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MANIFESTO Edited by Dr.Sócrates & Dj GArRinchA for Tropical Diaspora Records®
© Copyright 2008 - 2026 | All Rights Reserved

 

All that we are not and never will be
– Tropical Diaspora® Records’ position on cultural appropriation

Let us begin by stating that the language in which we write is alien to us. But like other instruments of communication, language is also a battlefield. We use language as a weapon.

The culture of colonized peoples is organized in the metropolises of the Western world. It has been incorporated into the Western system of cultural classification. Ethno, Afro, Latino, World… are all names that give Western man means of recognition and difference: to be Afro means it does not belong to him. All this seems to bear the stamp of cultural exchange, but it is not so. For us, it is very problematic. Why? We must warn that we consider the culture of the colonized as a culture that is produced outside the West or in the West but by non-Westernized people, and opposed to the culture of the colonialist. It goes without saying that the West is mainly Europe and North America, if we exclude Mexico and all those territories inhabited by native peoples.

We find ourselves in a situation where Europe is at the center. Every system with a center contains peripheries. These have been created by the voracity of the center, while the center functions as a point of reference for its peripheries; we could say as a mirror in which the peripheries are reflected, though not as they are but as they should be. Through technical means of reproduction, distribution channels, and the fetishism of social networks that act as the true public sphere promising equal access, the colonialist tells the colonized: look what we have achieved, wouldn't you like to be like us?

This center-periphery system dates back to the modern era; it has been with us since the birth of capitalism. We would even say that it is an invention of the modern era. And this has consequences, because modernity coincides with the so-called discovery of the African Continent and the Americas. The ships dedicated to the slave trade were the experimental ground for the later development of the capitalist factory that would enslave thousands throughout the world. The mines exploited in the Americas would pay for the European industrial revolution. The famous mines of Potosí and the expression, still in use, “worth a Potosí,” symbolize an economic and social development with the help of which the center grew, and continues to grow, at the expense of the peripheries. The stories about the vampire and the zombie are more than symbolic narratives. They graphically describe the world of globalized slave capitalist labor.

The white European who shows concern for the peripheries never sees himself as a colonialist but as a savior. Why is this so? Why does the European always position himself as a savior? Europe has been built as a culture of saviors who know everything better about the Others on the periphery. Linnaeus's classifications, Humboldt's love for the flora of the Americas are complicit with Rhodes' passion for the telegraph and the portrait of Elihu Yale, who gave his name to the famous university, while enjoying a cup of tea accompanied by a young chained African slave. Europe is the place of a culture that grants itself the right to know and save. But whom does Europe save and from whom does it save them? Of course, Europe thinks it saves others from themselves: from their corruption, from their ignorance and atavism, from their innate evils… Recently, a young German philosopher stated the following: "thanks to its past, Europe is better equipped to find answers to the desires for social justice and democracy for the future of humanity." A certainly strange comment. The young German thinker is ignorant. Ikwunga's poem clearly shows us how Europe has prepared itself to save us from all evils; it reveals the consequences of the philosopher's blindness.

Bombs are made in London
But bombings are in Congo,
Bombings are in Togo.
Tanks are manufactured in Russia
But they shell in Angola,
They shell in Rwanda.
Fighters are built in Germany
But attacks are in Freetown,
Attacks are in Asmara.
Bazookas are from New York
But they bazooka in Nigeria,
They bazooka in Mogadishu.
Cocoa grows in Nigeria
But we buy chocolate from Belgium.
Sugarcane grows in Jamaica
But tea is sweetened in Toronto,
Life is sweet in Toronto.
Diamonds are mined in Sierra Leone
But they have no hands to grab them,
They have no hands to take them.
Gold is abundant in Kinshasa,
Gold is abundant in Maputo
But they keep it in Swiss banks.
Cotton blooms in Mali,
Cotton grows in Cameroon
But we want pants from Paris
We buy used clothes from Paris.

Let's take a look at a compilation of so-called World Music, as is commonly done on labels in Europe and the United States of America. The production is the best, the editing is magnificent. Thanks to technical means of reproduction, the colonialist asserts his superiority, his dominance. He cares. There are no complaints. He certainly knows how to do things right. A salsa music is advertised with the name of its Western producer on a YouTube channel. African rhythms from Barranquilla are recorded in such a way that the Western listener can recognize them as African. The sounds of the Amazon are transformed into a myth that needs to be rescued from oblivion; and when Dona Onete releases a new video clip, the sharks of the music industry go wild: which of them will receive the recognition for it? Meanwhile, Bob Marley despised Eric Clapton's version of "I shot the sheriff" because he obviously hadn't understood anything. The powerful cultural institutions of European nation-states happily support this colonialist penetration in the name of the Other because they know better. Thus, we end up celebrating Humboldt's achievements as if they were our own.

The colonialist sees the native as prey. The native sees the colonialist as a predator, paraphrasing a well-known parable about relationships in the rainforest by a renowned anthropologist.
However, there is a trap. Due to the power that the West exerts through its distribution networks that disseminate an ideology of cure and recovery throughout the world, and thanks to the technical fetishism it professes, World Music compilations become the standard for the culture of the colonized. They are coffee table recordings, an opportunity for intelligent conversations among educated people while perpetuating the myths of authenticity with which "primitive" cultures are usually labeled. They reinforce the belief that you are well informed about the culture of the Other, the culture of the colonized. This is exactly what the Marco Polo syndrome means. When the culture of the Other became known through the eyes of the famous Italian merchant, we are disappointed that the Other does not behave as Marco Polo taught us, and we demand that they do so. World Music forces peoples to behave according to Marco Polo's standard. In cultural encounters, Westerners create stereotypes with the help of corporate money. Corporate beliefs are incorporated into the mechanism of colonization, while the cultural policy of European nation-states reaps the benefits. Philanthropy as a bad joke.

Although this is not the worst. The worst is that the acquired knowledge can be used to talk to the colonized about their own culture; in fact, to teach them about their own culture, to show them how their culture should be represented… cooked and swallowed. In the end, it becomes the only means the native has to talk about his own culture.

Colonialists have always granted themselves the right to represent Others, to equate them with their own scientific and artistic achievements. Record labels perpetuate this situation when they create with recordings the plane on which those who appear are kept alive as Others, the strange subject of colonialist curiosity and examination. The words Afro, World, Ethno, Latino… give the impression of universality. But it is a misrepresentation. Through recordings, the colonized learn to act as African, Latino, Native in the eyes of the white supremacist. This means that the colonized has been stripped of his own humanity and universalism and transformed into a puppet.

All this is what Tropical Diaspora® Records is not and never will be.

Our thanks to Frantz Fanon, always a source of inspiration.