Culture Shock

It was 5 a.m. and a sleepy downtown Houston was all but rid of the trash that appears every night at 2 a.m. from the bar's that line Main Street. I walked to El Big Bad; El Big Bad is a "gastrocantina"- it's a tequila bar with a focus on house made infusions and a small but diverse Tex-Mex menu. Dressed in a polkadot sundress and black flats, eyes still red from lack of a good night's rest; we gathered inside the spot we'd only left a few lazy hours before to shoot a promotion for a local t.v. station. A group of 10 lured here in the wee hours on the promise of free food, a bottle of tequila, and a Cocktail Kingdom "starter kit" a $60.00 value, we are apparently a cheap bunch. 

It was May 5th, which doesn't mean a ton to a lot of people, but in the name of alcohol consumption, society will appropriate entire cultures for the sake of a "significant holiday" to "celebrate" that is devise an excuse to drink into oblivion on a weekday . (e.g.: Cinco De Mayo, St. Patricks Day)

There was a Mariachi band hired to play music in the background; they arrived, set up in the corner of the restaurant, and began to warm up, much like an orchestra before a performance.

I sat in a stool at the bar, saying nothing when the violinist began to play Eine Kleine Nachtmusik: Allegro by Mozart. My ears sprinted with delight, anticipating every note that followed, my little heart in synch with his bow; I remembered what the sheet music for the piece looked like, how the fingers should be placed on the strings, vibrating back in forth with quick, sharp movements making the sound rich and heavy. 

He stopped as suddenly as he started and I began to ponder and I became troubled by my thoughts.

Why did I decide that because he was from Mexico that he'd not have an appreciation for classical music? I was completely distraught. I sat and contemplated this well into the morning; is this discreditation of my own people my own fault? Is there something I'm not seeing?

My father attended university in Mexico and earned a degree in Anthropology; he's a music teacher at an inner city elementary school and taught me so much about the art and music I love so much as an adult, still I found myself confounded that history classes taught in the schools I attended failed to teach me anything outside of cinco de mayo when talking specifically about Mexican history or influence. 

I began to study more closely the accomplishments of Mexican or Mexican/American classical musicians; I found myself with this idea that as a Mexican American child growing up in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood the socioeconomic status of my family and the families around me had created this impenetrable bubble where the primary focus wasn't art but family, religion, and hard work; lucky for me my parents were educators and instilled in me early on that there was in fact, a world outside of our homogenous unit. I researched further and expanded my argument, it wasn't just my people, it was everyone who didn't fall under the WASP classification.

I had not until that very moment realized how profound an impact my little neighborhood had on me. There is this slight feeling of resentment toward the school district that allowed this ideology to seep into the school and influence the curriculum. The children we grew up to be were initially afforded two paths; you could aspire to be an artist, to love music or the written word and accept that you'll struggle in poverty for the rest of your life, or you can decide now that you'll leave here, complete the necessary courses and get a job to help your family then start a family of your own like so many of our parents had done. It wasn't until high school that many of us knew that we could go to college, or that those paths presented to us early on weren't the only ones that existed.

I'll preface this with the fact that there is no right or wrong here; we are all instilled with the ideals we were raised with; a strong work ethic and an appreciation for a tight knit family are admirable and desirable qualities so in this there is no fault. I am saying however, that I felt that those very ideas were carried over to the schools we attended and further emphasised, curtailing the length of our educational scope focusing on passing standardize testing and letting liberal arts fall by the wayside, because in the end, you were as smart as your test score dictated and predetermined what you'd do later (Housewife? Mechanic?).

Intelligence is not measured by test scores but by curiosity; if you can add 1 +1 and come to 2 then you're half way right, the instrument of measure here is not  a correct answer but asking "why is it 2?" 

As I made my way through grade school and into high school we moved away from the area that was slowly gentrifying around us and I transferred to a new school in a neighborhood like the one we moved away from, only slightly different. It was at that school that I began to understand that liberal arts was a viable choice, one that I enjoyed and excelled in. Things at this school were different, we were an inner city school located in the heart of a middle class neighborhood whose student demographic ranged from impoverished to upper middle class. I met people who were first generation American's whom had created this unique identity; they were still the kids their parents raised with a focus on family and religion, but they were also people who'd decided that they were going to be artists, lawyers, physicists, for no other reason than being genuinely interested in the subject. Here we were a generation divided.

Here I am now, a girl and a laptop; i suppose then at this point that it isn't just the educational system, or the socioeconomic status of the people around you but rather culture as a whole. Western culture, anglo culture, the best culture in the world; for all their allotments in regards to other culture's achievements has failed to recognize the important accomplishments of those particular people rather acknowledging a select few events that American culture deem relevant. 

I once worried about the future; not so much mine, but the future of us, but I know that the kids I went to school with were the one's who broke free from their cultural restraints to become the minority children who succeeded and joined me in art school and claimed titles such as "valedictorian", "doctor", "professor" and so on. Our parents unknowingly waged a war on art but we proved to have the strength in numbers to claim victory.