A popular Afrobeat band from Western Massachusetts that was slated to perform at Hampshire College's annual Halloween party had their performance canceled at the last minute after students expressed concern that the band was "too white."

In a statement released by Shokazoba shortly after the abrupt cancellation, the band blamed "30 students" who complained "that we were too white to play Afro-beat."

The school's HYPE Committee, which organized Friday's Hampshire Halloween event, released its own statement saying it made the decision to pull the "predominantly white" Shokazoba from the line-up after students expressed concerns "about cultural appropriation and the need to respect marginalized cultures."

Though the school claims the decision was "not based on the band’s racial identity" but rather "on the intensity and tone" of the "increasingly aggressive" comments left on the committee's Facebook page, Shokazoba insists it was "discriminated against by people who had never even met us or heard one note of our music."

The band's keyboard player, Jason Moses, told The Republican he and his bandmates met with the event's organizers, who partly blamed Shokazoba for the outcome, saying they enhanced tensions "by responding to the negativity voiced online."

Despite the cancellation, Hampshire College planned to pay Shokazoba in full for their trouble.

SariBari posted:

hampshire college

piss posted:

ur tellin me a band named "foie gras" isnt too white to perform???

its not about barring white performers, its that you cant have a band named "shokazoba" and have it be all white people. if they were called "sturgeon" or "phase gingham" this would not be an issue

gastarbeiter posted:

lol panopticon

lets become youtube commenters now

palafox posted:

peepaw posted:

better yet....mumbleskank

hahaaha what is your personal relation to this

i read phiz back in the day i guess

acephalousuniverse posted:

i think its valid to say that white appropriation of black music is mostly balanced by the fact that black people invented slap bass, which is one of the worst things in any art form. it never sounds good and was a bad idea from the start i dont care what anyone says

gwap posted:

i know you people dont like identity politics or whatever, but this is art and nothing else, no rules, no-holds barred, cage match.


anyway, i dont know why anyone would give a damn about this when the entire history of jazz and even all american music is that of cultural appropriation

a lot of the socially interesting stuff in the history of jazz, and almost all the stuff that gets serious academic attention (which says more about academia than jazz), is borne out of appropriation. jazz manouche is a field that has very little intrinsically "manouche" about it, but is instead originally from german sinti following in the footsteps of one performer following parisian trends, and its current status is basically "the only thing french and german gypsies can do without getting yelled at/spit on". the storied afronationalist and revolutionary-minded nature of a lot of american free jazz in the 60s and 70s had (and has) a very interesting effect on the music of african jazz musicians. jazz in japan was originally pretty much directly in the vein of whatever was concurrently happening in america, but the rise of japan as an economic powerhouse is mirrored with a) the development of an independent, self sustaining improv scene (many of whose players were already working prior, but funding opportunities and better places to play came from this) and b) both formerly traditionally bop-oriented and ex-improv musicians started making weird clumsy endearing adult-contemporary hybrids heavily influenced by the success of City Pop (pronounced "Shiti Popu"), which in turn was influenced by the likes of peter gabriel.
kondo toshinori, who worked with both brotzmann and dj krush over the course of his career (and is heavily mocked in the wayne shorter biography) is one of my favorite exemplars of this