To the Editor:
I'm writing in response to last week's article entitled, "Pale neo-hippie boys have no right to bang African drums." In the first place, the author goes out of her way to be both insulting and offensive. She refers to various drummers as "white neo-hippie boys," "white boys," and "pale boys." This terminology is employed in a contemptuous and denigrating fashion. Further, the author refers at one point to this "self-assured descendent of slave masters." Speaking for myself, I am not a descendent of slave masters of any variety. Most of my ancestors were starving peasants living in Europe until the twentieth century. And my guess is that there are plenty of white African drummers who have no relationship whatsoever to "slave masters." Furthermore, it seems somewhat reprehensible to heap scorn on another human being for the actions of one of their ancestors who died centuries before their own birth.
This aside, I suggest that the message of this article is a somewhat dangerous one. The author condemns the playing of African drums by white men as "cultural rape." All right, I can respect feelings of anger or violation when an outsider adopts a piece of one's own culture. But there's another side to this issue. In order to eliminate the racist attitudes which gave birth to such abhorrent practices as slavery, it is necessary to come to appreciate cultures other than one's own. But if people are forbidden to, say, learn to play and love the music of another ethnic group, it would seem we're headed down the road to a kind of cultural isolation. Only by sharing the positive and beautiful aspects of our respective cultures can humans hope to transcend feelings of hatred and fear, and break down once and for all the walls created by racist sentiment.
Copyright © 1996, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 124, Number 24; May 10, 1996
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