In chapter 6, Rice argues that cool is a “culturally constructed” term formed by religions, media, literature, government, ect. Rice also states that cool originated within African history, most likely starting with the slave trade. Rice wants us to learn how cool “is as much a culture phenonmenon as is any other factor.” Rice talks about Amiri Baraka who points out the discrepancies between mainstream white culture and African-American culture at the level of power. Baraka also focuses on how music is cultrually created and heard not necessarily what it is.
African-Americans were not allowed to be involved in sharing the wealth should there music sell well, white jazz musicians often “eclipsed” the African-American musicians. Whites started noticing the fashion of African-Americans and wore what they did. African-Americans were not given create for what they did, overshadowed by what the way whites did it.
In chapter 7, Rice relates appropriation to hip-hop music for example, in how through DJ’s hip-hop, as a form of writing has minimized the cultural oppression. DJ’s use what is called ’sampling’, the process of joining pieces of different songs together, to create new music. Unrelated songs, such as The Temptations’ “Can’t Get Next To You” and Blondie’s “Rapture”, were collaged to create newer more ‘hip-hop’ songs.
Plagerism is the using of any form of writing and giving credit to yourself for doing it. The sampling that DJ’s do collaging different songs together, is not, in my opinion plagerism. As long as proper credit is given as the what the songs are and the original artist was, there shouldn’t be a problem.
