Cultural Devices In Hound Dog

With a song like Hound Dog, it’s easy to see how the issues of cultural blending, borrowing, identification, and appropriation have very serious repercussions. Hound Dog was not Elvis Presley's; it was originally recorded four years earlier by Big Mama Thornton, a black woman from Alabama. However, the song itself received more attention when Elvis Presley "introduced" it to the world. While Big Mama Thornton died without ever receiving the recognition she deserved, Elvis Presley, a white man, is considered a legend and the "king" of rock n' roll. He is "the father" of rock ’n’ roll music although he didn’t invent it because he had white privilege. His race and physical characteristics allowed him to popularise a genre black Americans had been
playing for years, and in the process became one of the richest people on Earth. The reoccurrence of cases like these in which white people have the power and means to steal from marginalized cultures, pass ideas off as their own and profit hugely from it is still prevalent today.