Summary of Justin Heet’s data for April 21 Indiana-Mexico presentation
The Hispanic growth Indiana is experiencing is associated with a later wave of Hispanic immigration. In comparison to the U.S. as a whole, this means for Indiana (all figures are for the Year 2000):
- a far lower percentage of the population is Hispanic (3% vs. 13%)
- a far higher percentage of the Hispanic population is Mexican (72% vs. 59%)
- a very similar percentage of the Mexican population is foreign born (39% vs. 42%)
- a very similar percentage of the foreign born Mexican population is citizens (21% to 22%)
- a lower percentage of the non-citizen foreign born Mexican population is undocumented (67% to 58%).
Mexican immigration accounts for an estimated 12% of post-2000 population growth in Indiana.
There is often an image of Hispanic and Mexican migration being a chiefly urban issue. Nothing could be further from the truth. In Indiana, there is a belt from Lake County in the Northwest to Marion County that is tremendously reliant on immigration. The majority of the counties in this corridor are primarily rural.
There is often an image of Mexican workers being restricted to agriculture, restaurants, and hotels. Thirty-eight percent of Mexicans in Indiana are employed in manufacturing. Hispanics are most under-represented in the education, health, and social services industries (19% of the non-Mexican workforce is employed in these industries while only 9% of the Mexican workforce is). [Figures are for the Year 2000].
To this point, Mexican workers have not had access to the white-collar segments of the economy. Twenty-eight percent of non-Mexican workers are employed in management, business and financial, and professional and related occupations. Only 12% of Mexicans are in these occupations. [Figures are for the Year 2000].
The total income of Mexicans in Indiana is nearly two billion dollars (1.9 billion in 1999). On a per capita basis, Mexican income in Indiana is just less than 60% of non-Mexican income. [Figures are from the 2000 Census.]
The disparity in per capita income is not primarily a function of the percentage of Mexicans in non-full time work, as might be surmised. Fifty-two percent of the Mexican workforce and fifty-two percent of the non-Mexican workforce are not working full time. Nor is there are a large difference in the distribution of the Mexican and non-Mexican non-full time workforces across the income continuum. Instead, the disparity in average income for the two groups is a function of the difference between the distributions of the full time workforces across the income continuum. Fifty-three percent of full time Mexican workers earn less than 25,000 dollars per year. Only 31% of full-time non-Mexican workers earn less than 25,000 dollars per year. [Figures are from the 2000 Census.]
Mexican trade is critically important to the Indiana economy. In 1998, Indiana ranked 14th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia in the value of exports to Mexico. By 2002, Indiana’s rank was 6th. The value of Indiana’s exports grew by 209% during this period. At the same time, Indiana’s rank for the value of imports fell from 5th to 6th. From 1998-2002, Indiana’s trade deficit with Mexico was essentially halved.
A Citizen Diplomacy Summit was held at Marian College April 3. Co-sponsored by the International Center of Indianapolis and The Franciscan Center for Global Studies at Marian College (and endorsed by more than a dozen other organizations), this program was part of a series of nationwide summits intended to raise awareness about the Citizen Diplomacy movement and explain its role in advancing U.S. foreign relations, promoting world peace, and increasing international activism. The Summit at Marian was one of a series of dozens of Community Citizen Diplomacy Summits called by the Coalition for Citizen Diplomacy, which will bring together representatives of these Summits to a National Summit in Washington DC July 12-14.The Summit kicked off with a keynote speech by Rep. Dan Burton, Chair of the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere for the House Committee on International Relations. Some might have thought that the main message a US Congressperson could deliver to a Summit on Citizen Diplomacy should be: “My fellow politicians and I are irrelevant.” In fact, Rep. Burton has long praised the private voluntary organizations he has seen working around the world. He admires churches’ relief missions, university students studying abroad, and the Peace Corps. The Congressperson carried up to the podium an excellent speech connecting these citizen efforts to the wider challenges facing Latin America and the US.
The speech he delivered however was slightly different, and focused more on the threat to shaky democracies across Latin America posed by the twin threats of Cuba and (especially) President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Rep. Burton seems to feel a sense of déjà vu, having seen something similar during the 1980s with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the FMLN in El Salvador, the New Jewel Movement in Grenada, FARC in Colombia … all supported by the USSR and Castro. Today the situation is perhaps even more disturbing since Venezuela’s oil gives Chávez access to resources with which to cause trouble that Fidel Castro has never possessed (“Chávez is Castro with money,” said the Congressperson). In the 1980s, Burton believes, the “Reagan Doctrine” helped defeat most of these leftist movements be establishing democracy, and the new wave of leftists must be confronted similarly today.
