Kidist from Cameraluc Shares Her Hate Mail

[GolightlyGrrl]

We haven't discussed Kidist from the blog Cameraluc very often in these parts, but she is one of the most hateful bloggers I have ever encountered on the Internet. On her blog, she expresses her hate for minorities (she especially seems to hate Asians), Muslims, gay people and other women. Kidist also considers herself to be quite the cultural critic and a true artist. However, her "art" leaves me cold, especially her photographs, which look like they've been taken with an iPhone.

Kidist doesn't allow comments on her blog (hmm, can't imagine why), and she rarely shares her e-mail. But she did get some e-mail regarding her horror over Asians playing in orchestras and symphonies.

http://cameraluc.blogspot.com/2012/01/m ... ether.html

[crassy]

She is from my city. This makes me weep.

[debrand]

Just to be clear, I studied piano since I was five years old. At ten I took up the violin for about five years. I started singing in classical choirs singing sacred music (as a soprano, and sometimes as a soloist) since I was ten, and continued well into my twenties. So, my observations weren't mere opinions.

I just started reading the post and this annoyed the heck out of me.

Still, they were declaring my racist/bigoted intentions since I dared write that Asian musicians were inferior to white musician

:o

SHe also post the names of some of the people who emailed her.

One of her comments was strange

I think if a white person had made the kind of observations I'd made, the wrath of the "nice" emailers would have known no limits (possibly worse than the anonymous emailers). Instead, this non-white critic that is me simply requires a dressing down, and a lecturing to, and she can be set in the right track of tolerance and wonderful music-making.

So, if someone writes a polite rebuttal to her article it means that they are intimidated by her race?

I am also confused by this observation

But there is a third option, which Mary Lee has found. She has formed a trio with two other white musicians. She can perform with her multi-culti Asiaphilic orchestra by day exalting its praises, and she can escape that rigid reality with her own trio by night.

Let me get this straight, Mary Lee works with people that she considers great musicians regarldess of their race. She feels so strongly about this blogger's comments that she uses her real name when she condemns Cameralu's views. Yet somehow, just playing with a couple of people who happen to be white makes her what? A racist? A liar?

[keen23]

Has she never heard Yo-Yo Ma play the cello?

[Cran]

Wtf? :shock:

She doesn't seem to consider herself Caucasian/white, and her photo doesn't look like it, but what ethnicity does she consider herself to belong to? But perhaps I misunderstood her and she thinks she's a speshul ultrawhite snowflake.

And she claims to know sooo much about music and yet doesn't even know that there is not the one right way to perform a classical piece? We have no recordings (Duh!) and do not exactly know how the composer and his contemporaries wanted it to sound.

Orchestras composed only of musicians and conductors of one ethnicity will also have considerable different styles, the argument "Asians play this way" is so not valid.

Does she realize the people she's calling Asians are mostly US-Americans with Asian heritage? Does she know Caucasians have not one monolithic culture, so they should be expected to play differently, too? Does she really think the interpretation of all Asian musicians will be the same?

She is making a statement based on her own tastes and backs it up with racism. I am not impressed.

[ThisOlGirl]

I found Kidist through the Stinking Housewife last week. Go figure.

[kaetrin]

I'm also totally baffled by the whole thing about "if people disagree with me politely it's proof that they look down on me and are trying to teach me a lesson while themselves being deluded by a racially-based political correctness."

[BlackHawk]

Really? She and I have very similar musical backgrounds (from her post)

Just to be clear, I studied piano since I was five years old. At ten I took up the violin for about five years. I started singing in classical choirs singing sacred music (as a soprano, and sometimes as a soloist) since I was ten, and continued well into my twenties. So, my observations weren't mere opinions.

Except my ages are slightly different.. I started piano at 3, Started Violin at 7, (french) Horn at 12 and continue to play, though not in an organized orchestra because I don't care for that. I have not sang in a choir however, so perhaps that gives her much more musical talent than I have....

However, what she is writing is racism... plain and simple. She is taking a personal opinion and applying it to a broad spectrum.

