Ethnicity

While perusing the Net for Eurovision blogs, I came across this 2004 BBC article on tensions between Greeks and ethnic Albanians.  It complements what I wrote in last week’s assignment.

Greek Albanians’ woes fester: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4101469.stm

I couldn’t conceal my surprise and delight when the Greek town of Ioannina (alternative spelling Janina) appeared in Jane Sugarman’s article, “Imagining the Homeland: Poetry, Songs, and the Discourses of Albanian Nationalism.”  Ioannina is an emerging urban center in northwestern Greece, known primarily for serving as a refuge for the influential Ottoman lord, Ali Pasha, who controlled the region in the late 18th century.  Under Ali Pasha’s reign, Ioannina’s prospering economy and flourishing cultural scene attracted many young intellectuals who, ironically enough, later became leaders in the Greek struggle for independence.  But to me, Ioannina is more than a mountain whistle-stop with a colorful history.  It’s where my relatives fled when shortages in our family village became dire, where my grandfather was born and raised, and where, at the age of thirty-five, my great-grandmother died from typhus mere hours before Allied forces burst the Nazi seams that strangled the city.  Upon reading about Ioannina in Sugarman’s article, I immediately recalled several conversations I had last summer with my uncle George, an Average Joe Ioanniotiko with extensive knowledge on the Albanian-Greek tensions in the Epirus prefecture.

In recent years, Ioannina, which is conveniently situated a mere 65 kilometers from the Albanian border, has become Greece’s gateway to the neighboring Balkan state.  Nearly all Greco-Albanian events are hosted in Ioannina, and it is through this burgeoning university town that most Albanian immigrants travel while journeying to Athens or other prominent metropolises.  As the Albanian population in Ioannina grows, so does Greek resentment towards impoverished immigrant communities.  When I first asked my uncle about relations between Albanians and Greeks, he responded with a smirk, “Albanians are our Mexicans.”  This comment echoed in my consciousness as I read about Albanian attempts to establish a national musical identity.  From what my uncle has witnessed, Albania is effectively emptying out.  The capital Tirana, with 800,000 inhabitants, is home to 25% of the country’s population.  The other 75% is scattered thinly across the rural countryside.  According to my uncle, upon crossing the border, the landscape is barren until you approach Tirana, which is 410 kilometers from Ioannina.  Despite the fact that Albania is not currently engaged in any armed conflict and strife in southern Europe has declined over recent years, Albanians are fleeing their homeland at an alarming rate.

From what I can gather, Albanians are tolerated but not welcome in Ioannina society.  Considering the derogatory aforementioned “Mexican” comparison, I was not surprised to learn that Albanians are relegated to the outskirts of town, where they live beside Roma enclaves in temporary housing.  I know far more about the specific northwestern Greek communities than I do about Albanian communities, probably because there isn’t much public information about the latter.  Ioannina features very few – if any – Albanian music concerts, and Albanian arts are all but nonexistent on the streets of the lakeside municipality.  According to my uncle, who employs several Albanians at his budget bed and breakfast, nearly all Albanian music-making happens within the home, or just outside the home in a common area around a campfire.  Because Albanian immigrant communities are not always granted dignified housing by Greek law, they are generally without any sort of community center or other venue in which to perform.  My uncle’s son, upon hearing the description of the campfire music sessions, admitted that if presented with a sound bite of Albanian music, he would not be able to identify it as Albanian.  As an outsider to both Greek and Albanian societies, I feel uncomfortable passing judgment on this confession, but I cannot help but criticize the fact that despite Albanian proximity to Greeks and contributions to Greek society and economy, Albanian arts remain foreign to most Ioanninans.

Ioannina is an up-and-coming city, a university town with nearly 40,000 young students (some of whom are Albanian), but the region surrounding the urban center is still characterized as “hillbilly” by greater Greece.  Ioanninans are beginning to shake this condescending identity, but the pervasiveness of rural slang, common traditional dress, and country cuisine has made doing so quite difficult.  I expected Greeks who suffer from such criticism to be sympathetic towards the Albanian plight, but I suppose subjugating Albanians to mistreatment and ostracization allows them to align themselves with other Greeks.

I hope to explore the intersection between these ethnic and nationalistic tensions and diaspora in the next assignment, as the Greek-American community has a different take on this altogether.