This struggle in Latin America touches us directly in Indianapolis. The state’s economy depends on trade with Latin America. Rep. Burton tells of a recent trip to Central America he made with Lt. Gov. Skillman: his thinking about trade has evolved over time, moving from opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the 1990s to support for a Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) today. He supports CAFTA today because of its implications for national security: we can use it to stop the wars of the 1980s from reappearing. Another way the conflicts in Latin America directly touch our lives is through immigrants dislodged by war and poverty.
By straying from his prepared speech, Rep. Burton gave the audience a peek into the thinking of one of the most influential conservative policymakers in Congress … no doubt about it, to judge from the speech he delivered at Marian college, that thinking is preoccupied with Hugo Chávez.
The audience, however, didn’t get a chance to hear one of the most important passage from the Congressperson’s prepared speech:
Elsewhere in Central America, in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala,
political corruption and a growing outbreak of violent crimes, especially by
gangs, have posed serious challenges to these young democracies. Drug
trafficking, HIV/AIDS, poverty, lawlessness and crime are straining resources in
the Caribbean, already stretched thin by hurricane reconstruction. Governments
alone cannot relieve and rebuild the lives affected by the natural and man-made
challenges. There is a significant role that needs to be filled by the
organizations, like many represented here today, who can deliver care,
compassion, assistance and technology to help the underdeveloped or disaffected
segments of the societies in these areas.
This is the most significant message from the Congressperson for the Citizens Diplomacy Summit. Poverty, social disarray, and government corruption can drive people toward extremism. The global problems facing poor and unstable countries in Central America and around the world are too much for their governments to solve. They are too much for the US government to solve. Because we are inextricably linked to the rest of the world by trade, by immigration, and by instantaneous communication, the problems wracking the lives of local communities around the world hurt us in Central Indiana as well. Most importantly, perhaps, local groups here may be able to partner with local groups in other countries to solve these global problems. 
Rep. Burton could have made another point connecting the geopolitical interests of the US with the themes of this Summit. Hugo Chávez may or may not be funding guerrillas in the region, but what he definitely is funding is a masterful public diplomacy campaign to win the hearts and minds of people across the region. Chávez connects the poverty people experience every day with a grand story of how the US is responsible, but this is not the essence of his public diplomacy campaign. The key is that Chávez puts Venezuela’s money where his mouth is. We caught a taste of this over the winter when he offered to provide cheap heating oil to poor Americans.
But any warm-and-fuzzies Bostonians might feel toward Chávez about receiving discounted Venezuelan heating oil is nothing compared to the love that some people around Latin America and the Caribbean feel for Venezuela. Venezuelan soldiers help Jamaica rebuild after Hurricane Ivan while Venezuelan petrodollars pay for Cuban doctors to provide first-rate free health services to poor people around the region (replicating the very popular program of providing Cuban doctors to slum-dwellers in Venezuelan cities).
The real danger Hugo Chávez poses to Latin America is not funding revolutionaries. It is that poor people will be seduced toward his populist economic policies that are unsustainable over a long period and that might not work at all without the enormous cash windfalls Venezuela has received selling its oil to the US (most Latin American countries aren’t sitting atop one of the world’s largest reserves of oil, and thus can’t afford Chavéz-style goofiness). When the policies fail and the condition of their economies gets even worse, angry people whose expectations have been lifted and dashed will blame betrayal, and could seek scapegoats on which to vent their frustration. No one wants to see that happen.
It would be a pity if Chavéz’s policies were adopted not on their merits but because only Chavéz seems to care enough about the poor and disenfranchised to try to relieve their problems. Here is a place where citizen diplomats can make a difference. Most Hoosiers who help build schools in Guatemala or provide medical care to Peru aren’t trying to promote the US Administration’s foreign policy: they are trying to do the right thing. But for American citizens to choose to sacrifice to help the poor in other countries defuses Chavéz’s message that only he cares.
A question politely left unasked during the question and answers after Rep. Burton’s speech: which president poses a greater threat to Latin America? It’s likely that many people in the audience identify more with Hugo Chavéz’s populism than with the Bush Administration’s policies. Perhaps that is what distinguishes “citizen diplomacy” from “public diplomacy.” If diplomacy means a government negotiating with other governments in pursuit of its foreign policy goals, public diplomacy is a government trying to win the hearts and sway the minds of citizens in other countries, again in pursuit of its foreign policy goals. (Examples of techniques of our government’s public diplomacy: news broadcasts to the Muslim world (that get the US government’s message to ordinary citizens), bringing rising leaders from other countries to the US (in hopes that they will better appreciate American culture and policies.) Citizen diplomacy is decentralized, not part of any government’s pursuit of policy goals, and sometimes quite difficult to mesh with any broader agenda. It is carried out by thousands of individuals and groups for thousands of individual and group goals, many of which may conflict with US government policy.
