a group of Inuit performers accused a Cree folk singer of cultural appropriation.
Several well-known Inuit singers have cut ties with the Indigenous Music awards (IMA), an annual show due to held in Winnipeg on 17 May, over the nomination of Connie LeGrande, who they accuse of improperly using Inuit throat singing.
In recent years, Canada has started to grapple with the issue of cultural appropriation as Indigenous people publicly challenge white artists for the use of Indigenous iconography and stories in their own work.
The current row, however, centres on an Indigenous artist, and raises questions over cultural borrowings between separate aboriginal groups.
“This is new ground – this is not ground we’ve walked on before,” said Kelly Fraser, an Inuk singer who has withdrawn from the award show in protest, along with throat singer Tanya Tagaq and the duo Piqsiq.
LeGrande, a singer from Alberta who performs under the name Cikwes, was nominated for best folk album for her album Isko, but Inuit performers said that the work uses a specific throat-singing style with deep cultural and historical ties to the Arctic. Nearly two months of talks between between the artists failed to produce an acceptable outcome, said Fraser.
LeGrande’s biography on the IMA website describes her singing as a “style of throat singing and chanting [which] celebrates the Matriarch, with a raw powerful and sexual presence”.
LeGrande did not respond to a request for comment, but has previously dismissed claim she is appropriating another culture, telling the Edmonton Star: “What I do is not Inuit throat singing. I went on and put my own expression and my own sounds because I don’t know their sounds.”
Much of the Inuit artists’ frustration centres on what they say is LeGrande’s failure to acknowledge the history and importance of throat singing in Inuit culture.
Throat singing, or katajjaq, was originally as a traditional game played between two women or girls. Guttural vocalizations are volleyed between the partners until one person breaks the rhythm and laughs – an exchange requiring intense concentration and focus.
Other times, it was used to help put small children to sleep.
Why are they all discussing this in English?
There’s little doubt that jeans are white man’s culture. The design was patented by a couple of white guys, one Latvian born the other a German American, both Jews. Originally designed for miners and cowboys, the design was popularised in the 1950s by white teenagers, particularly so-called ‘greasers’ often of Italian descent and into their motorbikes. Then the 1960s hippie culture – also predominantly white.
So could black people please stop wearing our jeans? It insults the heritage of us white folk.
Who came up with the stupid concept of cultural appropriation in the first place? Whoever it was, isn’t cultural appropriation a part of their culture? So accusing others of cultural appropriation involves cultural appropriation of the concept of cultural appropriation. It is hilarious to watch people who are too stupid to recognise such self contradictory absurdities falling over themselves to be more idiotic than each other.
The left should find great satisfaction in this because it shows their concept of cultural appropriation works. It’s meant to do this. To create conflict and division. To set people against each other and highlight their differences. Normally, the tactic is used to show how vile one group of white westerners are as opposed to how lovely and caring the other other group of murderers really are.
Sadly, the group of murderers don’t have any choice in killing members of the other group who simply refuse to do what they are told and thereby force the murderers to, well, commit murder. As the Labour Party claim, the Jews bring it upon themselves and it’s their own fault they make the socialists hate them.
Of course, in the case of cultural appropriation, the trick used by the socialists is to ignore the fact that the dusky hued chap accusing you of culural appropriation should definitely not be wearing a pair of Levi’s.On the other hand it would be disgustingly racist of you to insist he wear a loincloth in your presence.
This causes the problem of the moral high ground. The accused is not meant to resist. The accused are meant to grovel in shame and be shot for their disgusting racism.
Strangely, neither side in the indigenous conflict is willing to be shot and disappear.
In recent years, Canada has started to grapple with the issue of cultural appropriation
In recent years, Canada, along with much of the Western World, has started to grapple with reality.
Who came up with the stupid concept of cultural appropriation in the first place?
The Left – another weapon in the balkanisation of western culture. Invite them in under the guise of ‘integration’, then fight as hard as you can to keep them separate, disgruntled and paranoid.
“Nearly two months of talks between between the artists failed to produce an acceptable outcome, said Fraser”.
Two months of talks. Over this.
I’ll bet this whole ceremony runs on government money, that most of the artists are living on some sort of government money. And that they all sell about 10 CDs each and their music is shit.
The thing with people with real talent is that they don’t give a shit. Everyone steals from everyone and produces some great stuff. The only people who don’t are pathetic grifters.
“…who they accuse of improperly using Inuit throat singing.”
Trouble brewing; wait ’til the Tibetans hear about this!
@BoM4 – good guess. Connie Legrand has a handful of videos on Youtube. The only one with more than 500 views (and still only 2,800 views) has clearly been visited by the “well-known Inuit singers” and their mates, which has bumped up the numbers.
BTW – don’t both watching/listening. After all, if even Canadians won’t buy it…
Another ‘can’t they both lose?’ case….
That’s not cultural appropriation. THIS https://youtu.be/DpAFZnMyC7o is cultural appropriation. /Crocodile Dundee off.
Judean People’s Front vs The People’s Front of Judea.
