01 en — Trapped in “cultures”

I will here write about things I don’t know very well. The idea is to articulate concepts, share it with you guys and discuss about it. There was something on my mind for so long, I could not put words on it, and that is now slowly turning solid (or liquid?).

I want to speak about identity. Not only mine, but identity as a concept and how we do/did manipulate this concept, even if there is a scientific consensus on the fact that we are filled with cognitive biases on that matter and even if history speaks the same truth centuries after centuries.

My English isn’t as good as I would like to, but it kind of force me to re articulate my ideas in a new way, and more importantly, allow me to share those thoughts with you. I’ll try to maintain a hispanic translation of each post, and a French one too (maybe later on). I hope you’ll soon understand how this way of « translating » thoughts from one universe to the other is an elegant metaphor of what I’m trying to express.

All started with a pretty naive dream : to record musicians outdoor.

CONTEXT OF DESIRE

I was finishing my sound engineering cursus in the cinema school « Louis Lumière ». Aside from music recording, we had to do radio documentaries using field recording, testimonials.. It completely opened up my relation to sound. I started to record everything, from my grandma’s story to casual family conversation to my cousin and I smoking weed while at the same time listening previous recording of ourselves smoking.

Long story short, one night hanging out with some school mates we ended up recording friends playing oriental music next to the « Ourcq » canal in Paris. The following day, we listened the tapes and discovered something new. Suddenly, we weren’t recording to pursue an idealized piece of music, we were recording a piece of life. It was fascinating. Along the music you could hear the city sounds, bikes, buses bells, people gathering and singing with the musicians. At some point, someone even jumped into the water, his shout bouncing on the buildings across the canal. Recordings were telling another story.

With the same people, we started dreaming of recording music outside, in places that could resonate with their music, their instruments, their story (resonate both sonically and conceptually speaking).

We were finishing our school, we wanted to do things, and we strived to travel. Paris was full of neo-traditional bands. Colombian cumbia, balkanic music djs, and all kind of global-bass electronic music. In a purely romantic move, projects blending century-old music with modern influences were popping everywhere and we were quite amazed by those new worlds of sounds. Nature was never far away in those musical sub-cultures, embodying the supreme tradition.

Also, at that time, one of my closest friend was living in Salta, Argentina. I recall of a phone call while he was there, depicting local life like paradise. Another friend — who would become one of my closest friends — was from Chile. I was striving for travel, thirsting for freedom, and discovering south american music meeting musicians from there, even my grandpa gave me his old Atahualpa vinyl : everything was leading me to South America.

We started to imagine a project that would embody all those compelling desires. A serie of short films about musicians that would have a strong relationship with a place. We would record their music on location — ideally outdoor, in nature — and record their story, thus giving a glimpse of the astonishing cultural diversity of latin America. All of our focus united in a beautiful reason to live for. At that time we din’t realized that all of this was only a frame and not a story to tell.

TRAVELLING AND COMING BACK

I organized myself to travel to South America, worked some months, saved some $$$ and suddenly landed in Buenos Aires. I was supposed to start organizing stuff from this side of the Atlantic, learning Spanish, meeting musicians and prepare. The rest of the crew would join some months later for a 4 months trip (spoiler : won’t happen that way 😁).

The journey finally lasted a year. A year of wandering, music, discoveries, landscapes, solitude, love, people and deep friendship, living day-to-day life outside of abundance states.

At some point, Robin, the last and only « crew member » still interested in the project, would finally join and we would share part of the trip, meeting musicians and learning ! The others had left for other life projects.

While travelling, I was struck by how powerful nature was in those lands. Sun was hitting soo hard, rain was intense. Extreme humidity and dryness. I felt so fragile facing those huge mountains everywhere in the cordillera, crossing the never ending Atacama desert or walking in the Colombian jungle. Of course there are places in France where one could feel completely remote of « civilization », but America is so huge and empty outside of the big cities. The balance between oneself and nature was completely the other way around.

Along the trip, as I was connecting with musicians and doing research about local (hy)story and culture(s), it was becoming clearer that local music was shaped by history and people, much more than by a specific environnement.

The relation between oneself and his environment was obviously important regarding music, artists would write and sing about the daily life and their surroundings, and nature would more than often be the big main theme in local poetry. But as powerful as it was, it seemed to be nothing in comparison to women and men habitus. It was impossible to speak about local music without speaking about local history and multicultural background of the places.

WHAT HAD WE SEEN ? IDENTITY (THROUGH CULTURE)

Back in France, obviously broke, we (Robin and I) had to make sense of everything to present the project to TV channels and program producers, to find a way to finance the project. That’s obviously when things got more complicated.