Dan Burton’s speech was followed by a panel discussion bringing together an abundance of very diverse individuals representing groups engaged in many different aspects of citizen diplomacy (as well as many activities that wouldn’t count as citizen diplomacy). Some highlights from each panelist:
Fran Quigley, Executive Director of ACLU-Indiana, has chronicled many cases of citizen diplomacy in NUVO. He identified three noteworthy examples:
- The IU Medical School’s remarkable partnership with Moi University in Eldoret, Kenya.
- Faith-based partnerships between local groups in Indiana and local groups around the world have multiplied too quickly to count
- Quoting Tip O’Neill that “all politics are local,” Fran expressed admiration at the local groups who have translated their citizen diplomacy initiatives into significant influence over DC-based international policy
Stan Soderstrom is Associate Executive Director of Kiwanis International, “a global organization dedicated to changing the world one child and one community at a time.” With more
than 8,400 clubs (280,000 members) in 96 countries, Kiwanis International has a genuinely global reach. It has experience addressing serious large-scale problems, as with its long-time partnership with UNICEF. Kiwanis has raised nearly $100 million to iodize salt to prevent thyroid problems and mental retardation in poor countries, and sponsors many service leadership programs. Lately Stan and Kiwanis International have convened the first of an expected series of discussions of some of the leaders of the international community in Indianapolis.Henry Cole is Chair of Indiana Sister Cities. One might think that with its mission of “promoting understanding and cooperation between the citizens of Indiana and its sister cites and sister states,” Sister Cities would be no more than just another group aspiring to give the world a big hug. Not so. Henry mentioned Tempe’s award-winning Sister City program: the program has drilled wells and planted trees in dry, deforested Timbuktu, and sponsored exchanges with Skopje. Bloomington has maintained a mutually beneficial partnership with Posoltega, Nicaragua.
Kristin Garvey is associate director of the International Center of Indianapolis, which is devoted to making Indianapolis a welcoming place for those from around the world. In addition to helping businesses adapt effectively to a global marketplace, the International Center runs the National Council for International Visitors program for Indianapolis. Whenever the State Department sends groups of Albanian water treatment engineers or Senegalese middle school administrators to the US to learn about this country, Kristin is in charge of the Central Indiana portions of these visits.
Susan Sutton, Associate Dean of International Programs at IUPUI, discussed the opportunities for broader citizen diplomacy that emerges from the university. Educating students
globally has long been one of the main forms of citizen diplomacy, IUPUI offers focused and tailored study abroad through service learning. It has signed affiliation agreements with more than 160 higher education institutions around the world. And with more than a thousand students from abroad coming to Indianapolis every year, IUPUI is a conduit bringing the world here.Christine Vogel is VP of Strategic Development for AFS-USA (formerly American Field Service), which traditionally has organized intercultural student and teacher exchanges. Christine explained how several cities have sought to coordinate many of the diverse and fragmented organizations that work in the area of citizen diplomacy: Newark, Boston, NYC (focusing on the arts), Philadelphia (focusing on the quality of life), and Denver. She offered to put Indianapolis into contact with consultants who led these efforts.
Stephen Akard, Director of International Development for the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, is in charge of promoting international business opportunities for the state. With eleven trade offices and a network of informal connections around the world, the IEDC offers a supporting infrastructure for noncommercial citizen diplomacy initiatives. And from the IEDC’s perspective, robust global linkages of Indiana groups and individuals helps attract foreign investment.
Sergio Agilera, Consul of the Republic of Mexico, spoke briefly about the import
ance of citizen diplomacy to Mexico and Indiana. There are many opportunities for Hoosiers to engage in Mexico, from the highest levels of government to the poorest communities. When Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson led a delegation of businesspeople to Mexico last fall, Consul Aguilera helped set up high level and very productive meetings for the educators and nonprofits that were on the trip. Juana Watson (advisor on Latino affairs to Gov. Mitch Daniels) described the many trips she has led from Indiana to her native village of Calnali in Hidalgo: churches, IU medical students and professors, firemen and police officers.Some of the questions from the audience reflected curiosity about specific aspects of citizen diplomacy in Indianapolis.
The International Center organizes the trips for groups of other country’s young leaders visiting the US: but is there a program for young Hoosier leaders to make study trips to other countries? (Answer: not exactly.)
If aspiring citizen diplomats want to learn more intensively about particular cultures, where should they go? Answers: The International Center is very good at preparing businesses and their emplo
yees with everything they need. The Nationalities Council of Indiana brings together groups attached almost every country and ethnic group in the world. IUPUI and the other universities in the region have many world-class experts as well as students and faculty members from all over the world.Some forty college students who attended the summit broke away during the panel discussion for an intensive workshop offered by Americans for Informed Democracy, a nonprofit group that seeks to connect young people to global issues. This workshop paralleled two communications training programs offered by Citizens for Global Solutions to leaders of some of the international organizations in Indianapolis over the weekend. The two sessions offered by AID during the citizen summit:
· Messaging 101: How to talk global issues with Americans. A workshop on the best strategies for talking global issues with Americans using the approach of the U.S. in the World Guide, intended to help students talk more effectively about global issues with friends, family, and the broader public.
