Cultural Mixing in the Globalised World

The concept of cultural mixing is strongly felt in today’s world where the boundaries between nation states, people and communities are more porous than ever before. On the border between the United States of America and Mexico, generations of Mexican migrants have engaged in a fundamental struggle for identity that is one of belonging neither aquí (here) nor allí (there) (Kun 2015: 539). Situated in a precarious in-between world, they have used music as a mixed cultural practise that informs and responds to their unique migrant subjectivity. Likewise, in Paris, first generation young people whose parents came to France from the Maghreb world (Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia) are using new forms of mixed language as a reclamation of power and identity. Both cases speak powerfully of the transformation of place, culture and community through means of self-expression that are empowering for those concerned. As Norwegian social anthropologist Thomas Eriksen explains: ‘the cultural mixing resulting from globalisation takes many forms, usually indicating power discrepancies between the groups involved’ (Eriksen 2007: 122). In such communities where people have been marginalised from mainstream society through a discourse of ‘otherness’, and the politics of fear that prey on the ‘other’ as a menace, music and language represent an important reinvention of identity. Within a broader context of oppression and inequality, in which the questions of who has the right to travel across certain borders, whether they be national borders in the case of the Mexican sonideros (musicans), or metropolitan borders in the case of the Parisian banlieue (outer-suburban) youth, the ongoing social impact of mixing is important to examine.
Josh Kun in his essay ‘Alla in the mix: Mexican Sonideros and the Musical Politics of Migrancy’ described migrancy as a ‘sonic practise as much as a spatial one’ (Kun 2015: 544). In the music of the travelling sonideros of the Mexican and USA border, the precariousness of migrancy is expressed through musical attempts to respond to this living situation. Corrido, a form of musical folk ballad, which initially referred to European tales of thwarted love, has been a popular form of expression in Mexico since the early-20th century. Over more than a century of cross border flows, corrido songs have evolved to respond to and reflect a life concerned with the struggle for identity and belonging in the migrant world. As early as the 1920s and 30s corridos became primarily concerned with the stories of oppression and struggle in this politically charged arena of mixing. As Kun goes on to explain: “the history of the recorded corrido in fact begins with songs of undocumented immigration, labor, anti-immigrant violence, and deportation” (Kun 2015: 545). The economic collapse of the Great Depression fuelled this early period of expression. The sonic power of migrancy at this time was also documented by Mexican anthropologist Manuel Gamio who recorded that for every 100 migrants who left Mexico, 118 records were sent back (Kun 2015: 544). A practice of sharing music has long sought to enforce the idea of the border as not a line of silence but rather of active narrative, ‘a living musical witness to the injustices and triumphs of Mexican life’ (Kun 2015: 544).

Today, in live concerts in both countries, as well as online in live recordings, and in video clips such as ‘De Paisano a Paisano’ by Los Tigres del Norte, sonideros continue to engage in a world of migrant activism that seeks to make public ‘a precarious migrant subjectivity characterised by silences, invisibility, fear, and often perilous alterity’ (Kun 2015: 548). Here Kun refers to the permanent position on the margins that these people seem to fill, whether it be at ‘home’ or ‘away’, they are neither of here nor there, but rather always seen as an ‘other’. In ‘De Paisano a Paisano’ this expression of the injustice of border politics is evident in the lines ‘To brother, for wanting to work/They have waged a war patrolling/Borders that can’t be tamed’ (De Paisano a Paisano 2002). The clip realises its potential as an emotionally cathartic tool tied to the prolonged and ongoing struggle of those forced to engage in this process through its mournful lyrics, and strong stirring imagery of a desert that seems at once home and hostile. The video itself expresses a mixing of cultural forms that has become the reality of life and identity for multiple generations of Mexicans. The older male singers wear Stetson hats and Western shirts, while a young girl waves a Mexican flag, and there is a poignancy to the lyrics ‘How my country aches when crying’ which seems at odds with the upbeat, almost cheerful music it is set to (De Paisano a Paisano 2002). Mexican scholar Gustavo López Castro writes of culture forming a link between ‘absences and anguish’. He titles this decade-spanning practice, now encompassing the music of the sonideros, the ‘songbook of migrancy’ (Castro in Kun 2015: 544). This songbook broaches cross-border feelings of identity and belonging; creating, informing and shaping a vision for freedom of movements across borders, be they spatial, geo-political, or personal.

