In some ways, the country matters. If a German sang Old Man River then it's not quite the same as Sinatra. The sanest argument I've heard for Cultural Appropriation was the taking of someone's culture for profit. I think something about the Oppressor Race doing it was included. And that makes sense.
It's a hard issue to parse because in some ways that Oppressor is always opening up the market for potential new listeners. I think the prime example here is Elvis. He 100% took blues music and made millions (for his manager). So here are the questions:
1. Elvis seemed to celebrate black artists in Interviews (iirc), citing Fats Domino as doing rock music better than he did in a 1957 Jet interview.
2. Because the White masses were denied black music by the white power structure through radio, and therefore thought Elvis was doing something wildly different, should we blame them?
3. Is it Elvis's job to fix this problem? Or the country?
The problem is I don't think it's Elvis's job to fix America's race problem. But if you don't blame him the problem persists. So you can't do nothing.
My 2 cents is, talking about cultural appropriation won't fix the issue. I think it's a problem reflected in music but not caused by music. If you really want to fix injustice, you need to go after the low-hanging fruit of hosuing, education, and labor policy.
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