Music and ICD – Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Multicultural Music: Cultural Connections Over Time

Williger, Jonathan. (23 May 2023). From Pomona to Heart Mountain: “La Banda Más Chingón en Wyoming.” Folklife Magazine.

“The cultural and geographic lineage of “La Banda Más Chingón en Wyoming” by No-No Boy with Mariachi Los Broncos is culturally layered and deeply American: a mariachi rendition of a folk-country song about a 1940s Japanese American swing band, composed in Wyoming by the son of a Vietnamese refugee from Nashville performed in Southern California. Brimming with ecstatic energy and righteous anger, the song draws connections between recent waves of migration from Central and South America and the long history of Asian American immigration and the discrimination both groups have experienced once they reached American soil.”

This recording is a great example of combining multiple cultural heritages through music. The article explicitly discusses the parallels between current Latin American migrants to the US, and Japanese Americans during World War II.

2020 Video Competition, Listening, and Collaboration

Playing for Change. (2011, May 26). Gimme Shelter. YouTube.

In these days of instructions to “shelter in place,” this video seems a particularly appropriate fit, and a reminder that none of us is facing the COVID-19 pandemic alone.

It is in the shelter of each other that the people live
Irish proverb

Playing for Change has produced many videos, among them The Weight. For that, they also produced a first and second video describing what they did and how they made it work. All of these videos were produced long before Coronavirus, but they seem particularly appropriate today. It’s especially the two “behind the scenes” videos that may be of interest to any students working on a video for the CID Video Competition, in these times when the simple act of getting together for a group project becomes impossible.

“Playing for Change is a movement created to inspire and connect the world through music. The idea for this project came from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people.”

Yo-Yo Ma: The Culture of Us

Yo-Yo Ma, Music Video: The Culture of Us.

Yo-Yo Ma, world famous cello player, is playing Bach’s solo cello suites in 36 locations around the world. And in each place he and his team partner with local organizers to “demonstrate culture’s power to create positive change… The Bach project explores and celebrates all the ways that culture makes us stronger as individuals, as communities, as a society, and as a planet.”

“The shared understanding that culture generates in these divisive times can bind us together as one world, and guide us to political and economic decisions that benefit the entire species. We are all cultural beings – let’s explore how culture connects us and can help to shape a better future.”
Yo-Yo Ma