Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

Novels and plays:

• William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" is a tragic drama about a feud between two families that prevents two young lovers from realizing their dreams and results in both their deaths.
• Dave Eggers, Zeitoun (McSweeney's, 2009), about a man who tries to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, only to be harassed because of his apparent heritage. “. . . Zeitoun is mistaken for a terrorist and subjected to a series of humiliations, locked in a cage, then a prison, all the while without being charged with anything or even being allowed to make a phone call to his wife.”
• Nuruddin Farah, North of Dawn: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2018): “Dressed in a ‘body tent’ and reciting Quoranic verses in the back of Mugdi’s car, Waliya refuses to fasten her seatbelt, stating that her death is the will of Allah. Mugdi responds that he may have to pay a heavy fine to the police if she doesn’t. Her compliance is not acquiescence. The battle lines are drawn.”
• Margaret Verble, Cherokee America: A Novel (Houghton Mifflin, 2019): “. . . the novel is about more than individual events; it’s about life in the Nation when it was a sovereign land with a government of its own. It’s also about the Cherokee culture and its rules, spoken and unspoken, that have been passed down for generations.”
• Mahir Guven, Older Brother: A Novel (Europa Editions, 2019): “A young Muslim who feels disenfranchised in the West . . .”
• Xiaolu Guo, A Lover’s Discourse: A Novel (Grove Press, 2020): “The book reverses the common theme of a perplexed Westerner baffled by the habits and rituals of an Asian country. Transplanted to London, the Chinese-born narrator struggles with the city’s transport system, tries to find “Brexit” in her dictionary and wonders if London Wall is anything like the Great Wall of China.”

Poetry

I see vapors exhaling from unexplored countries,  

I see the savage types, the bow and arrow, the poison'd splint, the fetich, and the obi.  

I see African and Asiatic towns,  

I see Algiers, Tripoli, Derne, Mogadore, Timbuctoo, Monrovia,  

I see the swarms of Pekin, Canton, Benares, Delhi, Calcutta, Tokio,  

I see the Kruman in his hut, and the Dahoman and Ashantee-man in their huts,  

I see the Turk smoking opium in Aleppo,  

I see the picturesque crowds at the fairs of Khiva and those of Herat,  

I see Teheran,

I see Muscat and Medina and the intervening sands, see the caravans toiling onward,  

I see Egypt and the Egyptians,

I see the pyramids and obelisks.  

I look on chisell'd histories, records of conquering kings, dynasties, cut in slabs of sand-stone, or on granite-blocks,  

I see at Memphis mummy-pits containing mummies embalm'd, swathed in linen cloth, lying there many centuries,  

I look on the fall'n Theban, the large-ball'd eyes, the side-drooping neck, the hands folded across the breast.

[Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1891-92), Book VI, “Salut au Monde” (10).]

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Culture may arise from any combination of various influences and practices.  In music, culture is not limited to relatively more apparent distinctions, such as race, sex, and gender. (Race is largely a social construct. However, it also has genetic foundation, albeit attenuated from the social construct. By contrast, culture can more easily seen as being entirely of human invention - on the other hand, without human genetics, our cultures would not be what they are.)

A champion of cultural inclusion in music is Béla Fleck. He has created several albums with great musicians from around the world, highlighting and celebrating many cultures in music.

• “Throw Down Your Heart: The Complete Africa Sessions” (2009) (203’), with Toumani Diabaté and other artists
• “The Melody of Rhythm” (2009) (63’), with Zakir Hussain and Edgar Meyer
• “Tabula Rasa” (1996) (54’), with Jie-Bing Chen on erhu (China) and Vishwa Mohan Blatt on vina (Indian side guitar) 

Snarky Puppy “is a collective of sorts with as many as 25 members in regular rotation. They each maintain busy schedules as sidemen . . . producers . . . and solo artists . . . At its core, the band represents the convergence of both black and white American music culture with various accents from around the world. Japan, Argentina, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Puerto Rico all have representation in the group’s membership.” “After a decade of relentless touring and recording in all but complete obscurity, the Texas-bred/New York-based quasi-collective suddenly found itself held up by the press and public as one of the major figures in the jazz world.” “. . . more than the cultural diversity of the individual players, the defining characteristic of Snarky Puppy’s music is the joy of performing together in the perpetual push to grow creatively.” Here are links to its releases, its playlists, a documentary film, an interview with the group’s leader, and some videos. 

Gregor Huebner is a violinist who has been praised for integrating classical, jazz and world music traditions. He is responsible for a multi-volume recording project of Latin music featuring the violin, called El Violin Latino:

• Volume 1: El Violin Latino (2009) (64’)
• Volume 2: For Octavio (2016) (64’)
• Volume 3: Los Soñadores (2019) (61’) 

In these works, modern composer Lou Harrison incorporated an Indonesian instrument, the Gamelan, into the Western classical genre:

• La Koro Sutro, for 100 voice chorus with gamelan, harp & organ (1970) (approx. 29’)
• Suite for Violin and American Gamelan (1973) (approx. 28’)
• Concerto for Piano with Javanese Gamelan (1987) (approx. 26’) 

Several other composers from the Romantic, Modern and Contemporary eras also have used cultural inclusion as a positive theme.