· Organizing 101: How to Organize Town Halls That Educate and Activate Your Community. A workshop on how to organize a town hall meeting on global issues, enabling participants to bring the world home to diverse, non-expert members of the public.
As Indianapolis becomes more organized and intentional in its citizen diplomacy, it is important to engage these national organizations that want to provide us with the proper tools.
T
he citizen summit concluded with a talk by Judy O’Bannon, former First Lady of Indiana and Director of External Affairs of Indianapolis Peace House. Judy has been involved in international exchanges and programs since her late husband moved to Indianapolis as Lt. Governor. Judy offered dozens of examples from her experience of how connecting directly with people from around the world can transform lives.By the end of the Summit, a sort of logic became clear. Rep. Burton alluded to aspects of international politics that badly require effective citizen diplomacy. Poverty, disease, and corruption are all social dysfunctions contributing to the fragility of democracies in Latin America that he fears could allow troublemakers such as Hugo Chávez to damage vital US interests. These are also local social problems that nongovernmental citizen initiatives from Indiana might help solve more effectively than DC-based international aid programs. Judy O’Bannon observed how the American individuals and communities are changed by citizen diplomacy. The two talks capture vividly the two of the most important reasons for people to engage with the world: it makes the world a better place, and it makes us better people.
Hearing this message about the two crucial possibilities of citizen diplomacy was a crowd of people who, by virtue of plunking down $10 to attend the Summit, have demonstrated they take this seriously: probably most of them are now engaged in forms of citizen diplomacy, and probably most want to become even more engaged. The organizations represented by the panelists are but a few of the hundreds of intermediaries with the mission of connecting people like those in the audience to the sorts of opportunities alluded to by Burton and O’Bannon.
The trick following the Summit is to connect the desires and aspirations of those in the audience (and many, many more like them in the community) to the intermediary organizations, and to help the intermediaries identify the best and most appropriate citizen diplomacy opportunities for people and groups. Caterina Cregor Blitzer, Director of the International Center of Indianapolis, challenged the participants in the Summit to think of concrete action steps. Cathy suggested several:
An institutional inventory of local organizations engaged in citizen diplomacy
Continuation of the discussions of leaders of these organizations initiated by Kiwanis International
A mapping of potential national-level funders of citizen diplomacy in Central Indiana
Continue efforts to integrate global issues and citizen diplomacy in early education ¶ 12:57 PM 0 comments
April 4 will probably witness the first real debate of equals of the ACLU-Indiana's "First Tuesday" noon series. The first pitted David Stocum (a real scientist) against a "young earth" creationist (a group pretending to imitate the scientific methods of "intelligent design" advocates, who in turn pretend to imitate what they mistakenly believe to be the methods of real scientists) ... no real contest there. The second in the series, on the limits of spying on US citizens, would have been excellent if it had come off as planned. It would have set Marian Colege professor Pierre Atlas against a very bright FBI lawyer. Unfortunately a family emergency sent Pierre out of Indy, leaving me to fill in at the last minute (leaving me, moreover, to absorb the rhetorical pummeling I had intended for Pierre when I helped recruit the FBI agent). April 4's debate will set two near-equals against each other on a genuinely difficult issue: Should Same-sex Marriage be Legal? The two debaters are well-educated grown-ups. Walter Botich is co-chair for legislative action for Indiana Equality, "a coalition of organizations from around the state that focus on ensuring basic human rights for Indiana’s LGBT citizens." (If you don't already know that LGBT = "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered," Indiana Equality would surely recommend some background readings.)
Curt Smith (an erstwhile overlord at Hudson Institute) is head of the Indiana Family Institute, one of the cluster of very influential "family policy councils" across the country inspired by James Dobson. IFI's mission is pretty clear: "Preserve pro-family policy already within State Government an
d push for additional policies that will strengthen Indiana families." And unlike the proponents of "intelligent design," Curt's group is relatively straightforward in its "statement of faith": they are trying to impose a very specific religious dogma on public policy. ID supporters disingenuously pretend to be objective scientists, so there's no such statement of faith on the Discovery Institute's website.That doesn't keep Curt and his crew from playing at being social scientists. (Don't get me started on the selective and systematic distortion of social science by partisan think tanks!) As IFI's mission statement says:
We believe firmly that the family is the key institution of society, and that the overall health of any city, state, region or nation is largely determined by the health of this bedrock institution. An already large and growing body of published, peer-reviewed social science research confirms this age-old wisdom that traces its history back to Socrates, the Hebrew Scriptures and beyond.
Curt echoes this is a distressing article he wrote for the Indianapolis Star last year:
For 5,000 years -- the span of recorded human history -- marriage has enjoyed a special status in law that reflects its special benefits to society. Researchers report:
- Married individuals live longer.