Music, as any musician knows, is a formula of taste and appreciation. Obviously her tastes are not with the Asian community, but she sure as hell could appreciate them. I do not like Handle... but I appreciate the music he composed. Seriously listen to Lang Lang or Yo Yo Ma and tell me an Asian cannot play music... I'll tell you that you are crazy.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Yuck - she works 5 min. from my old apartment. I'll stop bragging about being from Toronto for today.

She seems to be an ethnic Canadian who fancies herself to be a expert on the arts (when she's not working as a retail sales clerk), and who has some serious obsession with other ethnicities. For some reason, she's particularly irritated by Chinese-Canadians, although her reasons are mostly in her own head. For example, she has a fit that the National Ballet has a Chinese principal ballerina dancing in Swan Lake. There is not a word about her actual dancing ability - just Kidist first obsessing over whether this woman might have married a white man, then a comment that while she married a Chinese husband they obviously gave their Canadian-born daughter an English name in order to allow her to snare a white husband in the future, and finally a rant that there is no way that an audience can accept an Asian in a "white" role like Swan Lake. The whole white husband obsession is just creepy, and the last comment is downright laughable considering that the whole ballet is based on the idea of the audience accepting that human dancers are swans.

I don't know whether she's driven by OCD or jealousy, or a combination of both. This goes beyond politics - she's clearly got this weird focus and reads things into situations which just don't exist.

[Wolfie]

Not to mention her grammar has issues.

As a music teacher, her comments have no logic and are pure racism.

[tropaka]

Methinks her own disappointment/lack of success as an artist/musician has driven her to find racist reasons for the success of others.

[Someonetocall]

Approximately ditto. However, I tend to be racist against sopranos/soloists who think that because they can hit high C (etc.), they are God's gift to music and ignore that they largely sing the melody. I've never noticed that a person's racial background had one iota of impact on their skills.

(I do not refer to all sopranos/soloists, obviously. Just the racist ones.)

ETA: She's Canadian?!? No. Just...no.

[simplysweet]

I want to smack her in the face.

That is all.

[browngrl]

She is from my city. This makes me weep.

Me too. This woman is vile.

[julie paradox]

So, they are of course, in their own subtle, race-bound ways, saying that I as a non-white person, whose ethnic and cultural group does not figure in white classical music repertoire, have no say in classical music, since I am "essentially" unable to make such critiques.

No dear, they're saying you're obviously unable to make such critiques because - based on what you've written - you know tosh about playing styles. Nothing to do with your ancestry or essence.

[amydamy]

Methinks her own disappointment/lack of success as an artist/musician has driven her to find racist reasons for the success of others.

I think you're exactly right. I'm she is just pissed at anyone who is a working musician.

She is just crazy pants too.

[2xx1xy1JD]

More insight into her warped thinking:

cameraluc.blogspot.com/2011/07/young-beautiful-white-boy-tall-handsome.html

The crazy hurts.

This was my neighborhood for 6 years. My oldest child was born here and spent her first 3 years here.

She sees a little boy in the care of his neighbor. What's the problem?

She says that she met Chinese immigrants who wanted to work hard to get into competitive university programs and get good jobs. Again, what's the problem?

She's traumatized by the thought that some of these women may marry white husbands. What's the problem?

She's beside herself thinking about how this TODDLER may actually marry a Chinese woman because of his babysitting arrangement. To repeat - she's obsessing over the future sex life of a TODDLER, to whom she is not related.

Seriously, I don't like to label nasty political opinions as mental illness, but I'm thinking that this woman really is suffering from some sort of untreated paranoia and/or obsessive disorder.

[SpeshulTaterTot]

I had to register just to comment on this. I started playing the piano at 4, the violin at 8 (short-lived - my mother claimed the practice gave her migraines), the flute at 9, and I started singing in choirs when I was 10. Obviously, I could still never match her expertise, I'm just not that awesome, and I adore Lang Lang.

I studied music at a pretty good German university of arts. We had quite a few Asian students, who were all ridiculously talented. Another very good music school in my city as even more Asian students because they care a little less about German language skills than my school did/does. The one thing that annoyed me was that most of the Asian girls were Sopranos, and I have a bit of a problem with Sopranos ever since I turned 14, my voice did strange things, and I had to give up my dream of being the Queen of the Night one day. Has nothing to do with them being Asian, though. It's just... Sopranos.

