Filmstill: «Curupira, Creature Of The Woods», Félix Blume, 2018.

The Ghosts of Colonialism

Short Essay

A mythical creature with an ecological conscience, the Curupira protects the Brazilian Amazon from destructive forces. Yet, as Patricia Jäggi suggests, it might not be the only monster haunting the forest. Read an essay on the problem of representation inspired by the film Curupira, Creature of the Woods.

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When I was playing in the woods as a kid, I was afraid of the Swiss Wildmännli – wild men and women. I had even heard stories about them killing humans who mistreat nature. I was reminded of this when I learned about the mythological creature Curupira in the film Curupira, Creature of the Woods. In her relentless ecological activism, the anthropomorphic Curupira seems to be an ally of the Swiss creatures. Living in the Brazilian Amazon, she protects the forest and animals from hunters, lumberjacks, and other disrespectful people. But as far as I know, the Wildmännli don’t have backward-turned feet to trick and trap you – nor do they utter high-pitched whistles that can make you lose orientation and even drive you mad.

A Collage of Voices

In the film’s richness of singing birds, insects, frogs, monkeys, and howling dogs, you can’t miss the extremely loud voice of the Screaming Piha (Lipaugus vociferans). He starts high and slides skillfully down to a pretty low note for a bird – better than a synthesizer could. More than any other, this birdcall gave me a sense of the sound sought by filmmaker Félix Blume: The voice of Curupira.

The myth is presented as an audio piece. The voices of inhabitants of Tauary, a place in the midst of the Amazon rainforest, share personal experiences and anecdotes about Curupira. One inhabitant doubts her existence, but others disagree. The collage of voices offers a multiplicity of perspectives on Curupira. In this way, Blume leaves interpretive sovereignty to the Tauary narrators.

From a decolonial perspective, the visual aspect of the film raises questions about the adequacy of representation. The Amazon and its inhabitants are a long-standing target of longing for modern civilisation, and have experienced colonial exoticisation and exploitation. The inhabitants of Tauary are portrayed as listeners, all wearing the same pair of headphones, helping Blume to decipher unusual noises he recorded.

Colonial Gaze

What might seem unproblematic at first reveals itself to be deceptive. Is Blume really able to break with the «colonial gaze» that defines the white person as observer and the natives as observed – by having them look back? Or does the film’s method of filming each Tauary person close up give the impression that their heads are being displayed – or even measured?

Curupira might not be the only monster haunting the forest. The remnants of the destructive history of colonialism are still being perpetuated, even with the «best intentions». Thus, the film points to the difficulties faced by current art production in not continuing this legacy unintentionally – and the need to find creative ways to address it.

The film «Curupira, Creature of the Woods» by Félix Blume was officially selected at the Norient Film Festival NFF 2021. See full program here.

This text is part of Norient’s essay publication «Nothing Sounds the Way It Looks», published in 2021 as part of the Norient Film Festival 2021.

Bibliographic Record: Rhensius, Philipp. 2021. «Editorial: NFF 2021 Essay Collection.» In Nothing Sounds the Way It Looks, edited by Philipp Rhensius and Lisa Blanning (NFF Essay Collection 2021). Bern: Norient. (Link).

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Biography

Patricia Jäggi is a research associate at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Lucerne – Music and works in the fields of anthropology of sound and listening, sound studies, and sound art. She completed a PhD in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Basel about cultural politics and radio listening during the Cold War. Currently she works in an SNSF-funded project on practices of aural perception, meaning-making and audio recording in field ornithology, avian bioacoustics, and environmental sound art.

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Miriam de Rosa: «Q&A Sound, Noise & Place in Film» (Norient)

Published on February 16, 2021

Last updated on April 09, 2024

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Cover artwork of YG feat. Tyga and Jon Z: «Go Loko» (Def Jam, 2019)

A Matter of Style Appropriation

Commentary

by Dianne Violeta Mausfeld

When I was conducting fieldwork on the history of Chicano rap in L.A. in the spring of 2019, many interlocutors voiced the opinion that the Chicano community never received due credit for their contribution to gangster rap culture. This observation is exemplified in the controversial music video «Go Loko», which exhibits Chicano aesthetics and features African-American rapper YG sporting a mariachi suit. In this commentary, I criticize the video for its culturally offensive potential.

Doing fieldwork in Los Angeles, a metropolis with almost four million inhabitants, can be challenging as the city is very spread out and people generally move around in their cars. Without a car of my own, Uber was the easiest way to go places. Ironically, this is precisely where I met my main gatekeeper. During the 45-minute drive from West L.A. to Hollywood, we got to talking about Chicano rap and it turned out that he knew a lot of people in the community. He mentioned in passing that he would attend a rap video shoot later that day.