- Children do better when raised by their two biological parents.
- Married couples earn more money.
- Married individuals report greater satisfaction and have a reduced need for mental health and psychological services.
These benefits do not flow from other living arrangements, even if sexual intimacy is an element. This includes polygamy (one man, multiple women), polyandry (one woman, multiple men), opposite-sex cohabitation or monogamous homosexual unions.
Though marital benefits are well documented (see "Why Marriage Matters: 21 Findings from the Social Sciences" at www.americanvalues.org), many argue fairness and equality require society to confer similar status to alternative arrangements. Others believe doing this also removes social stigmas and thereby increases relationship commitment.
Leaving aside the powerful values, morals and religious arguments, worldwide health and wellness research shows other living arrangements -- even if equated in law to traditional heterosexual marriage -- do not provide similar benefits to society or the individuals involved.
For example, neither civil unions nor domestic partnerships prompt gay couples to change high-risk sexual practices, showing that actions at the heart of the AIDS epidemic and other health issues of significance in the gay community are more behavioral than sexual. This is the hard science, not some "homophobic screed."
Well, since there are so few examples of societies that have embraced same-sex marriage over an extended period of time, it's hard to imagine what "hard science" Curt could be citing. But let's imagine it is true, that marriage does confer longer, happier, and more prosperous lives on straights ... but not on gays who sneak into the married camp. Curt surely isn't afraid that it will cheapen or debase the quality of his marriage if Bruce and Andrew next door wear wedding bands, and I hope he isn't worried that his lifespan and income will be diminished. More disturbing, however, would be if entering into a stable, permanent, and state-approved relation with a person of the same sex really would bestow the magic benefits Curt and others attribute to marriage. Fighting to deny gays marriage would be the same as fighting to deny them (for instance) organ transplants or education that would allow them to earn more money. It would be similar to fighting to have them live poorer and die younger. I have to admit, that position sounds more wicked than anything gay people might do behind closed doors.
But I am sure Curt Smith is not wicked, so he must have something else in mind. Attend the "First Tuesday" debate and let me know what it is.
My own view on this issue is that it isn't that gay marriage is the civil rights struggle of the 21st century. It is part of a conflict we see around the world as religion and the state redefine their relations to one another. Eventually, I expect that we will clarify the fact that getting married has two parts, is approved by two overarching institutions: it has a civil component when it is sanctioned by the state, and a religious component when it is sanctioned by a church. Gays will eventually be entitled to the first, but not necessarily the second. Some churches will continue to discriminate against gays, and it would be wrong for homosexuals to try to use the courts to force churches to perform ceremonies. But right now many religious people fear that this will be the strategy, that obtaining a right to civil unions is a tactical first step to assaulting churches and their dogmas and rules.
As with the anxieties that express themselves over teaching evolution in public schools, there are real fears at work here, not only political opportunism (although of course there is some of that as well). (Understanding and addressing these anxieties will require people like me to be more sympathetic than I was in my treatment of the views of IFI's head above.)
Want to learn more about this controversy? Google and Yahoo have collections of current news articles. For a balanced presentation of all sides of the controversy, check out religioustolerance.org.
If this issue excites you, the three organizations featured in this event give you plenty of options for engagement. Get a hold of the Indiana Family Institute if the idea of Bruce and Steve exchanging marriage vows gives you the willies. Get in touch with Indiana Equality if you think LGBT persons should be treated like, well, like persons. And contact ACLU-Indiana if you think LGBT persons ought to be treated like persons even though they give you the willies. ¶ 7:40 PM 0 comments
In the meantime, you can read a synopsis of the plot of "Carmen" here. This is from http://tofuhut.blogspot.com/
¶ 11:42 AM 0 commentsMadosini Manquina aka Latozi Mpahlele
Madosini
- Sphetukano / Uxam Ulilela Abantwana Bakhe / Weny Se GoliMadosini
- BafaziI was in college when I happened upon a mixtape of traditional Xhosa music. Most of the tape was comprised of the astonishing Madlamini and Her Witchdoctors' 1980 Sounds of the Transkei album, a collection of songs from the gorgeous, otherworldly Zulu vocal choir that is both out of print and unjustifiably MIA on the internet. As obscure as that Transkei album is, the last ten minutes of that beloved mix were even moreso: labeled only 'Madosini - Mouthbow - Four Songs' the end of the tape was unlike anything I've ever heard before or since. The type of instrument playing on the recording was impossible for me to place; the sound was tinny and wheedling, like a combination of a flute and a musical saw. The mystery instrument somehow produced oddly ethereal overtones, not unlike Mongolian or Tuvan throat singing. The strange thrum of the buzzing strings mimicked the pop and hiss of surface noise on a record, a sound I've always found warm and lulling. The singer's voice had many of the same qualities; she was authoritative but gentle, a balance of rough directness and elegant delicacy.Several years later, while transferring the tape to CD, I found myself again transported by this amazing music and decided to investigate further. Madosini turns out to be the acknowledged master of a number of indigenous Xhosa instruments: the isitolotolo (a variety of wooden Jew's harp), the uhadi and the mhrubhe.The umhrubhe was the instrument that had so perplexed me on first listen; it is played with a bow like an upright bass, but the upper half of the umhrubhe is held in the mouth. The musician changes the sound by bending the umhrubhe while increasing pressure with the bow or by plucking the strings. The ghostly overtones are created by widening or narrowing the resonant chamber of one's mouth while whistling and bowing the string. It's a complicated performance technique and one that, again, evokes that of a Tuvan traditional instrument: the mouth bow known as the 'ca'. Madosini has been playing these instruments since her teen years. Though at least pushing seventy (she's unsure of her exact birthdate), Madosini now records on the South African MELT label and continues to perform live, recently touring with the internationally acclaimed traditional Xhosa troupe Amampando and playing WOMAD in 2002. 2003 saw the release of the African
documentary film Spirits of the Uhadi, in which Madosini meets with Thandiswa Mazwai, a young South African pop star who she befriends and teaches to perform the music of her ancestors.