[Kitchen Princess]

This woman is crazy. You can't reason it out. She lives in her mind. Just the fact that she went over to talk to the toddler's dad is scary enough. I, too, think paranoia of some kind going on.

[Deleted07]

and my douchebag of the week award goes to her!!!

[DCmilly]

Hi.

I'm usually a lurker, but I had to comment on this post. My favorite cousin (who happens to be an Indian American, i.e. an ebil asian) is a professional musician and is a tenured percussionist with a well known symphony orchestra. We talk regularly about his career and when he was in the process of auditioning with different orchestras we always discussed how an orchestra picked new members.

For someone who claims to be an expert about professional classical music this blogger seems to know very little about the auditioning process and hiring process for a professional orchestra. Most of the best professional orchestras (at least the ones in the US) do blind auditions, meaning there is a screen between the judging panel and the auditioning musicians in the first round of the interview/audition process. Thus, the judges can only hear the music and don't actually know if the candidates for the job are white, black, asian or even martian. They generally only meet with finalists or those who are called back face to face. Thus, they pick the best musicians for the job. So all those asians who she complains about made it in because of their skills, not because of their race.

Also, I'm super offended at her claim that asians aren't usually percussionists because they are too physically week. I'm 5 foot nothing and a hundred pounds dripping wet. My musician cousin is 6 foot 2 and built like a linebacker. Someone should tell this idiot that asians come in all shapes and sizes.

Thank you for letting me rant. :D

[ilovetchotchkes]

Has she never heard Yo-Yo Ma play the cello?

Beat me to it!!!

[samurai_sarah]

Hi.

I'm usually a lurker, but I had to comment on this post. My favorite cousin (who happens to be an Indian American, i.e. an ebil asian) is a professional musician and is a tenured percussionist with a well known symphony orchestra. We talk regularly about his career and when he was in the process of auditioning with different orchestras we always discussed how an orchestra picked new members.

For someone who claims to be an expert about professional classical music this blogger seems to know very little about the auditioning process and hiring process for a professional orchestra. Most of the best professional orchestras (at least the ones in the US) do blind auditions, meaning there is a screen between the judging panel and the auditioning musicians in the first round of the interview/audition process. Thus, the judges can only hear the music and don't actually know if the candidates for the job are white, black, asian or even martian. They generally only meet with finalists or those who are called back face to face. Thus, they pick the best musicians for the job. So all those asians who she complains about made it in because of their skills, not because of their race.

Also, I'm super offended at her claim that asians aren't usually percussionists because they are too physically week. I'm 5 foot nothing and a hundred pounds dripping wet. My musician cousin is 6 foot 2 and built like a linebacker. Someone should tell this idiot that asians come in all shapes and sizes.

Thank you for letting me rant. :D

^^ This. My Korean sister-in-law plays the flute in a fairly well-known European orchestra. It was a gruelling process to get in, and she is great. Personally, I don't like said orchestra's interpretation of my favourite pieces. They don't hit the right emotional notes with me. So what? I grew up with a different recorded interpretation. I love the Beatles. I hate new interpretations. Doesn't mean they're bad. Much less does it have anything to do with the performer's phenotype!

[duplessis3]

I get the feeling she wants to be the Canadian Ann Coulter.

I love her profile. "Started ballet at 7" So did I, sister, and quit at 7. "Won regional prizes." At her school? What region? I could write one virtually as self serving and seemingly impressive as hers, have it not be an actual lie but...it still wouldn't be true. I won a regional prize in history in the 5th grade. The DAR award - I was the best in my school at history!

[Wolfie]

The one thing that annoyed me was that most of the Asian girls were Sopranos, and I have a bit of a problem with Sopranos ever since I turned 14, my voice did strange things, and I had to give up my dream of being the Queen of the Night one day. Has nothing to do with them being Asian, though. It's just... Sopranos.

I had a student nearly in tears today because I was making the whole class sing the alto part. Not sure why, but it insulted her to have to sing alto... (middle school)