@BoM4
Congrats. It’s funded by the government
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Music_Awards
The funding partners seem to be majority state entities.
https://www.manitoahbee.com/sponsors/list
Judging by the “sponsors”, it appears to be lots of Manitoban entities. The complainers are Inuit, who don’t live in Manitoba. One of the “Buffalo” sponsors (Platinum I’d guess) is a Cree nation. Connie Legrande is a Cree singer. So the IMA are just looking after their own.
Why this kind of guff requires taxpayer money is beyond me.
Cultural appropriation is one of the most explicitly racist concepts I’ve come across – trying to say that individual races are different and only some deserve access to knowledge that should belong to all humankind.
MC,
I have a video with more than 500 views, which I knocked out in 10 minutes.
“Why are they all discussing this in English? ”
White man speak with forked tongue……………………
“Who came up with the stupid concept of cultural appropriation in the first place?”
A wag who wanted “woke” people to seem especially stupid and precious?
Why this kind of guff requires taxpayer money is beyond me.
Because no-one else is foolish enough to pay for it.
Being a lefty means believing that all cultures and races must live very close together but that under no circumstances must they mix at all
On a related topic, “The HU” are a Mongolian metal band that incorporate throat singing.
Wolf Totem
BoM4, this “knocking out in 10 minutes” thing: Surely we were talking about YouTube, not the far dark corners of Pornhub.
That was odd. Right after Chris’s YouTube link was this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zZainT9v6Q
I wondered what he did when he wasn’t flouncing off of political talk shows.
Revolution. Children. Eating.
hahahahahahaha
So, am I getting this right?
There is no cultural appropriation when:
– An American Dutchman plays a cockney chimney sweep? (Dick van Dyke)
– An English actor plays a bumbling French detective? (Peter Sellers)
-An American actor acts as a German Officer trying to kill Hitler? (Tom Cruise)
-When an American comedian imitates a Scotsman? (Robin Williams)
‘Cultural appropriation’ was brought to you by the same people that brought you ‘diversity is our strength.’
CM scum determined to destroy Western Civilization.
There’s always a bigger victim.
I think its likely there’s a germ we might have been able to go along with before it got hijacked by oppressed obsessed identity power dialectic language and non-logic. Possibly that germ is the idea pastiche is looked down upon compared to the original. Likely because poorer reproduction quality added to the notion originality has a higher value because its so damn hard to come up with new ways/ variations human haven’t tried or seen before.
Reminds me of that footage of the 1920s All black team performing the haka. Looks like exactly what it is : bunch of antipodean scotch sheep enthusiasts jumping up and down. They were rugger buggers rather than maori warriors only doing it semi seriously and why not? They were all amateurs who had been exposed to something and they reproduced it. Compared to the original performed by Moari it doesn’t hold a candle. Now watch a modern haka on the Rugby Field, and you have no doubt, it ain’t pastiche, and they take it very seriously. So an old thing adapted to a modern setting, and we’re all richer. I suppose a quirk of history and they could’ve all been doing the highland sword dance.
I haven’t bothered to investigate the ‘artistes’ in question but perhaps someone who did do the research could answer this question for me.
Do any of the disgruntled throaters look Inuit or Cree or in any way indigenous or are they Canucks with 1/1024th native blood?
“Who came up with the stupid concept of cultural appropriation in the first place?”
Clearly this indicates that the left has been correct all along. We most certainly need a much larger government so as to be able to form the regulatory agencies and review committees that can ensure that one Indian group isn’t offended by another over songs. We might need another committee to review dances.
TD,
We might need another committee to review dances.
Perhaps that would fall under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Met Office.
Hallowed Be,
I think that’s it. There’s also historical examples where people from an original culture were deliberately shut out by the state, like the way the Musicians Union prevented American artists promoting records in the UK, so record companies would get them re-recorded with British artists.
Bloke on M4, when I saw her in concert, Dionne Warwick mentioned that most of her hits in the US were hits in the UK for Cilla Black.
“Reminds me of that footage of the 1920s All black team performing the haka. Looks like exactly what it is : bunch of antipodean scotch sheep enthusiasts jumping up and down. ”
The half-hearted half-confused haka is the only bad bit of the Barbarians v All Blacks 1973.
Weren’t the Cree the villains in the Captain Marvel movie?
First brainwashing, now cultural appropriation.
It was fun watching the BC indigenous bands stare down the Olympics committee when the Winter Olympics came to Vancouver.
First Nations artists refused to pay the Olympic committee their usual licensing and threatened to pull out of all the cultural events etc.
The big irony is that the whole concept of “cultural appropriation” must be about the whitest thing on the planet. So one minority complaining about another’s cultural appropriation following a shiny new white idea is just deliciously-ironic cultural colonialism.
Basically, Whitey’s putting them up to it.
-Barbarians v All Blacks 1973- just watched it… yeah 50 years later didn’t change much.. must;ve been the 80s when it took off.
BonM4-“Original culture were deliberately shut out by the state”
yes, weird, very happy to protect the employer or the employees rarely the enjoyees.
The half-hearted half-confused haka is the only bad bit of the Barbarians v All Blacks 1973.
That was worth a 6 point start for the Barbarians.