• Ernest Bloch, Three Jewish Poems (1913) (approx. 24’): Bloch may have been paying tribute to his father.
• Jacques Halévy, La Juive (The Jewess) (1835) (approx. 175’) (libretto): forbidden romantic love between a Jew and a Christian
• Thomas Beveridge, Yizkor Requiem (1994) (approx. 53’): combining Catholic and Jewish traditions, and music
• George Benjamin, Antara: (1987) (approx. 20’) “Antara is the ancient Inca word for panpipe, a term still in use today in Peru. And the history of the panpipes is indeed ancient, with roots dating back thousands of years around the world, not only from South America, but also China, the Pacific and Southern Europe.”
• Yehudi Wyner, Tants un Maysele (Dance and Little Story) (1981) (approx. 14’): the composer explains, “I began working on a piece that would be dancelike, filled with Hassidic-type dance rhythms, but also infused with a kind of violence and peremptory rage that one would not find normally in a Hassidic dance; and, also, with a sense of extreme mystery and confusion.”
• Mieczysław Weinberg, Polish Tunes, Op. 47, No. 2 (1950) (approx. 14’), “offer a world far removed from strife and suffering: moods are uniformly chipper and festive; tunes are folkish and catchy; and the orchestration is colorful.”
• Alexander Glazunov, Symphony No. 4 in E-flat Major, Op. 48 (1893) (approx. 31-35’): here, the composer looks outward toward German culture, instead of inward toward his native Russia.
• Jesús Guridi, Diez melodias vascas (Ten Basque melodies) (1941) (approx. 22-23’): “It is more than an agreeable orchestral setting of folk tunes, but could be heard as a ten movement suite or symphony, sometimes reminiscent of Rodrigo in its eastern Iberian gaiety and lyrical tenderness.”
• Alberto Hemsi, Quintet for Viola and String Quartet, Op. 28 (ca. 1943) (approx. 18’), “breaks from the use of Sephardic themes, and includes a movement that mimics a stomping dance and another that sounds like an English jig.”
• Joaquín Turina’s piano works (approx. 296’) present Spanish culture in sound. 

Albums:

• Guo Gan and Emre Gültekin, “Lune de Jade” (2016) (55’), features instruments from “Two different worlds who, a priori, have nothing in common”.
• Orquestra Afro-Brasileira, “80 Anos” (2022) (38’): “. . . the sole remaining member of the 1968 unit, percussionist and vocalist Carlos Negreiros, spells out the importance of the Candomblé rituals and their leader’s message: 'I became aware of what it is to be black, discovering the extraordinary potential of the Afro-Brazilian culture in the making of the national ethos.'”
• Eric Jacobsen, Sandeep Das and Kayhan Kalhor, “Blue as the Turquoise Night” (2021) (54’): “There are five pieces and although it’s nominally a classical album, much of the music is close to the diverse traditions that have inspired it.”
• Barbora Xu, “Olin Ennen” (2021) (37’): a Czech singer and instrumentalist exploring shared symbolism in Finnish and Chinese poetry
• K.G. Westman & Zaعfaran, “KG Westman & Zaعfaran” (2022) (50’): European sitarist K.G. Westman collaborates with musicians from Sweden, Egypt and India to produce this elegant set of instrumentals.
• Duke Ellington, “Far East Suite” (1966) (45’): “The Far East Suite was meant to convey the excitement and awe felt by the band when traveling to lands that were truly foreign-exotic and totally different from what most of them had experienced before.”
• Bill Alves, “Guitars and Gamelan” (2015) (51’)
• Jordi Savall & Hespèrion XXI, “Mare Nostrum” (2011) (156’): Mare nostrum is defined as “a navigable body of water (such as a sea) that belongs to a single nation or is mutually shared by two or more nations”. “Mare Nostrum (Latin for 'Our Sea') was a common Roman name for the Mediterranean Sea. The term was always somewhat ambiguous: it both implied Roman dominance of the Mediterranean and the cultural diversity of the nations that have bordered it for well over two millennia.” Savall describes the album as “an attempt at promoting intercultural dialogue, using the history of the different cultures and religions clustered around the Mediterranean both as a metaphor and as illustration.” Here are Savall and ensemble in live performance.
• Wadada Leo Smith & N’Da Kulture, “Golden Hearts Remembrance” (1997) (69’): “This sextet, which uses Eastern and Western instruments, authors into being a kind of folk music for the emerging century, one that relies deeply on poetry, improvisation, subtleties in tone, timbre, and rhythm. The six pieces here reflect Smith's ongoing concern with marrying the vanguard jazz tradition he comes from to the history of the ages in Eastern music, particularly the music of Asia.”
• Firelight Trio, “Firelight Trio” (2023) (65’), “lead us on an exhilarating jaunt from Scotland’s glens and isles through France’s majestic countryside to the glorious Balkan hillsides, and Scandinavian landscapes, all topped off with a tasty garnish of irresistible Klezmer.”
• Samuele Strufaldi, “Davorio” (2023) (45’) “is a collaborative experiment between Italian polyhedric musician Samuele Strufaldi and Ivorian artist Boris Pierrou.” “. . . Strufaldi recorded the villagers’ music and stories in the local Guéré language and they took the tapes back to Italy, where he and Pierrou wove them into a cross-cultural conversation . . .”
• Edmar Castañeda World Ensemble, “Viento Sur” (2023) (53’) is a “true global collaboration inspired by traditional Latin America rhythms (Samba, Joropo, Chacarera, Tango, Landó, Latin Jazz) from a collective of jazz artists spanning the globe . . .”
• Sam Martinelli with Ken Peplowski, “Jazz Meets the Great Brazilian Songbook” (2023) (49’)
• Tasmin Elliott & Tarek Elazhary, “So Far We Have Come” (2023) (46’) “is an album about the commonality between two musicians, between two musical traditions in fact: one English and one Arabic. The album’s beauty weaves and dances through Arabic classical and folk traditions and English dance tunes proving an enchanting listen.”
• Kate Griffin & Matchume Zango, “Tchopo” (2024) (28’): “Kate Griffin (UK banjo player) and Matchume Zango (Mozambique multi-instrumentalist) are forging a new cross-cultural collaboration celebrating the universal power of traditional music. They both bring echoes of their respective traditions to a vibrant new sound full of world rhythms, contemporary song-writing and joy.”

