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I was looking into other Putumayo CDs other than the ones that I own ("Putumayo Presents: Brasileiro" and "Putumayo Presents: Brazilian Groove") today and the Asian Groove one peaked my interest so I decided to look into it. Although I have qualms about them not saying "South Asian Groove" as it makes Asia less of a monolith, I do have to appreciate the choice of saying "Asian" and meaning South Asian music instead of the typical expected East Asian songs. I do really enjoy the selections with Putumayo usually but from what I've heard, they kind of phoned this one in, which was a bit disappointing. You would hope they'd get music from the best of the desi diaspora like they do when they get music for the Putumayo Latin America CDs, but I do appreciate a lot of the effort. What ended up happening was that I found the most batshit insane review on AllMusic that starts talking about how the "language police" is stopping everyone from calling Asian people "The Orient". I was in shock a bit because I actually had not realized that the descriptions on AllMusic were reviews until this point, so I was genuinely thinking to myself "wait a minute, the people who make Putumayo would definitely not say this because they're pretty respectful even in 2003," which is how I found out that these were reviews. It is honestly so bafflingly racist that I was just in awe from the pure insanity of ranting about people not wanting to be called an alienating term, on a CD that had basically had nothing to do with the term other than the fact that it said "Asian" on it. I just found it really funny because why is this guy ranting about this on a CD REVIEW he was paid to write by the website! It's strange behaviour to the degree that I just had to send it to my friend to just discuss how truly funny it was to just see in the wild. I guess it's not the most racist thing, but seeing a guy basically go on to talk about not being able to say a term because a lot of people in the diaspora were uncomfortable with it has to be kind of funny from the sheer patheticness of that behavior. I genuinely said "Man, work on the review 😭" to my partner on call. (06/25/2024) — Mars ᓚᘏᗢ |
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