SLICE: When will people in the US see past themselves?
Connected through the stream but disconnected through ideology, the great ‘coloured’ debate.
- Tyla has just released her new EP, WWP, with four songs.
- Despite chatter that the EP is a ‘flop’, streaming numbers are soaring.
- Many Americans refuse to respect South Africa’s ‘coloured’ history but demand respect for themselves.
The newly appointed ambassador for the South African coloured community, Tyla, has just released her new Extended Play (EP), yet the online conversation always seems to revert to her identity.
Tyla released her EP ‘We Wanna Party’ (WWP) a month ago and conversation has swirled, with discussions over whether the released music was a ‘flop’ or not. Short answer: it was not.
In an article written in OkayAfrica, it was stressed that in the digital age we can no longer measure an artist’s success through units of sold music, but rather, through number of streams, and Tyla’s streaming stats are soaring, with WWP gaining over 60 million streams on Spotify, according to the OkayAfrica.
This makes you wonder why narratives about her downfall have been spreading. Well, there is one persisting reason, she’s coloured, and African Americans don’t like – and refuse to understand – that.
Wits Vuvuzela spoke to Feven Merid, a student at Pitzer College in California who spent one month studying at Wits University earlier this year. Merid said, “I think that the way that she’s been received recently, especially with her new EP and how she has identified herself, has been mistargeted in a way.”
“Tyla, who proudly identifies with her South African culture, […] comes to the States, a place where slavery still has a very painful meaning for Black Americans, I think it kind of felt like a bit of a wound opening for many Black Americans,” she said.
The word ‘coloured’ in America, is associated with the segregated Jim Crow era. The one-drop rule was enforced, where anyone with the slightest bit of African DNA was classified as black to maintain the purity of the white American race. So, in that context, Tyla is considered black.
The Root, an African American online magazine, attributed her EP’s perceived ‘flop’ and prospected future downfall to her racial identification, citing Joe Budden, a podcast host, who implied the ignorance of her youth caused the ‘mistake’.
“As a young artist in America, you should read the room,” he said.
However, as a South African and in a world that no longer solely caters to the US, why can’t mutual understanding and respect be foregrounded rather than forcing assimilation?
Rosey Gold, a European DJ living in South Africa, explained it well, saying that Tyla never expected Americans to use the terminology, she just expected an understanding of who she is and where she came from.
Significantly, Tyla’s audience is not limited to America. According to Music Metrics Vault, North America doesn’t even make up the top five of singer’s global streams. So, maybe Tyla isn’t the one who needs to ‘read the room’.
FEATURED IMAGE: South African artist, Tyla. Photo: Supplied/Wikipedia [WBNX-TV 55, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons].
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