VIDEO 1: De Paisano a Paisono – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsXxVI9nvQk
Similarly, in the banlieues of Paris – urban ghetto suburbs made invisible by their position on the fringes of the global city – young people are expressing their cultural hybridity through the informal language Verlan. The use of Verlan speaks to the mixed identity of growing up in France, where descendants of post-colonial migrants are often referred to as immigrés (immigrants) despite having been born in France (Forbes 2000: 172). Verlan combines distinctive influences in a playful manner, incorporating words from a variety of languages and dialects, and reversing and ‘re-reserving’ them in a multitude of ways. For example the word arabe and its two separate Verlan iterations – beur and now rebeu – all have vastly different connotations. Beur refers to an ethnic and/or cultural origin, meaning anyone whose family is of an Arab country. It has been co-opted by the mainstream media, and is now widely used in popular society. Whereas rebeu refers specifically to a mixed French-Arab identity, and is an endearing term used by the community itself, serving as a reclamation of power over their own sense of identity. As Verlan becomes popularised, the young people of the banlieues continue to reinvent new cryptic forms for their language. In this context, Verlan serves as an active rejection of a defined French identity. Many see it as an affront in a country in which linguistic purity is regarded as a highly treasured cultural asset. For the empowered communities, however, there is a sense of power in this unsanctioned linguistic form of expression. It is what anthropologist Sabine Mabardi describes as ‘hybridity as a site of agency and a process, or strategy of survival and resistance’ (Mabardi 2000: 1).

In the 1995 film La haine, the use of Verlan, as well as other forms of cultural mixing within these banlieue communities is evident. Young protagonists, Vinz (a Jew), Said (a Beur), and Hubert (of sub-Saharan African descent), are an example of the classic trifecta known as ‘black, blanc, beur’, meaning black, white, beur. This ideal multi-ethnic mix or métissage is that which was on display in France’s victorious 1998 World Cup team, and stands in opposition to the traditional ‘bleu, blanc, rouge’ of the French flag (Forbes 2000: 177). In the film’s soundtrack, the centrality of music in cultural mixing is again evident. Rai music, itself ‘a mixture of melodic traditional Algerian melodies and coarse French pop’ (Orlando 2003: 401), is combined with the classic song ‘Non, je ne regrete rien’ by French singer Edith Piaf, revealing intersections between Magreb populations and mainstream France. Similarly, the powerful opening credit sequence, which uses documentary footage of French protests from 1968 up until the 1990s, places the film within a broader context of the accepted, and even treasured, French tradition of protest. This footage, combined with the Bob Marley song ‘Burnin’ and Lootin’, which Marley himself described as the ‘music of the ghetto’ (Forbes 2000: 173), shows how the histories and struggles of marginalised urban populations across the Atlantic are common, and mix and interact in powerful cultural forms of expression. Whilst accepting some norms of so-called ‘mainstream’ French culture, young people from these communities are also offering subversions of it that best reflect their own mixed identities. This articulates a space of belonging that is in between two worlds: that of where their family has come from, and that of where they, themselves, are going.

VIDEO 2: La Haine opening credits https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz9vgtXq_Hs

Globalisation in the modern world is a dual process. For the Mexican sonideros and Parisian youth of the banlieues, cultural mixing and the reinsertion of localised expressions of identity emerge as fundamental to their sense of belonging in a globally interconnected world. There is a simultaneous expanding outwards, overlapping and colliding of distinct forces, combined with a sense that these forms of expression are still specific to a particular place and context. We are of a mixed world, and so it is evident that cultural expression, whether that is through music, language or film, will also be mixed. These case studies show how this mixing is at once transcendent of geographical time and space, and yet, undoubtedly, spatially embedded and localised. Eriksen explains that mixing does not lead to the elimination of boundaries itself but instead, makes such boundaries ‘visible through their negotiation and re-negotiation, transcendence, transformations and reframing’ (Eriksen 2007: 110). By embracing mixed forms of expression, the Mexican sonideros and Parisian youth of the banlieues are proving that community and culture in the globally interconnected world is at once that of the here and now and that of the over there, and, ultimately, just as important to people’s lives as ever before.