The Language and Music of America

                                                                                     

The Revolt of the Masses

                    

     It shocked me when I heard one critic say that Bad Bunny’s halftime performance at the Super Bowl was un-American. Why? The two main reasons given were: the music was in Spanish, so people couldn’t understand the lyrics. The second reason: the music was foreign. To follow that logic, speaking Spanish and performing various genres of Latin American music make the performers un-American, even if they are born in the United States. 

     From what I recall, the same criticism was leveled at Kendrick Lamar for his performance at last year’s Super Bowl. “We can’t understand the lyrics,” or “we don’t know what he’s singing about,” essentially saying his lyrics are unintelligible and his music is different. “Real” Americans don’t get it. Therefore, Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny are “un-American.” 

     The vast majority of Americans said they enjoyed the performances of both Bad Bunny and Kendrick Lamar. Americans, in the millions, stream the two artists' music. Today, African Americans account for about 14% of the U.S. population, nowhere near enough people to make rap one of the top selling musical genres in the country, which means a lot of "White" Americans are streaming hip hop and rap. The same with Latino music. For listeners to stream Bad Bunny in the millions, many "white" Americans music lovers are listening to his modernized blend of Latin rock, salsa, and reggaeton. 

     Super Bowl fans and fans across the country and around the world dug Benito Ocasio Martinez's halftime show, 145 million worth, appreciating the music, the dancing, the "vibe," the staging, the passion, energy, and style of the performance, even if it was different. It reminded me of the wave created by the Buena Vista Social Club in 1996, millions listening, even if they didn't understand the lyrics, the power of music. Sure, many said they didn’t like the performance or the music. It wasn’t their “cup of tea,” which is fine. None of us like everything we hear, either, but to say something is un-American. That’s different. It raises the question: what is American? 

     Is speaking English a requirement to be an American? It is on one portion of the U.S. citizenship test. To become U.S. citizens, applicants need to communicate in enough English to pass the test, which doesn’t mean fluency, by a long shot. If an applicant can say, “The President lives in the White House,” “citizens can vote,” and “the flag is red, white, and blue,” they’re in, as far as English fluency goes. 

     Is English the official language in the U.S.? No, not yet, and not even during the signing of the constitution. A number of the founding fathers rejected an "official" language, since they were of Dutch, French, Scott, Irish, and Welsh extraction, like John Jay, Esbert Benson, and Martin Van Buren (whose first language was Dutch) and their roots in New Amsterdam, which became New York and New Jersey. Their ancestors spoke Welsh, French, Galic, and Dutch, different than the colonists in upper New England who spoke primarily English. 

     At the time, Florida was a territory of Spain and Spanish the primary language, before a border with New Spain existed and Spanish and hundreds of indigenous languages were used throughout the Americas. Later, France settled Louisiana, and French became the language of the land, which today can be heard in Cajun and Creole. One must take into account the thousands of languages imported from Africa with the slaves, who first arrived in 1619, during the colonial period, right there with the founding of the country, some of the words seeping into Southern culture. Without Africa, we'd have no blues or jazz.

     Some early settlers learned to speak the many of North America’s indigenous languages, like Navajo in the west, Cherokee in the south, and the Uto-Aztecan languages of Shoshoni and Camanche in the plains, some linguists say whose roots go back to the Aztec Nahuatl languages to Tenochtitlan. 

     So why did America’s founders and, later, "enlightened" legislators, reject adopting one official language? The consensus was adopting an official language was “undemocratic” and a “threat to individual liberty.” Time and time again proposals to adopt one official language were rejected because “language choice was tied to liberty and practical inclusivity rather than state power.” Essentially, adopting one official language, even English, was “Un-American.” 

     Isn’t it ironic, after 250 years, when the brightest of America’s founders understood unity in different languages, Donald Trump has proposed an English Unity Act, to adopt English as the official language, an action that nationalizes language, just the opposite of Republican values, and what the founding fathers and those who followed argued was against America’s values of liberty and choice. 

     Today, nearly 50 million Americans speak Spanish and millions more dabble in it. Latin American dishes, especially Mexican foods, are staples in the American diet. Without Spain and Mexico, there would be no mythic American cowboy. We eat Italian, French, Japanese, Chinese, Middle Eastern, and African foods without a second thought. We listen to music and appreciate art from around the world. American cars are designed and constructed by the hands of foreigners from Mexico to Europe and Asia. 

     The foreign language taught most in American schools, K-12 and into university study is Spanish. I see Mexican and Guatemalan nannies speaking Spanish to the American children in their care, the children answering in Spanish. American wars and industrial incursions in Spanish-speaking countries have created massive amounts of migration into the U.S., the same for our wars in the Philippians, China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Iran, and across the Middle East. So, to say Bad Bunny’s thirteen-minute Super Bowl halftime performance was un-American is complete ignorance. 

     There would be no “salsa, cumbia, or reggaeton without the rhythms of the Caribbean, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Colombia, but neither would they exist without the American big band sounds of the 20s, 30s, and 40s, including Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Louie Armstrong, Perez Prado, and Tito Puente. Today's young, hip Latin American music is a fusion of genres and cultures, just like American music, the guitar from Arabic countries and Spain, the violins from Italy, the saxophone from Austria, the tuba from Germany, the percussion from Africa and the Caribbean. There would be no Bad Bunny, Pitbull, Jenny Rivera, Peso Pluma, or Carol G. without Grandmaster Flash, Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, NWA, or Jay Z, who had the courage to stick with Bad Bunny, even after all the flak.

     Personally, I carry a soft spot for Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, and Virgin Islanders in my heart. During Vietnam, the U.S. dropped the Spanish language requirement necessary to serve in the military, and many Spanish-speakers from the Rio Grande Valley and the Caribbean fought and died in those seething jungles, right by the sides of kids from Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and California. All are my brothers, and their language and music are purely American.