Leaving the Lane

Amidst so much that bothers me these days, there’s a mentality from the left side of the equation that suggests that everyone can only play music or write books or plays or teach history from their own ethnic group/ gender/ class/ religion or else you’ll be charged with “cultural appropriation.” Some appropriation is, of course, real and of concern, but it is not in anyone’s interest to deny that a woman can write with insight into a male character and vice-versa, that a Japanese person can play gamelan, a black person study yoga, a Jewish person capoeira and so on. It’s particularly disturbing to me because it goes against the grain of my entire life’s work and point of view. 

 

Today I stumbled into an article I wrote for an Orff journal back in 1994 and I found it held up well in describing that point of view. Some excerpts:

 

A newborn baby comes into this world with the entire history of human potential radiating out of a body/mind of immense possibility. Every human quality is floating freely in seed form. Various factors affect which of those qualities gets watered and nourished—race, gender, genetics, climate, family and human culture. Each society will shine the light on some qualities, thus encouraging growth, and leave others in the dark. Some cultures honor expression of feelings, others choose to ignore them; some reward innovation, others adherence to tradition; some celebrate material wealth, others spiritual wealth and communal sharing; some look to the heavens for inspiration, others to the earth for nourishment. These choices make a distinct difference in the life experience of an individual and the life of a culture. They are at once reflected in, expressed in, shaped by the particular art forms of a culture and their most positive qualities given an artistic shape, form and style to grow in. One can say that the arts in each culture offer a gift to the human psyche in the form of one strand in the greater music of who we might become. 

 

The negative side of the cultural pruning of our vast possibility of human possibility is the wound of unlived qualities. What is offered to us in the music we listen to, the movies we watch, the books we read, the dances we dance, the rituals and ceremonies we attend may not wholly resonate with us. We may feel ourselves as spiritual beings, but not find it in the Catholic Church and discover it in Zen Buddhism. We may feel incompetent as a jazz drummer, but come alive when we play Taiko drums or Indian tabla. We may not find our blues singing voice growing up as a black woman in Mississippi, but discover we were meant for opera. We may think that poetry has nothing to say to us and then discover Rumi or Mary Oliver. By experiencing music and dance (or arts or literature or religions) of another culture, we are opening to the possibility of contacting an undeveloped part of ourself that turns out to be central to our fuller identity. 

 

Written over three decades earlier, it feels like a viable response to today’s “stay in your lane/ back to tribe” movement where your inherited identity defines what's appropriate for you to learn or teach. I stand firm in my conviction that a multicultural perspective helps us to, as I wrote then:

 

 "Learn about ourselves through the eyes of the 'other,' in realization that the other is often an unlived and unloved part of ourselves. Joyful and successful experience in 'other' musics opens up a psychic doorway in the child (and adult) that allows freer passage in the corridors of consciousness. Amidst all the other reasons for including multi-cultural music, this seems to me the most important—that children can learn to move freely in the marvelous dance of their human possibility."

 

That certainly has been true for this guy Jewish by blood, Unitarian by upbringing, Buddhist by choice and practice, musician playing Bach, Beethoven, Brubeck, Bird, banjo, Balinese gamelan, Bulgarian bagpipe, Brazilian samba, cooking tacos, miso soup, stir fry, pasta, falafel, gazpacho, curries, pad Thai, etc. etc., reading Rumi, Hafiz, Basho, Pablo Neruda, Shakespeare, Dickens, Doesteyovsky, James Baldwin, Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie, Amy Tan, etc. Would someone suggest I only read Phillip Roth, eat bagels and listen to Benny Goodman? 

 

I imagine there are many like myself who didn’t find everything I needed in my given lane and had to cross lines to discover who I was meant to be. Let’s keep the roads open, please.