Why I’m Ditching Some of the Old Tracks
When I started leading Zumba® fitness classes just over five years ago in early 2011, I had longer hair, a bunch of white privilege and not much of a clue about what the phrase ‘white privilege’ meant.
Zumba® Fitness HQ regularly included ‘Bollywood’ routines in the choreography they send to members of their network and recent release Jai Ho was a total banger, so I leapt upon it. And we jumped! How we jumped. It became a class favourite and it still gets requested once in a while now.
In the intervening years I’ve been lucky enough to benefit from the educational labour of members of marginalised groups on the internet and I’ve learned a little more about why my choices of music and routine for classes need some more consideration than that.
Cultural appropriation, as I understand it, is the term for when a member of one culture takes an aspect of a culture that isn’t theirs, particularly when it:
- Involves a social power dynamic, i.e. a white person taking from a culture that has suffered historic or current violence from white colonialism,
- Is done without any real understanding of its cultural significance,
- Is used in a completely separate context, perhaps reinforcing stereotypes of the borrowed culture and
- Is done without any reciprocity.
I know from speaking to various friends about this that many fellow white folks can dismiss this kind of concern as ‘over-thinking’. I’ve heard “it’s just a costume / hairstyle / dance” from several people close to me, so here are a couple of ugly analogies if that’s where you’re at.
Let’s say someone you met was wearing a swastika as a brooch because they thought the symmetrical pattern was pretty. You’d (most likely) know that since World War II the symbol has had its 2nd century BC religious roots obliterated and is now associated with horrific Nazi violence. Does it matter that they don’t claim to carry that meaning of the symbol? The presence of the hateful symbol says something beyond their intention because of a larger cultural context.
Or imagine someone wore a Victoria cross medal on a cheap, inaccurate copy of a WWII fighter pilot’s jacket and a Union Jack flag as a nappy as their costume to get horrifically drunk at a college party. Now imagine they were from a race that had historically killed, exiled and overtaken the British (which is tricky if you’re actually white British, because in the last few centuries we’ve done more settling and invading than having it happen to us). It doesn't matter that this specific person wasn’t the one who harmed your ancestors, it’d still be an ignorant, disrespectful act.
When you borrow from cultures that aren’t your own — particularly if you do so with no attempt to learn — you don’t know the meanings of the items you’re using.
You might have seen this debate around white people wearing black hairstyles or appropriative Halloween costumes like Native American headdresses.
But we’re talking about dance — and it can get complicated. Some people argue that art forms, including dance, evolve through cultural exchange, the idea of styles borrowing from each other reciprocally. When dance is made up of many movements put together in complex varieties of ways, it can be harder to identify which hand position or head tilt came from which culture. This phenomenon is particularly common now that dancers from many parts of the world (if they have enough privilege to get online) are sharing their creative work on platforms like YouTube.
Certainly fusions can produce great new work and homage can be paid respectfully.
However, there are occasions when you can tell when some dance moves are either ripped straight out of marginalised cultures or a vulgar caricature of stereotyped ideas about a group of people. Given that I’m a white instructor who earns their living through leading a mostly white audience in dance, I have a responsibility to consider whether I’m profiting from or colluding with something that causes harm to others.
So while it’s not as clear cut as some styles are permissible, some aren’t, there are considerations to the context of every track. Let’s look closely at Jai Ho (You Are My Destiny):
The original song was by Indian composer AR Rahman, who collaborated on this remix with The Pussycat Dolls to soundtrack the film Slumdog Millionaire.
That strikes me as a film by a white British film director who earned profit, awards and status by romanticizing the poverty of colonially-devastated India.
The Pussycat Dolls are an American pop act comprised of a variety of races, many of which are white, none of which are South Asian. The video for this song, which propelled them to fame, features the performers wearing saris and bindis in a non-authentic and sexualised setting.
Singer Nicole Sherzinger even pronouces ‘Jai’ wrongly.
Then there’s my choreography choices, which were Indian-cinema-style hand positions and movements. These strike me now as mortifying perpetuations of South Asian stereotypes.
Put all that together and I can’t keep the track in my playlist in good conscience. If it was released this year knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t go near it.
Waka Waka is another old favourite that crops up on the request list. There’s Shakira, a blonde, light-skinned Colombian, singing ‘for Africa’, using African language with African backing vocals, united in care-free dance with black folks in the video to promote a wealthy corrupt sporting body’s event. That’s a grim enough context to merit dropping it too, right?
There’s a whole lot of grey areas; for instance, we do the occasional booty-pop amid various routines — hopefully in ways that aren’t culturally insensitive, but I wouldn’t set up a twerking class [that link contains descriptions of some outrageous racism].
That Britain was responsible for less colonial damage in Latin America makes those rhythms feel less obviously inappropriate; Salsa originated in 1970s New York; though I’m still not sure about what to do with the fabled origin stories of Merengue.
You’re a fan of Jai Ho or Waka Waka? No judgement on you, friend. Since you’re not the one bringing together a broad community and profiting from the track choice, the stakes on your choices are a lot lower — and I hope you can understand that my dropping those tracks doesn’t mean I have beef with your tastes or music requests at all.
These issues have been tricky to navigate partly because I don’t see any chat about this in Zumba® fitness circles. Zumba® HQ packages workshops and add-ons like African Rhythms and World Fusion that feel entirely inappropriate for white instructors to use, in my understanding. It’s each of our responsibilities to deliver a suitable class and I’ll continue to fix my ignorant blind spots through learning dance history and listening to members of marginalised groups when they talk about what’s harmful, but it could help dismantle some unhelpful patterns if there was more discussion about what can be a very complex and nuanced topic.
Since I’m still teaching myself about all this stuff I’ll no doubt make mistakes, so if you think I’m wrong about any of it, I’d appreciate your efforts to call me out.
I’m not too interested in hearing defences of cultural appropriation from white folks at this point, but I’d be very keen to hear views from anyone else and to get feedback on this from people who’ve thought about how to avoid appropriation, especially from instructors with views on styles or tracks that require this kind of cultural analysis.