Homage to the Culture or Cultural Offense?

Little did I know that the video in question was «Go Loko» by Compton1 rapper YG (featuring Tyga and Jon Z), which was to be released on Cinco de Mayo weekend, a major Mexican-American holiday with parades and events all over the city. Set in a Chicano community, the video displays Black rapper YG posing in a red mariachi suit in front of a Mexican mariachi band. In his critique, Cepeda (2019) sees the video as mirroring the co-existence of the Black and Brown communities in L.A., especially Compton. This was also mentioned by one of my interlocutors. In fact, L.A. hip hop culture has been characterized by cross-pollination between the African-American and Mexican-American communities since its very inception. Black gangster rap incorporates numerous Chicano elements such as lowriders, slang, and fashion (Macías 2014). Chicano rap, in turn, can be considered a sub-genre of gangster rap.

As soon as the video dropped, it became the talk of the town. People debated on social media platforms whether it was cultural appropriation2 or an homage to Mexican culture (Cepeda 2019). Tensions between the Black and Chicano communities had already been a topic in most interviews, only now my interlocutors started referencing this video as an up-to-the-minute example. They considered it proof of the overall lack of Black appreciation for Chicano culture and felt particularly insulted by the mariachi suit. As countless gangster rap videos before it, «Go Loko» portrays lowrider cars and fashion rooted in Chicano gang culture. The mariachi suit, however, seemed to push it over the top. Feature artist Jon Z’s cultural roots are highlighted by the portrayal of the Puerto Rican flag. But while the Mexican one is blowing in the wind right next to it, no Chicano rapper is part of this production. At the same time, «Spanglish» lyrics and a beat composed of brass instruments and Spanish guitars are reminiscent of a Chicano rap song.

Cultural Appropriation or Marketing Strategy?

The mariachi suit and the Spanish guitar beat fit James Young’s (2008, 6) concept of «style appropriation», a subcategory of cultural appropriation implicating an artist’s use of «stylistic elements […] of another culture» without fully appropriating it. But the crucial issue lies with the implied hierarchy: Black artists continue to dominate hip hop culture on the West Coast, borrowing from Chicano culture yet seldom endorsing Chicano rappers. This somewhat explains the anger about Puerto Rican Jon Z’s presence in the video expressed by one of my interviewees. I suspect there might have been less criticism if a Chicano rapper had been featured on it. If YG wanted to show his appreciation for Chicano culture with this song – why not feature a Chicano rapper?

My ethnography showed two central issues: catering to the Chicano community for marketing reasons on the one hand, and disrespecting their culture on the other. Empathizing with my interlocutors, I consider the release of «Go Loko» just in time for Cinco de Mayo a crude promotional stunt by the record company, framing the song as the anthem of the season.

1. Compton is a city in the south of L.A. predominantly populated by African-Americans and, since the mid-1990s, Latino immigrants (Davis 2001, 162).
2. The Oxford Dictionary defines cultural appropriation as «the act of copying or using the customs and traditions of a particular group or culture, by somebody from a more dominant… group in society» (Oxford University Press 2020).

List of References

Cepeda, Eduardo. 2019. «YG’s Video for ‹Go Loko› Has People Arguing About What Constitutes Cultural Appropriation». Remezcla. May 6. Accessed April 14, 2020. (https://remezcla.com/music/yg-new-video-mariachi-appropriation/).

Davis, Mike. 2001. Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the U.S. City. New York: Verso.

Macías, Anthony. 2014. «Black and Brown Get Down: Cultural Politics, Chicano Music, and Hip-Hop in Racialized Los Angeles». In Sounds and the City: Popular Music, Place and Globalization, edited by Brett Lashua, Karl Spracklen and Stephen Wagg. 55–75. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Mausfeld, Dianne Violeta. 2019. Personal Interviews.

Oxford University Press. 2020. «Cultural Appropriation». Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Accessed April 16. (https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/cultural-appropriation?q=cultural+appropriation).

YGVEVO. 2019. «YG – Go Loko ft. Tyga, Jon Z.». YouTube. May 3. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2cFkVfVf2Y).

Young, James O. 2008. Cultural Appropriation and the Arts. Malden: Blackwell.

This commentary has been written in the context of the international workshop «Sound in Motion» at the University of Bern in September 2019. The research is part of the SNSF-project «Hip-Hop as a Transcultural Phenomenon».