On Cultural Appropriation (or lack of such thereof)
Looking at this announcement, I feel naturally excited and happy to see Bożena Muszkalska and Kapela Brodow having their long-term seminal work presented by a Polish state institution. After all, that is exactly the field that has constituted the core and the essence of my professional life for mere 20 years, only that in Belarus and focused on the musical traditions of the Belarusian / Litvak Jews. (I am specifically thankful to Bozena for having invited me to Wroclaw in 2014 to speak at the Kolberg Conference and present my work there.) On the other hand, I can sadly admit that NONE of the Belarusian ethnic minorities' cultural traditions (Jewish, Tatar, Roma, and so on) have a chance to have similar representation by the Belarusian state institutions. Money is lesser of an issue than lack of interest and zero professional involvement of the state officials in promoting grassroots cultures. Any culture that is rooted in Belarus including the Belarusian culture herself are literally orphans with the living parents, so to speak. But the fate of the Belarusian / Litvak Jewish culture is even worse: she got no place on the Belarusian music stand, as my friend journalist Maksim Zhbankov noted to me once. Belarusian Jewish music is an example of the absolute orphanhood: an unwanted sibling of an unwanted child, if you wish to put it this way. That's why what I have been doing with Minsker Kapelye and later with Litvakus may sound interesting, exotic, appealing, but UNAPPROPRIATED BY ANYONE except for handful of our older generation audiences. (Did I ever say I didn't like the idea of cultural appropriation?) The only scholar who collected Jewish repertoire played by the Belarusian musicians (1970's - early 1990's) is Inna Nazina Инна Назина. She never got a chance to get this collection published though, whatever little it is. With politics and other factors in action, the main focus of the Litvak culture-oriented Lithuanian institutions is naturally on Lithuania herself, despite the fact that "Yidishe Lite" (Jewish Lithuania) equally includes Belarus, Latvia, and other adjacent territories. There is no state support, there is no active diaspora that would care enough, Belarusian or Litvak, there is no structure whatsoever that would, to any degree, claim that culture as their own. Even for #Yiddishists, it is kinda exotic thing that no one really touches. I will keep doing what I believe in, but I am sad to be nearly alone on this battlefield.