I love Solar. She is very talented and he has a beautiful singing voice. I am happy to see her putting out new music but when I watch this ... it's just hard.
I read an essay that I can't find now that basically was about how African American culture was the most STOLEN from culture in the ENTIRE of the world ... everything from literally land, art, music, clothing, hairstyles, speaking ...
The most stolen from and the most oppressed at the same time.
Just ...
It becomes exhausting to a certain extent and ONLY BECAUSE African Americans are SO mistreated and so oppressed and so hated ... yet almost every aspect of African American culture has been stolen and appropriated. Just think about the constant rape and pillage of the continent of Africa ... everything from raw materials to plants ... stealing land and art from slaves ... appropriating rock and roll, blues, jazz ... it goes on and on and on ... and yet the oppression is MONUMENTAL ...
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Everything is art and I'm not saying you can't interpret or do homages and stuff ... that's not my point. The point is that if African Americans were treated as well as their culture was stolen ... things would be very, very different.
I consider appropriation to be appropriation when the BALANCE isn't there ... when you treat the inherent aspects of a culture BETTER than the culture itself. When the borrowed art, style, and outward look is cherished but the people who created it are oppressed.
Seeing Solar do ballroom and vogue ... is ... weird and cringey and awful ... because of these facts. Kpop is 99% stolen from other cultures including African American culture but not exclusively. They borrow, shift, add on, to a lot of different styles and cultures including some middle eastern styles and music. It's all they do ... what is Korean music without borrowing, stealing, appropriating, and building upon others ... it's gugak basically ...
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Cultural appropriation isn't an issue in other countries because those same cultures aren't oppressed there.
For example most Japanese people in Japan love when white folks wear kimonos or when the U.S. exploits Japanese culture because they are considered "model minority" here and it's a form of flattery ...
However, if Japanese people were getting lynched every other day and shot for no reason etc I think they would stop finding the borrowing of their culture by white people flattering.
All that said ... Solar does ballroom and vogue well ... just like any Kpop idol or any dancer who is trained extensively would be expected to do. I'd only be surprised if she DIDN'T do it well.
Solar is doing ballroom roleplay basically ... she's seen it, she likes it, she wants to jump on that trend. She grabs some ballroom culture vernacular like "kiki" and puts it in there and then learns the dances.
It's a costume. It's cosplay.
Borrowing and celebrating aspects from a particular culture while simultaneously oppressing and punishing the people of that culture for expressing them themselves is cultural appropriation. Add to that the unopposed and systemic act of "culling" members of that culture as well.
Native Americans and other Indigenous peoples have been saying this for generations.
It's not that hard to understand what cultural appropriation is.
People just want to nitpick about it instead of being honest.
Solar has put out another piece of cosplay ... this time she's trying on a hard rocker style.
Look ... Solar can sing. MAMAMOO was a group of ALL singers. If you listen to them live there is NOTHING that can touch their voices.
However, Solar doesn't know who she is or where she falls outside of that and she's been trying out things I think she's always wanted to do ...
She writes music, she sings, she's hella talented but ... the cosplay just doesn't interest me.
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I wrote a long essay about "How To Hate Kpop For The Right Reasons" and one of the things I got into was the fact that South Korean pop is copies of copies of copies. It copies everyone and then sings it in a mix of Korean and English but it's just appropriated, borrowed, and recycled with no soul of it's own ... unless you're Song Sohee and a HANDFUL of others.
I would love for Solar to find out who she is and where she fits into the music world as a solo artist. I would LOVE that.
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But this new album of hers is just her playing around and borrowing stuff from different genres and that's great for her it's just ... not very interesting music.
What IS interesting is watching her do all this cosplay, seeing her do things she wasn't allowed to do and never had the chance to do and having fun doing it ...
What I want to see is where she ends up. I want to see really who Solar is. I want to see if she can find herself underneath all the cosplay.
That will be worth the wait.
Kpop isn't like here where some artists kind of are free to kind of express and then the music industry steals their work and owns it forever and just sucks the life out of them. At least they have a chance to put out what they are passionate about.
Most kpop groups are GIVEN something to perform and rarely have an opportunity to inject anything of themselves into it. They're trained to sing and dance and perform.
Figuring out who you are after decades of that is gonna be a hell of a journey.
Solar is just really beginning that journey ... figuring out who she is outside of the group she's been a part of since 2014.
She probably wants to try everything and do everything and write everything and sing everything and really just have some freedom to figure herself out and that is something I understand. It just doesn't interest me as much as the end result of it all.
I cannot WAIT to see the real Solar come out of all this. ❤️
The title of her album is COLOURS so I'm probably right about what she is doing and why.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the future of her music ❤️
It gets harder and harder to enjoy things the borrow from African American culture as a basis for art as my presence in this country (or any country) becomes more and more a life and death issue.
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