US YouTuber James Charles criticised for video featuring classical Indian music

Netizens are criticising American YouTuber James Charles for being “disrespectful” after his TikTok video with classical Indian music playing in the background surfaced on Twitter.

The 13-second clip has sparked a discussion on social media as Twitter slammed Charles for mocking Indian classical music.

In the clip, Charles experimented with a new filter while appearing to lip-sync to an Indian classical tune that played over his video.

However, the video did not do too well with social media users, and they particularly disapproved of Charles’ video as he laughs while trying to lip-sync to it.

Many netizens schooled Charles on how long it takes to become a master of classical music.

Twitter user @hwanghaven shared the clip and wrote: “I see a lot non-desis (a person not from the Indian subcontinent) using this audio like this and I really don’t like it.”

https://twitter.com/hwanghaven/status/1291891121489051648

User @taegiphiIe wrote in response: “Do they even know how hard classical music is to learn.”

https://twitter.com/taegiphiIe/status/1291985067758084097

After @hwanghaven’s video garnered thousands of views, the tweep posted a video link to Indian singer Lata Mangeshkar’s song and wrote: “This is kind of blowing up right now so here’s Lata Mangeshkar, one of India’s most skilled and famous singers singing the song. It takes years to perfect these kinds of runs so seeing millions of non desis using this audio is…”

https://twitter.com/taegiphiIe/status/1291985067758084097