May my curiosity be a form of care: SLĀV and cultural appropriation

On June 26, 2018, the Montreal International Jazz Festival presented SLĀV, a show directed by Robert Lepage around the singer Betty Bonifassi, described as a theatrical odyssey inspired by slave songs. Protesters and artists denounced a mostly white cast singing songs of Black slaves and evoking cotton picking. The musician Moses Sumney withdrew from the festival. On July 4, after three performances, the Festival cancelled the show and apologized to those who had been hurt.

Lepage saw it as an attack on artistic freedom. From the Black Theatre Workshop came the reply that one cannot profit from Black pain. Quebec was divided.

At the heart of the debate is cultural appropriation: borrowing elements of a culture, especially that of a marginalized group, without carrying its history, its meaning or its wounds. As early as 1992, in her essay "Eating the Other," the American thinker bell hooks described how, in consumer culture, ethnicity becomes a spice that livens up the dull dish of mainstream culture. She also noted the fine line between appropriation and appreciation.

The point is not to forbid exchange: cultures live through encounters. The point is the manner. Ubuntu invites us to borrow the way we enter someone's home: by greeting, by listening, by making room for those whose story we are telling. A shared stage is better than a confiscated one.