Towards the beginning of Stokes’ “Introduction: Ethnicity, Identity, and Music”, he states that playing a specific song “evokes…collective memories and present experiences of place” (3) and that one’s private music collection “illustrates the ways in which music can be used as a means of transcending the limitations of our own place in the world” (4). So, even though I’m sitting at my desk doing homework in Oberlin, OH, through listening to music I can be reminded of a fun time I had in a discoteca in Spain not that long ago, or have fun imagining a different place that I’ve never been to before. This imagining requires caution, though, for as Stokes points out, sometimes “musical images do not just reflect knowledge of ‘other places’ but preform them in significant ways” (5).

I am still struggling with the definition of ethnicity and how it differs from “nationality” at times. I think the shortest answer to that question that I can come up with right now (which may not be a very inclusive answer) is that ethnicity refers to a sense of one’s identity partly as defined by the national border lines that encircle the areas where the individual was born, grew up, socialized, and currently socializes and lives and the nationalist feelings that may come along with identifying oneself as a member of a group of people that live within these border lines. But ethnicity also refers to specific social groups that form based on family relations, similar heritages from other countries, common languages spoken, similar faith and religious traditions, and similar music, art and other cultural traditions. (These were some of the “traits of ethnicity” that were brought up in class.)

I can remember and imagine with any songs, but I’ll focus this post on some selections from my music collection whose artists and musicians are from different countries than I or my ancestors originated from and, I think, would not identify with the same ethnicity that I identify with. First, I’ll talk about two songs that I heard all the time last semester in Spain, whether it was in the discos, on TV or radio driving in the car, or sometimes just people singing them. I’ve included the videos because I think they’re kind of funny, but it’s really listening to certain aspects of the songs that bring back specific memories of Spain for me. I’ll also mention a band, Salsa Celtica, that I think does a good job of answering Stokes’ question, “[D]oes music provide any means by which the boundaries might be challenged in any lasting way?” (24) Specifically, with this example, I’m thinking about ethnic boundaries.

This first song, “Un violinista en tu tejado” by Melendi, features a lot of clapping in the bridge to the chorus, and it evokes the very specific memory of the way that my (American and Spanish) friends and I would clap along to songs we heard. It was a different way of clapping and dancing then what I was used to in the US. The vocal style of the singer, particularly the way he vibrates certain notes (like the ends of the words “menchero” and “quiero”) evoke memories of the more traditional flamenco singing that I saw performed. It’s cool that this more contemporary song uses instruments and vocal/percussion techniques similar to older styles of folk dances, like the music played for sevillanas (Andalusian folk dances).

The singer of the second song, “Cobarde”by Bustamante, really reminds me of the Spanish people that I met on my semester abroad because of the way he blends all his words together. It’s very common to combine two syllables into one in Spanish poetry or song lyrics. For example, at the beginning of the chorus, the singer sings “Cobarde he sido tan cobarde por vender” but blends the syllables “de” and “he” so it sounds like “Co-bar-de(he)-si-do-tan co-bar-de-por-ven-der…” This characteristic of Spanish speech is one of the reasons its hard for non-native speakers to understand Spanish sometimes; particularly in the south of Spain where I was, it is common for words to blend together and the ends of words to be kind of cut off. (Thanks to my semester in Andalusia, my Spanish has been dramatically altered from the days in elementary, middle, and high school when I had mostly teachers from Latin America, which I think is kind of cool.)

These specific characteristics of these two songs “bring me back” to those specific memories of some of the places I went and the people I met in Spain.

Salsa Celtica’s album “El Agua de La Vida” was given to my family a few years ago by one of my best friends and her mom, who are always getting me to listen to cool world music. (They also gave us the Putumayo CD “Salsa Around the World”.) This is a band from Scotland that, as you can see in the video, blends what I would think of as traditional Celtic music instruments (violin, bagpipes, banjo-or-something-that-looks-like-it) with horns and percussion instruments that I associate more with dance music that originates in Latin America. The songs are mostly, if not all, in Spanish, but some Celtic tunes and melodies are used or intertwined in the songs. (The last track on the album is a not-quite-so-traditional version of Auld Lang Syne.) The syncopated rhythms and singing styles of the performers (one solo singer is often featured echoing the rest or just singing nonsense syllables over or in response to a lyric they are repeating) really make me think about the salsa, cumbia, merengue and other kids of dance music I’ve heard or seen performed, so the ever-present traditional Celtic instruments are an interesting mix. The result of the mix is an extremely catchy, fun, danceable album, that I would say is an effective harmony of music commonly associated with two different ethnicities. http://www.salsaceltica.com

Stokes’ article ends with an idea argued by J. Attali that “music prefigures social history; the forms of one era herald the social processes of the next” (24). Maybe more kinds of fusion music is on the way, and with it, a greater understanding and appreciation of the diversity of the world’s different cultures. I guess we’ll see!