It was quite chaotic. Our ideas would go in a lot of directions but the result was scattered… Each of the artist and places had a shared history, yet, we were unable to bring out a solid story-telling that would link all of the pieces. Nothing could be said about dozens of musical heritages and complex historical background embodied in magnificent landscapes ?

As I was writing, I could feel that something was wrong. Synthesizing about each places history and their music in small paragraphs, I recall feeling hot and stressed because of the simplification I had to make : I always wanted to point out exceptions, I was uncomfortable with the terms that I was using, feeling they were carrying a heavy load of untold.

It would take me three years to realize that I was trapped in a « cultural » reading grid, that would impeach me to make sense about what I’d seen.

The cultural grid

Almost everything we learned during the trip was by observing, listening to as many live and recorded music as we could, listening to casual people and musicians telling their stories and their music’s story, reading wikipedia or taking notes in local museums. It was important to us because we wanted to share the way people relates themselves. I was afraid to discover local « cultures » via anthropology or musicology because I wanted to avoid a western point of view.

I recall how people would usually speak about their customs : « It’s our roots », « it’s who we are », « it is our tradition ». Often, when I spoke to casual people about their tradition, they were curious about mine. As I didn’t have any answers, I started to ask myself what was my music, what was my place, where was « my » nature, what was my tradition, what was my identity. Once back in France, I was obsessed with this question.

What’s my identity ?

I was born and raised in France near Paris, as my father. My mother was born in Sarajevo (Bosnia) and arrived in Paris as a child, but always told me that we were Serbs. In my youth, I recall wondering how could we be serbs if all our « serbian » family was born in Bosnia and many of them were still living there ? I couldn’t understand.

« [Bosnia] is home to three main ethnic groups […]. Bosniaks are the largest group of the three, with Serbs second, and Croats third. » says wikipedia. Ok so the country is divided in three. But what does « ethnic » exactly means ? Let’s refer again to wikipedia : « An ethnic group or ethnicity is a grouping of […] people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups such as a common set of traditions, ancestry, language, history, society, culture, nation, religion, or social treatment within their residing area. Ethnicity is sometimes used interchangeably with the term nation, particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism, and is separate from, but related to the concept of races. »

How interesting that a concept that would justify millions of death through history has such a vague definition. (People uniting as a group based on things in common, excluding others..). Ok so several groups defining themselves as different, but does it means they are effectively different ? How ?

My father’s and mother’s family are really different. On my mother’s side, they were humble tailors, emigrated to France in the 60’s fleeing communism, because they wanted to practice their orthodox religion freely. They remained very-close to the serbian diaspora in Paris. As I only have my grandmother, I strongly relate it to feminine clichés such as sensitivity, care, passion. On my father’s side, its quite the opposite. They were from a wealthier background : engineers with a cartesian mind. Having only my grandfather on this side made me relate them to masculine clichés such as rationality and control. Their relation to care is a lot less spontaneous, more codified and intellectualized.

Growing up with 2 different exemples of “how life can be lived” was certainly a great chance, it made clear to me very early that social codes are conventions and the “right” doesn’t exist without the frame (kind of double consciousness). But in my personal experience, I realize that it also planted two distinct poles, essentializing differences of personality, languages, food, music.

For example, my mother would frequently spoke about my “Serbian side” to explain some of my behaviors or tastes.

I realize now that when speaking about my “Serbian side”, she was appealing to something I would have shared with Serbian people, wherever they live, today or 200 years ago. Homogeneity, in time and space, by blood : ethnicity 🙊 That was it. Everywhere on the globe, when I meet someone from Serbia, first or second generation, it has always been followed by a joyous hug, and some talk about serbian food haha.

I find it interesting to notice because Serbian don’t carry any physical characteristic, and I don’t even speak the language ! Yet, I become part of a great family based on my blood. How fun ! And awkward at the same time… I won’t extend on the Serbian case because I have only sparse information about it, but thinking about this made me realize how I had grown up in an environnement that gave so much importance to cultures, ethnicities and nations, with my closest relatives being living examples of such ideas.

On my return in Europe, trapped in a “cultural” lecture grid, I was unable to make sense about what I’d seen.

One music would be presented as the result of a cultural blending between african, european and pre-colombian cultural heritage. Then in another place, the story would be similar yet the music would be completely different. Furthermore, the “characteristics” that would “remained” of each “culture” were each time completely random. It was too simplistic to view cultures as predictible heritages. Cultures were as complex as human lives.

So I started to read, looking for better concepts. Slowly, joyously, my “lecture grid” completely fell appart.