Madosini takes her role as one of the few surviving Xhosa virtuosos quite seriously; the uhadi and umhrubhe are considered primitive and antiquated by many newly-Westernized contemporary Southern Africans but Madosini is determined not to see the instruments fade into obscurity. She does a considerable amount of community outreach and touring throughout Africa and Europe to both youth groups and public crowds to increase awareness of the rich tradition and still enchanting sound of traditional Xhosa music. As Madosini says, “When I play my instruments, the idea is to tell the people that without nature there is no life and without life there is no music. These are the foundation stones for humanity."The music I have on the Hut today comes from a test-recording session with Madosini dating from 1987. All of these songs were later released in a much different form on Madosini's eponymous 2001 MELT album, but I don't believe that these particular recordings have ever been issued in any form. They find Madosini in excellent form; raw (I love the exclamation of breath as she clears her throat between songs), vibrant and powerful. The first mp3 track contains three songs: 'Sphetukano', 'Uxam Ulilela Abantwana Bakhe' and 'Weny Se Goli'; all three feature Madosini on vocals and the umhrubhe. The second track, 'Bafazi,' features Madosini on vocals and on the uhadi. I am under the impression that these songs are effectively originals, crafted from the natural hybrid of Madosini's own compositions and of the traditional themes of indigenous Xhosa music.I hope you enjoy these four songs as much as I do; I've been listening to them for almost a decade and they still sound new to me.Listen to this realaudio BBC piece on Madosini, featuring a live performance and an interview. The story of Madosini being stripped of her instruments at the airport (they seem to have thought they were bows of the weapon variety) and of her proving their use to customs officials is a jaw-dropper.-
Listen to some realaudio samples of Xhosa instruments and choirs on this PBS page and read from this collected English translation of Xhosa folklore. Caveat emptor on that folklore collection: the 'translator' is a colonial occupant from 1886 with something less than a full appreciation of the people whose stories he's committing to paper (he compares the tales in his preface to "the blocks of wood in the form of cubes with which European children amuse themselves"). Undoubtedly, these stories are colored more than somewhat in the retelling, but they're still pretty compelling; take a peek at the loopy Story of the Cannibal's Wonderful Bird.-The 2004 issue of Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa features an interview with Madosini about the technical process of playing and composing for the umrhubhe as well as the place of the instrument in the culture of the Xhosa people. You can order the magazine from the link above for about $45US or do what I'm doing and get thee to a library.-For a very technical explanation (spectrographic analysis, CoolEdit and M.C. Escher are
invoked) of how the umhrubhe is played, how it produces overtones and how
recording this music affects it's sound, have a go and read this
sadly graphic-less but still fascinating essay on Xhosa music.
¶ 6:50 AM 0 commentsAmerica’s war in Iraq, from its start, did not go as President Bush’s administration had predicted. Though the U.S. army captured Baghdad and Iraq’s other major cities easily enough, and encountered little resistance in abolishing the detested regime of Saddam Hussein, Iraqis did not greet America’s forces with the gratitude that they had been told to expect. Far from treating America’s soldiers as liberators, which is how they looked upon themselves, Iraqis regarded them as conquerors. It was a characterization for which most Americans were shockingly unprepared.
Frustrated, the American invaders believed they were being misunderstood. The leadership in Washington had proclaimed repeatedly that its quarrel was not with the Iraqi people but with Saddam’s regime. It had assured its soldiers of the nobility of their mission, not just to end a dangerous military threat but to wipe out tyranny and create the conditions for democracy. Wasn’t that why the armies of their fathers and grandfathers had disembarked in 1944 in France, to a delirious welcome by the local population? In 1945, moreover, the defeated Germans and Japanese, taking for granted the victors’ benevolence, willingly established free and democratic regimes. So why were the Iraqis so hostile?
