Music, a cultural memoir

"Music is a cultural memoir discussing all cultural realities." For many artists, music has been a valuable tool in their hands, used to demonstrate and depict messages and connect with the audience. Music could as well be a political voice for artists in times of hardship and difficulty, just as it could exist as a sign of hope for those who listen: those in similar situations. Endless depictions and emotions towards the cultural realities of the time can be found embedded in larger spectrum of African American music. Sam Cooke is considered a great example of an influential artist who expressed the feelings of his community through what he wrote, having experienced it all first hand.

Cooke was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi on January 22nd, 1931. For Sam Cooke, Gospel singing had already become a profession at the age of only 10. In the fifties and sixties, he did something special with the gifts he already possessed. Cooke took the sounds of gospel and combined them with secular themes, and as a result, he contributed in the creation and shaping of soul music as we know it today. The meaning of the genre 'soul music' is near self explanatory, but is simply a form of secular testifying or preaching. This is a mere sum up of what Sam Cooke became world renowned for.

"He wrote of what he saw and heard. He listened to it and spoke to it. Effortlessly and instinctively, he turned it into music." (Brian Leli) Sam Cooke expressed his life and culture through music, which became not only a memoir of his own cultural realities, but of the many millions of black Americans with whom he shared hardships within the community

There was one specific single released by Sam Cooke that inevitably reached out to the people. "A change is gonna come." Again, a clear and self explanatory title, a piece of music that was a political voice for the artist, and a sign of hope for the intended audience. It was written within the Civil Rights Movement. This social movement aimed to end all racial segregation and discrimination in the United States at the time, and this was a movement for which many considered the song "a change is gonna come" to be an anthem.

In this piece of music, he uses language, with traces of African american vernacular English, to express the emotions and connect with the people. "I go to the movie and I go down town. Somebody keep telling me don't hang around" This supposedly depicted the fact that many owners of cinemas and restaurants did not want any blacks on or anywhere near their establishment. "A change gonna come." This phrase is in constant repetition throughout the song, which could suggest that hope is the underlying them of the lyrics. It is also clear that AAVE is present: evident in the typical use of the word "gonna" as a replacement of "going to."

The legacy of Sam Cooke lives on within the replenished hearts of black american people. What he left behind was unlike anything else. He was a true example of artists who used music for a meaningful purpose, and not just a form of entertainment. The statement that music is a cultural memoir is relevant when discussing the music of Sam Cooke, since all the ups and downs (realities) of his culture are laying deep within every note he sings and every word he utters.

Bilingualism

Language and identity have a strong connection. Identity refers to characteristics distinctive to a certain individual, and it is constantly in flux. After all, it is more of an accomplishment than a thing.

But identity can be revealed and changed through certain contextual uses of language. Aspects of language, such as accents, can vary based on ones conversational partner.

One obvious example would be the natural alteration in an individuals relational or interactional identity between school and the comfort of his/her own home.

I am one of many whom I know alter their accent, form of language or even the language itself depending on who is at the receiving end of the conversation, whether it is a huge crowd of eager listeners, or your own mother.

In the essay (with the pun-intended title) "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan, she reveals that she experienced this change in identity when conversing with her mother in her "limited" and "broken" form of English and a different accent. Amy Tan alters her relational identity in order to connect with her mother and use the language she felt to be more simple and meaningful.

When given the talk to a larger group of people, however, her accent and form of English, and therefore her interactional identity, completely changed, even with her mother in the midst. "I was saying things like, “The intersection of memory upon imagination” and “There is an aspect of my fiction that relates to thus-and-thus’–a speech filled with carefully wrought grammatical phrases...the forms of English I did not use at home with my mother."

I too change my accent depending on who I converse with. At school, I tend to use a much different accent than at home with my parents. It's a natural tendency in my case.

Accents can attract a lot of judgemental and prejudice people. Far too often are native speakers from many nations judged harshly by non-native speakers. Having lived in this country for many years, I have never experienced such prejudice. (Thankfully) But Tans mother experienced plenty unfair judgements based solely on her accent.

The hospital didn't apologise for losing the CAT scan nor show any good service considering what had happened. They saw her English as a way to look down upon her. She said "did not seem to have any sympathy" towards her.

Me.

Culture has played a significant role in my life, especially during my teenage years. Born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1998, as well as having spent a relatively large fraction of my childhood in my homeland, I had the privilege of experiencing the extensive diversity of South African culture in my surroundings. Everything from music, art and sports, to the food and traditions were engraved in my childhood. It developed my love and interest in many things, like music and sport, in which I still find joy till this day. Almost certainly, language plays the most important of roles in my life to date, as it does for almost all humans. It is a special and complex system of communication that is unique to the human race. Besides English, my mother-tongue, I got to learn a fair amount of Afrikaans, a language closely linked to South African history, which also helped my feel more included in my own culture. Evidently, culture was a special part of my childhood. But it wasn't until 2008, the year I moved to the UAE, it started to play a different and more life changing role.

Things in this country are indeed very, very different. It was particularly alien to me at first. Even though the culture here is alike any other, with language, religion, food, music, traditions and customs that are unique to its land, there are strict rules and laws that exist because of this culture. One thing to get used to was not being able to eat in public during Ramadan, a tradition which at first I struggled to understand. Some may judge and show a lack of respect to these laws, regulations and traditions that are a result of a religiously oriented culture. But I, having interacted with people whose lives the culture defined, began to show respect towards them, as well as that which they believed and thought to be right. 

Moving to RIS only developed my respect and open-mindedness towards different cultures further. I started to realise and appreciate the diversity of different cultures from all corners of the globe, and because of this diversity of cultures, no single definition for the word 'culture' can be decided on. It is based entirely on opinion, and how much culture and language played a part in the life of the individual being questioned. Based on what I've experienced culture to be, I think that it is a cumulative deposit of knowledge, beliefs, rules, ideas, customs, and traditions that are acquired by a group of people over generations. But language plays the biggest part. Without it, how would we be capable of depositing any knowledge and communicating ideas, beliefs, customs, etc? Not only is language itself special, but it is the key to what makes us unique, and the most intelligent of all species.