Wednesday 13 February 2019

Not Elvis :a puzzle in a photo


That's not a guitar, but a type of Chinese ukulele - itinerant street musician, 1950's.The other urious thingabout this photo is that the guy is wearing a silk gown and cap, like a gentleman, whereas travelling musicians wore simple working man clothing. No wonder the crowd freak out - usually they took street singers for granted. So we have a puzzle in a picture. In the 1920's, the US and Canada passed las to exclude Chinese settlement, and in Hispanic America  Chinese people weredepirted wholesale,even if they'd settled many generations and were part Hispanic.  Unless we learm from history, we repeat it. Whoever this man is and why he's dressed up effectively in a costume, we will never know, but we need to think why he was doing this.

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