Notwithstanding the political and cultural diversity among them, most Iraqis took the position that the American army was their enemy and placed serious obstacles in the way of its efforts to stabilize the country. This was the response of Sunnis and Shi’ites, Baghdadis and provincials, extremists and moderates, students, tribesmen, professionals, peasants, Saddam’s followers and his foes. By the third year of the war, many Shi’ites, perceiving an opportunity to shift political domination to themselves, had adopted with some wariness a strategy of cooperating with the occupiers. Iraq’s Kurdish community, to whom the occupation presented an opening to long-sought independence, did the same. But the once-powerful Sunnis, with nothing to gain, waged a fierce insurgency against the occupiers. United in mistrust of the Americans, however, Sunnis, Shi’ites, and Kurds were all impatient for them to go home.
Why were Iraqis so much more hostile than America’s defeated enemies had been after World War II? Why, unlike the Germans and the Japanese, did they impugn America’s ideals and objectives? Why, after President Bush declared “mission accomplished,” did Americans keep dying on the battlefield? Clearly, the leadership in Washington had initiated the war on the basis of a grievous miscalculation of Iraq and of the Arabs.What the American leadership had failed to calculate, or simply dismissed, was Arab nationalism. Much as Iraqis were driven by sectarianism—Sunnis versus Shi’ites, Arabs versus Kurds—a long history of hostility to foreign occupation served as a bond among them. Yet American leaders, in deciding to invade Iraq, chose not to take this bond, and the deep emotions of Arab nationalism, into account.Back in mid-2003, a few months after the invasion, when it looked to Washington as if its war had been won, President Bush was cautioned by French president Jacques Chirac about Arab nationalism, the power of which he had experienced as a young army officer in Algeria forty years before. Chirac told Bush that Arab nationalism was a rising danger to allied forces. “I cannot disagree with you more, Jacques,” Bush replied. “Iraqis love us. We liberated them from a bloody dictator. The very few who fight against us are either remnants of the old regime, who are responsible for massive massacres and the use of torture chambers, or foreign terrorists, who hate life itself.” The bloodshed of the years since then has confirmed how poorly informed the American president was.
To be sure, Germany and Japan, America’s enemies in World War II, were driven by their own nationalism. But intrinsic to German and Japanese nationalism was a different conception of the United States, which imparted to both defeated peoples some confidence that the victor’s presence, if not painless, might be benign. That was not true of Arab nationalism, which had embedded in it significant suspicion of, if not outright hostility to, the United States. America represented the Christian West, which had been the enemy of the Arabs for fourteen hundred years. The twentieth century had been particularly catastrophic for relations between them. Then, on September 11, 2001, in the embers of the World Trade Center, the gap drastically widened. History had not been kind to the feelings between Arab and American cultures.It is fair to say that America, in initiating the war, had a duty to foresee—or, at least, to make a serious effort to foresee—what it would encounter among the Arabs. Arab nationalism was not a hidden phenomenon. Grasping its essence did not demand sophisticated minds, much less sophisticated secret services. The intelligence establishment’s failures in bringing on the war have been amply documented. The blame for miscalculating what ensued after the American army rolled over Iraq must start with the president and be distributed among all those who advised him that Iraq’s conquest would be, in the words of the CIA’s director, a cakewalk.
America had available the wisdom not only of distinguished scholars but also of experienced diplomats and journalists. The literature was copious. Library shelves were crowded with basic information in books of history, religion, and sociology, even poetry and fiction. The books did not always agree—nationalism by its nature is elusive—but America’s leaders cannot be forgiven for dismissing the admonition to know thine enemy. They were derelict in their duty to consult the experts, crack the books.In an article in The New York Times Magazine, a revealing statement suggested that what was involved was more than neglect. It quoted a senior White House official who derided the “reality-based community,” men and women who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” In the Bush administration, the official told the writer, “we create our own reality . . .
we’re history’s actors . . . and all of you will be left to just study what we do.” The assertion, corresponding with what is publicly known of the process that led to the war, has the ring of accuracy. Its disdain for data expressed a worldview that diverges from centuries of Western intellectual tradition. In precluding the need for information, it conveyed a reliance on what can at best be called ideology permeated by elements of the supernatural. It produced a war plan that left U.S. forces vulnerable to Arab fury, which they were not prepared to handle.Let us admit that Arab culture is, in so many ways, distant from Western experience. American education pays scant attention to the ideas and events that produced the Arab mind. Even at their most diligent, Westerners have a problem getting beneath the surface of Arab society. But that does not absolve the leaders who chose to initiate an invasion of Iraq of the duty to take account of the culture and grasp what the impact of an invasion was likely to be. Arab nationalism, the “discernible reality” that America’s soldiers encountered, proved a powerful force for which they were in no way prepared.