For the past couple of summers, I’ve been living away from my parents while working in New York City.  Rent anywhere that white people live in large numbers is really expensive, so I’ve lived in a Dominican neighborhood in Washington Heights and a Trinidadian neighborhood in Crown Heights.  The way that the people I lived around demonstrate their ethnicities through consumer culture is really not dissimilar.  In Washington Heights, the most visibly demonstrated marker of ethnicity was food.  Everywhere that I went in the neighborhood, there were shaved ice stands with flavors like tamarind and mango (delicious!) and empenada stands that sold cheese, chicken, and beef empenadas.  About five blocks south from my apartment were two Dominican diners, open directly across the street from each other 24 hours a day.  I’m mystified as to how they both stayed in business, but I appreciated their enormous Cuban sandwiches that cost $2.50.  Most other shops in the neighborhood that did not deal in food were less explicitly Dominican and catered mostly to urban tastes (sneaker stores, clothing shops with clubbing-style tops, beauty supply outlets).  Soca and reggaeton music was really popular and you could hear it everywhere you walked.
The section of Crown Heights that I lived in was called Prospect-Lefferts Gardens.  There were some food shops that sold Trinidadian food like roti and curry goat, but many others were markers of diasporic identities that sold food like halal fried chicken and pizza.  However, there were also many clothing and video stores that sold beautifully crafted African-influenced dresses and Trinidadian music cassettes and DVDs.  The music that was most popular was dancehall and reggae and there were a lot of posters for club nights and concerts with musicians like Beanie Man and Elephant Man.
Even though Dominicans and Trinidadians are members of diasporic communities, they demonstrate ties to their homelands and nationalities (the Dominican Republic, Trinidad, and in a looser sense, Africa) through clothing, food, and music.

When I studied abroad in Hyderabad, India, I often encountered music as an icon of ethnic identity. Many parallels could be drawn between Indian wedding celebration music and the Indonesian example that we discussed in class; Hyderabadi weddings seem also to be a mix between ethnically representative music and pop music that projects a cosmopolitan sensibility. To me, this dynamic is not surprising; I find that in American wedding celebrations, it is typical to give a musical nod to tradition and then move on to music that represents the new generation. A wedding reception might begin with big band or jazz hits from the first half of the century—dance numbers that have far more resonance with our parents or grandparents—and end with a DJ playing the most recent radio hits.

More interesting to me is the way that I observed South Indians preserving the musical traditions of their native communities in every day expressions at home, while engaging in ‘modern’ activities and music more generally considered ‘Indian’ outside of the home. Like in Brubaker’s discussion of ‘ethnic groups,’ these musical expressions are not intended to identify or mobilize a ‘group’ politically, but are effective ways to connect to a more specific identity than the national one.

My former host father, Mohan-ji, is an English professor at the university that I attended in Hyderabad and has published several books through a London publishing company. He often travels abroad to England and the U.S. to attend conferences in his field, and reads an English newspaper every day. His musical tastes are not necessarily cosmopolitan, but represent a broad Indian aesthetic; classic Bollywood soundtracks and famous ‘light’ classical North Indian artists are the usual in the car ride to school. However, Mohan-ji is from a Brahmin community in the southern state of Kerala, and grew up in a richly musical household. When I lived in his house, every morning before donning his Western-style dress shirt and trousers, he first changed into a traditional cloth wrap and went to the puja room. He sang for an hour each day at home, and very occasionally at the family temple, accompanying himself on a tambura.

Though part of his musical practice is informed by his religion, Mohan-ji finds it most important to honor the specific regional traditions that had been passed down to him from generation to generation. In a multi-ethnic, religiously varied, and materially cosmopolitan city like Hyderabad, his day-to-day expression of musical tradition helped him feel ties to his minority language, caste, and culture.

