I'm so glad I'm a member of this forum! Thank you for your reply. I've grown to appreciate your friendship very much, sir! :icon_thumright:
Your post and reply to my message has spurred many thoughts:
You say, "I never really incorporated my heritage into my music other than imagery" and that you have a new approach now. I am in the middle of such a transition. I am from Texas by birth and by heritage, yet my family group has lived in the region for...well for as far back as our records go! So I am Mexican, Texan, and American! You've heard the phrase, "We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us." That is a true statement for many of the older families of Tejas. Actually it happened a few times.
It's hard to accurately tell what indigenous group I descend from, since the records are so shoddy and they end in the early 1700s. Before that, I'm not sure where to look for my original roots.
Personally, I feel sometimes like I'm "wearing" my culture, rather than living mi cultura. It's disorienting to have a diasporic view of a culture that I know mostly from collective memory. Admittedly, I live in a big city infused with many influences, not in pre-revolution PotoSi. San Antonio is a great place to live! The cultural diversity of the city has broadened my world view...or has it distanced me from the Colonia? from the Reservation?
Some proponents of total exchange acculturation only see me crouching deeper into my own shadow. I can't help but wonder at the instictive urgency to protect and defend the traditions of our anscetors that drives me to learn more about my past. I have to believe that this is a practice held dear by each new generation: A search for a hand hold on our eternal history while marching ever forward in time and through new and fascinating changes...
Yes, our Culture is dynamic. But not so for those on the Reservation.
I've visited your Myspace and I digg it. Good ideas. I like the direction your going.
Actions are born in the mind as ideas, waiting for some brave fool to dig them out of the mind and will them into the world. Create change.
Thanks for the thought provoking post.