Latino Teens Sit This Dance Out

As the interlocked rivals of the culture wars furiously spin out of control, many Latino teens sit this dance out, gazing at each other and at the world.

I recently asked a group of students, ages 12 to 17, which types of social media posts interested them. Two of their answers surprised me. One was their strong aversion to political messaging. The other was their lively interest in cultural identity.

“Politics is too much like school,” said one girl to an enthusiastic chorus of agreement. A boy resented teachers who use class time to politic, even in classes unrelated to government.

These teens, however, did enjoy cultural topics and were interested in discovering how different people relate to each other and perceive experiences.

In my college years of the early 1980's, discussions of cultural identity were invariably wrapped in politics. They were inseparable. We Mexican Americans were taught that our music was a reaction to our oppression.  Not much fun there.

I see now that it is impossible to accurately contort cultural history into that frame. Culture is much more interesting than that. Also, it is unhealthy to see one’s heritage as a sideline reaction to a larger ideological struggle. 

Political messaging can be a valid and powerful function of music.  But it is politics that fits within culture, not the other way around.

This new generation seems to have broken the linkage. They want to know how cultural identity, similarities and differences affect individuals. They do not see culture as a function of politics. They see it as a network of relationships.

In 25 years of teaching music and culture, I have sought to understand the deeper functions of both. At our Academy we teach our students the process of the cultural arts so that they may find ways to understand their worlds and discover their own solutions.

A deep generational divide separates our society. The old cannot shake themselves from ideological battles that are increasingly bitter and intractable.  The young people with whom I work seem to be turning a deaf ear and blind eye to all that. Like sitting through a family argument at a holiday dinner, these kids seem to view the culture wars as an obstacle course that they must cross in order to pass school classes and get on to their own lives.

Some may see it as apathy but I see it as a brilliant option to despair among this group whose immigrant families are caught in the middle of one of the most vicious battles of the culture wars. These kids, after all, see themselves as normal American teens. And it is within the glow of teen optimism where they have a shot at developing perspectives that may lead to real solutions.

Their commentary on culture and politics is a good start. I am thrilled that they value human relationships above all because relationships lie at the core of both culture and politics. Many of our leaders and their followers have sadly forgotten that.

In the dance of the culture wars I believe these kids are the ones behaving like adults.

Tradition: Celebrating The Inevitability of Change

In 1993 my teen students and I attended a traditional music and dance camp in the remote Popoluca village of Pajapan, Veracruz, Mexico, an hour and a half from paved roads. Local homes were built from thatch.

At the foot of trees, my Chicano students, alongside their Mexican counterparts, practiced instruments and dance of the son Jarocho, a tradition created from generations of cultural encounters among Europeans, Indians and Africans. During breaks between classes the kids played soccer in an open field. At night we slept in a small dormitory visited by goats and chickens.

My students, from disenfranchised neighborhoods in San Pablo and Richmond, Calif., spoke mainly English. The Mexican students were Indigenous Popoluca and Nahuatl, among the most marginalized people in Mexico, as well as Mestizo. Some spoke their ancestral languages. Most did not.

Each group initially reacted to the other with the shock of encountering the exotic: they were quiet and observant. When the students began playing and dancing, however, connections emerged. The musicians formed a circle around dancers who took turns rhythmically zapateando on a wooden platform. Lit only by a few bare light bulbs in a cement courtyard, the kids strummed, danced and sang, growing bolder and bolder by the moment.

Benito, one of our teens, discussing his lack of Spanish, said “I watch how they play. They watch how I play. That's how we start talking to each other.”

When the lights turned off at bedtime in the communal dorm, four languages, English, Spanish, Popoluca and Nahuatl, could be heard whispered from the giggling children until the eldest maestro shushed them to sleep.

Within a few days, the Chicanos were etching designs into the hair of the Mexican kids and teaching them to dance hip-hop. The local kids taught us to live in their world.

In the middle of rural darkness, this simply lit circle of young musicians and dancers was a poignant example of the encounter and negotiation of culture. Every movement and every sound made an impression and invited reaction. Everyone present was a participant. Everyone was an observer. No one was more or less authentic than the next. All were there to learn, share and to express themselves.

We often think of traditional culture as a fragile relic or pageant of a specific and special people etched in a specific point in time that we outsiders observe from a safe distance so as not to disturb its purity.

But culture is a much deeper and more complex continuum that moves through time, geography, and even heritage. The preservation of tradition requires that we keep alive the process of learning, encountering and sharing through myriad ‘languages’.

Just as the son Jarocho tradition is the result of cultural migration so our visit to that camp was part of a larger transference and evolution of culture. Nothing is static.

Today the village of Pajapan, now connected to paved highways, has joined the developed world. Because of the historic migration of people from Mexico to the United States, the master Mexican folk artist is as likely to live in a U.S. city as on a Mexican ranch. In our rapidly changing world many children are likely to lose their ancestral language, move from country to city and intermarry.

I do not mourn the inevitability of change, because it has always been so.  Cultural traditions survive because they modify to stay relevant.   Like weeds that poke through the pavement of city sidewalks, our need to connect is innate and durable.

What I find tragic is that in our grasping at the trappings of tradition we lose sight of its true power.

We all carry tradition within us.

Mystery and Miracles

December 12 is the day of La Virgen de Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico, who represents hope and faith. As the day approaches I think about mysteries and miracles. Not in the sense of magic, but in the sense of possibility in the face of darkness and limitation.

My wife, Marie-Astrid, who teaches artesania (arts and crafts) at our neighborhood arts academy, sometimes dreams of discovering a hidden extra room in our home or cultural center – a place of exploration and unexpected possibility. She says that creating art is like finding an extra space inside of you – an extra dimension within which to expand beyond your apparent limits.

Marie-Astrid and I have seen many young people use the tools of arts training to open doors both inwards to themselves and outwards to the world.  For these children, finding their own solutions to artistic challenges, and discovering and creating beauty with their own hands, eyes, voices and bodies, can be an experience both mysterious and miraculous.

However, most children don’t have the opportunities our students do. Many in our neighborhood do not graduate high school and many become pregnant in their early teens. My sense is that for many girls, pregnancy provides mystery and miracles in the absence of comparable options. Expecting a child gives them a sense of possibility, of hope for their child’s future and maybe a life of love with the child’s father.

Where do our teens lose the natural wonder of childhood? And who is teaching them to cultivate it?

Human beings have from birth an innate sense of exploration that parents and educators can nurture and strengthen, or neglect or destroy. Music, dance and art are exceptional ways to teach exploration to children that are safe, fun and measurable.  And they will serve them a lifetime.

Our Academy has seen autistic children learn to read because of art classes. We've heard heartbreaking and profound stories of reconciliation from grieving children while making offerings, ofrendas, for Day of the Dead altars. Silent, inward children flower to become confident, expressive and happy while dancing and singing.

The arts can put a youngster on track to becoming an engineer or scientist. We have heard the sound of young voices and bodies reviving ancestral songs and dances. And we have seen the birth of new songs of emerging composers. We have seen countless “disposable” lives turn meaningful and exceptional through dedication and commitment to the arts. Are these not miracles? Is this not a mystery in the face of darkness?

As we celebrate La Virgen de Guadalupe, let's remember the cradle of hope, invention and possibility:  the human mind and its many extra rooms. And let's choose to protect and nurture this vast universe of possibility. Arts education needs be part of every child's academic education. And making art, with all its mystery, should be part of all our lives.