Though Brubaker talked about groupism in terms of ethnic violence, I think it is more broadly relevant. My host father does identify with several ‘groups,’ each of which is related to his ethnicity, but none of which describe his ethnic identity fully. Mohan-ji is a musician, a native of Kerala, a Hindu, a Brahmin, an English professor, a Congress party supporter, and a speaker of five Indian languages. All of these identities inform his political and social activities except for his musicianship. His music, shared with his family and close friends, is his most meaningful expression of his ethnicity, and his most un-affiliated activity.

What does it mean about identity if there is usually no one around to see my host father playing music that relates to his ethnicity? Though Mohan-ji’s music is not projected to all of his associations, it is still performative. In the physical practice of playing music, he is able to indexically connect to an ethnic identity and personal history. Thus, unlike in the wedding examples, Mohan-ji is not practicing traditional music to announce to the world that he is respectful of tradition. Does this make his musical practice a more ‘genuine’ expression of his ethnicity?

Since we watched the videos of weddings in West Sumatra last week I have been thinking about different ethnic celebrations we have in the United States all of the time. Through an anthropological lens weddings, coming-of-age ceremonies, and various holiday celebrations function to keep a history and culture alive. Here in the United States, in our country of immigrants, we have many different traditions that are continued and passed on through these types of celebrations. I will look closely at just a few examples of these ethnic celebrations, Jewish Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, Hispanic Quinceaneras, and other coming-of-age ceremonies, to explore the ways these celebrations exists within the American idea of ethnic identity.

The Bar and Bat Mitzvah in Judiasm, Quinceanera in Latin America cultures, Confirmation for various Catholics and Christians, and the Sweet Sixteen for many Americans, are all coming-of-age ceremonies and celebrations that happen all over the country every day. In Judiasm, the Bar/Bat Mitzvah brings twelve and thirteen year old boys and girls into an active relationship with both Judiasm and the Jewish culture. In order to prepare, young people must learn how to read from the Torah or a Haftarah portion, engaging with the history of the religion itself. After the ceremony children are responsible for Jewish laws and tradition. The Quinceanera in many Latin American cultures is a coming-of-age celebration for girls, usually at the age of 15. For Roman Catholics this event holds religious significance as the Quinceanera affirms her faith. Confirmations for Catholics and Christians can happen at any age, but in the west they are often coming-of-age ceremonies for young adolescents. Additionally, in the United States we have a secular kind of coming-of-age celebration that usually consists of a lavish party for a 16 year old girl called a Sweet Sixteen.

For all of these coming-of-age celebrations there are typically gifts given to the young person, as well as reception and/or party after the ceremony. These events bring family and friends together and are clearly social gatherings for people with shared religions, backgrounds, or ethnicities. The tradition of these cultures and religions is passed down to the young person, at a point when they can begin to understand the meanings and implications of their beliefs.

I am sure that many ethnomusicologists have examined how music is involved in these traditional, religious and cultural activities, however I am fascinated by the way the modern and traditional music exist at the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs I have attended. The ceremonies have a lot of traditional music, with all of the religious songs that are sung at Jewish ceremonies. After the ceremony at the party both traditional and modern music begin to exist in the same space. There are certain songs that were played and sung at most of the parties I went to, such as Hava Nagila. At this point there was usually dancing by the young people not to these traditional songs, but to all of the pop, rock and hip-hop music that was popular at that time.

These ceremonies are ways for these cultures to be maintained. In Stokes’ article “Ethnicity, Identity and Music,” he emphasizes that ethnicities are created through boundaries that need to be constructed, maintained and controlled in order to continue to exist. I think the Bar/Bat Mitzvahs and Quinceanera’s are particularly good examples of a kind of ethnicity that is continually constructed and maintained through these kinds of ceremonies.

Often times in the United States certain aspects of these religious and cultural traditions are incorporated into these celebrations and ceremonies, while others are left out. This emphasizes the compromise of identities that is continually occurring in our country. There are Jewish-Americans, Catholic-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Indian-Americans, etc. The main point is that the national identity of American is an overarching category that all of these ethnic identities fit under. These compromises can be seen in these celebrations, just as we saw in the videos of West Sumatran weddings where the modern and traditional is encoroprated into one wedding, where ethnicities, traditions and cultural identities are passed along.