10/3/2018
By talking about the steel guitar and the minstrel show the word “appropriated” has come up a lot. The word “appropriated” has become a buzz word in the modern world and has become synonymous to purposely stealing. But although the definition of the word is to take without permission it doesn’t necessarily mean it is the same as the negative connotation of stealing. So as discussed the origin of the banjo comes from Africa and was later ‘appropriated’ by colonizers into a more modern day banjo. So the action of appropriation happened but in a historical context it probably wasn’t to purposefully strip this instrument from a culture and was more likely reused in a different culture because it was available and sounded good to the people appropriating it. This scenario has happened throughout a multitude of time periods and different cultures. For example, the dance Kazachok, a dance used widely in Russia, is originally from the Turkic people of the step who the Russians often traded and conversed with. The appropriation of the dance by the people of early Russia wasn’t differently not done to take the dance away from the Turkic people but became a dance among the Russians because it was a popular dance in the area since the Russian had been in contact with the Turkic people. The simple acts of appropriation can come from simply just liking what a another culture has and is not always linked to a negative acts of stealing for the sole purpose of taking something something away from a culture to make it your own.
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