Foto: Vivián Álvarez
It’s not easy living on this side of the border. We are away from our roots, our family, our abuela-revering practices, our prideful (sometimes questionable) history and a conviviality that could withstand centuries of trauma with some eyes-rolling-backward cooking, and tortillas recién hechas. We make great efforts to keep the family together despite the survival-like wages, but nonetheless we suffer. Along with our severed cultural fabric, we also forget about the power of music. The power of our music. Music that is present when we celebrate literally anything and everything. With this we are also losing the dance steps to this music that make your mom and dad nostalgic for their rancho or those 3-day raggers in their pueblos. When we lose those dance steps, we lose a connection with our elders including our parents.
It’s not all romantic as some of the song lyrics have messages of violence, machismo, racism etc., but the functionality of our music is real. Our norteñas, rancheras, polkas and cumbias are all links to memories and a security blanket of where we come from. In this hyper-technological social re-weaving, how we relate to each other is rapidly morphing, so with even more urgency we can stand to preserve music that protects our emotional, social and spiritual well-being.
As a child I loved to dance (my mom says), but as I got older, I got “self-conscious” and I didnt want anybody to look at me shaking it up. I only danced on stage in my ballet folclórico big skirt with bright-colored bows to songs like “La Negra.” Although I’m grateful for those dances because in my family it was usually the only outlet I had to keep ties with our old school moves, I didn’t know how much I needed to dance without the lights, the applause, and the choreographies.
I don’t think this applies to just us Mexicans, but to most of our south-of-the-border compatriots that probably had to ride La Bestia in hopes of supporting our families via the American dream. We can help ease the stress of living in this country by continuing to do the things weve done for centuries to survive, know our music and dance to it.
So if you don’t know how to dance a cumbia, ask your tía or tío to teach you. If you don’t know how to speak Spanish, ask your abuelita or abuelo to tell you’re their favorite viejita, and then translate it on “Tío Google.” And I know sometimes when you see your tíos dance a norteña, they’ve got the most stone-faced looks, but I know somewhere in there they’re actually enjoying themselves, and are comforted that they still got the moves to dance to las buenas, so pay attention to what theyre doing. And if you already dance, keep dancing and show your sobrinos. It’s these moments that show us how deep and nuanced the intersections of art, culture and experience really are.
This is a kind of Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equally with dance moves, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Music, Dance and the pursuit of Happiness.
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Laura Cambron.
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