Nationalism, let us repeat, is not easy to define. Arab or other, it is not a doctrine. Nowhere is it rooted in critical thought, intellectual calculation, rationalism. Rather, it is an awareness, a consciousness, a frame of mind. Nationalism can be rash, even passionate, particularly in extreme forms. But at its core nationalism is mystical. A nationalist need not be mystic, since even among the most cerebral a space in the mind exists for mystical bonds. Love is an expression of these bonds; so is nationalism, a kind of love. But what other than nationalism explains one’s choking up over a symbol, a rectangle of often tattered or faded cloth whose design identifies it as a national flag?All nationalism emerges out of a community’s shared memory. The memory is not necessarily accurate, and it is rarely verifiable. It often embraces collective pride—or shame. It may reach back beyond recorded history, but historical uncertainty does not weaken its hold. Nationalism is a mystical attachment to historical roots that guides a common destiny.
For the Arabs, historical memory is the experience of a community whose members, with rare exceptions, are Muslim and speak the Arabic language. Though they are currently divided into many sovereign states and many more sects, they share an attachment to the Quran, the basic Muslim scripture. Almost all speak the language in which the Quran is written. For reasons of history, the Arab world is geographically and politically divided. But their religion and language unite the Arabs. So do the lessons, correct or not, they have learned from their history.Ibn Khaldun, the Arabs’ greatest secular thinker, understood the tie between history and mysticism as long ago as the fourteenth century. He identified the Arab people with asabiyya, a term rendered as “group feeling” in the standard translation of his classic, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. Other scholars have translated asabiyya as “tribal bonding,” “zealous partisanship,” “the collective will to
power,” and “the sentiment of group solidarity that results from kinship, blood ties and common descent.” Each of these translations implies the presence of a mystical tie among Arabs. Ibn Khaldun attributes this tie to Islam. Writing in an age of Arab weakness, he laments that the Arabs, after Muhammad had transformed them from hostile tribes to a religious community, were not able to make better use of their asabiyya.
"Religion cemented their leadership with the religious laws and its ordinances, which explicitly and implicitly, are concerned with what is good for [Arab] civilization. . . . As a result, the royal authority and government of the Arabs became great and strong. Later on, . . . they neglected religion. They were ignorant of the connection of their asabiyya. . . . They became as savage as they had been before. . . . They returned to their desert origins."
The experience of bonding that is at the core of Ibn Khaldun’s theories took place in the mashreq, the Arabic word for the area encompassing present-day Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine. Geographers sometimes call it the “fertile crescent.” Though Islam was born in Arabia, the Arabs soon spread their faith and their power to the mashreq, which became the heartland of Arabic culture. Though the links remain strong, the mashreq stands apart from Egypt and Arabia. It stands even further apart from the maghreb—Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritania, Libya; the very name, which means “the west,” affirms its distance. It was in the mashreq that the Arabs’ collective memory and nationalism were formed. With deference to the contributions of the maghreb states to Arab culture, it must be acknowledged that the mashreq remains the Arab core. And so it will be the essential focus of this book.
The Next Indy was conceived as the flip-side, the Janus-faced sibling of IndyBuzz. IndyBuzz began as an effort to tell people in Indianapolis about the cool policy-wonky and intellectual events that are coming up. That alone turned out to be a big job. A lot of cool stuff is happening, more than be comfortably consumed by one person ... and no one is doing a good job of aggregating this kind of info. (For a taste of what's involved, try visiting a university's webpage to find out upcoming events, then remember that many of the best events are organized by departments or schools that forget to tell the university's webmaster, which necessitates poking around further ... now multiply that by 50).
IndyBuzz evolved into something more ambitious. More than just offering announcements about events worth making the time to attend, more even than making recommendations, IndyBuzz tries to make events deeper and more meaningful ... for those who attend and for the community itself. So it tries to prepare people for an event by explaining why it's important, by suggesting a couple of useful articles about the event's topic, by pointing out some websites with more information or a couple of books that are especially good ... and maybe most importantly, by identifying local groups that are trying to solve the problems being addressed by the event. Time-consuming, that's what this process is ... if done well, an IndyBuzz blurb takes longer to prepare than the event itself.
But the site has been popular, and I learn a lot. The Next Indy could be seen as looking backward at events past, where IndyBuzz looks ahead to events that are on the horizon, thus the picture of Janus, the two-faced Roman gentlemen who styled himself as the patron-saint of beginnings and gates. But the reality is that The Next Indy isn't only looking back, thumbing up or thumbing down a talk that happened last night or a play from last week. It ought to be looking to the present ... what does this event tell us about our community? And it ought to look forward too ... after this event, where do we go from here? ¶ 1:32 PM 0 comments