Now we turn to the dark side. Shakespeare’s tragedy “Romeo and Juliet” is a story of a young couple kept apart by divisions between their feuding families. The characters are from different cultures only in the narrowest sense: they are from different families within the same community, which teaches us that people can unite or divide along any lines. The story is among the most famous in literature, and is well-represented in Romantic opera, theatre and the orchestra.

• Vincenzo Bellini's opera I Capulete e I Montecchi (The Capulets and the Montagues) (1830) (approx. 120-135’) (libretto) is Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" as opera. Here are links to performances conducted by Abbado in 1966 with Aragall & Rinaldi; Muti in 1984 with Baltsa & Gruberová; Callegari in 2002 with Devia & Ganassi; and Luisi in 2008 with Netrebko & Garanča.
• Leonard Bernstein updated the story to New York City in the 1950s, where warring street gangs replace feuding families in “West Side Story”. In Bernstein’s telling, it was Puerto Ricans versus “regular Americans”. Here is a full performance of the music conducted by Bernstin (76’). Here are clips from the classic 1961 film.
• Charles Gounod, Roméo et Juliette (1967) (approx. 145-180’) (libretto) is an operatic treatment of Shakespeare’s play. Excellent performances are conducted by Cooper in 1947, Lombard in 1969, Plasson in 1998, and Minkowski with video.
• Hector Berlioz, Roméo et Juliette, Op. 7, H79 (1847) (approx. 95-100’) (libretto)
• Constant Lambert, Romeo & Juliet (1925) (approx. 30’)

Music: songs and other short pieces

• K’naan, “Wavin’ Flag” (lyrics)
• Manu Chao, “Clandestino” (lyrics)

Visual Arts

Salvador Dali, Desoxyribonucleic Acid Arabs (c. 1963)

 

• Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 6 (African) (1909)
• Wassily Kandinsky, Solid Green
• Pavel Filonov, East and West (1912-13)
• Rodolphe Bresdin, The Good Samaritan (1861)
• Nikolai Alexeev, A Young Girl in Russian Costume (1837)

Film and Stage

• The Chosen, about Hasidic Jews who struggle to fit in
• Bad Day at Black Rock, about anti-Japanese bigotry
• Beautiful People, “a portrait of the multicultural life of London,” humming “with the vital cacophony of daily life”
• Heat and Dust: two women, sixty years apart in age, confront cultural India through the respective lenses of their time
• Paisan (Paisà): this 1946 film portrays “the tenuous relationship between the recently liberated Italians and their American liberators”
• Yana’s Friends: “a light comedy about romance and culture shock”
• Embrace of the Serpent, depicting an encounter between and Amazonian Shaman and two foreign scientists

Post-World –War-II films confronting anti-semitism:

• Crossfire, portraying “a frank and immediate demonstration of the brutality of religious bigotry”
• Gentleman’s Agreement, on the “shabby cruelties of anti-Semitism”