If by “people”, do you mean the average everyday person in America? Then yeah I mean I can see what you’re saying, most people, in that sense, make no distinction between Middle Eastern identities.
But if you mean “people”, being the “people” producing hours long mixes on YouTube and Spotify, who are the ones making revisionist claims that the sounds people will hear are authentic to some ethnic identity, then I would like to offer a counterexample. Namely, there are channels with videos such as this one, which say things like,
And of course this is just one example, but there are tons of other examples out there of this, some of which belong to the YouTube channel I’ve shared.
In your original comment, you say that you went to a random point in the video and that your impression was that his “Iranness is really shining through”. Now, this is just my assumption, but to me this read like that you are saying that your impression of him was that he is being culturally snobbish about Persian music, and idk, that seems kind of problematic to me because ethnic identity, music, and people being educated about both those things on the internet are very intertwined, and I think it’s kind of shitty to characterize him this way without seeing the video first, especially when the content of the video seeks to give some education about Persian music, and it’s impact culturally. Maybe you could elaborate more about what you meant by that?
No, I did not mean to imply that he is a snob or that he’s racist or anything. I was just amused that I pressed a random point and he had named the western perception of the middle east as a homogeneous culture “Persian” That’s it. That’s the end of my point on that. And that related to that that I don’t think anyone else would name this homogeneous orientalist soup “Persian” unless they had a specific goal in mind or they had a connection to Persian culture. I didn’t mean to imply that he was a cultural supremacist, or that he was saying anything wrong. It’s just that I’ve never heard anyone refer to the generized and racist caricature of the middle east, north africa and central asia as “Persian” and the first time I do it’s an Iranian.
Yeah, I’ve seen it a couple of times online, like with these types of “vibes-based” music playlists, but otherwise you’re right, it’s hardly ever referred to as Persian, at least not in the video title; I imagine he probably has that impression due to whatever algorithm he has on YouTube/Other social media feeding him stuff like what I linked, but probably to an even greater degree, just because of how these algorithms function, but idk! Sorry for misunderstanding you!