IDENTITY
From: Goin' Home And Far Away
(The novel will hopefully confirm the perception) that the world is colorful, diverse and full of unknown treasures; that identities are composed of an infinite set of variables that extend well beyond our own collection of experiences and are constantly shifting and recombining themselves; that identities are rarely an end, more often the beginning of something new. Only this kind of openness will lead us away from narrow, static and, in extreme cases, racially based definitions. Linking identity to a single quality, particularly to a gene or gender, and cramming that identity into a corset that ignores an individual’s many other qualities and potentials, is an attitude that everyone who holds emancipation in high regard should eye with suspicion.
Music is, and always has been, a realm of acceptance and openness, in which identities can unfold boundlessly. Interculturality was cultivated in music long before the terms world music, crossover and fusion were introduced. The real question is not whether cultural discourse with the other should take place, but how.
Bob took a deep breath, sat up straight and changed the topic. “You know, Petra, we’re talking about identities. Nothing you can put in a tidy, academic box. And if you did, it might happen to be a caterpillar, and then it would come out as a butterfly.”
Bukar put it in a nutshell. Perhaps we were so impressed by our friends in New York, he said, because their strength rested in their mature, self-critical approach to their various states of mind, to their ambivalences and their at times conflicting priorities.