Ethnicities Mezcladas!

I've had a couple of interesting experiences recently that helped me feel less alone and brought home to me the beauty of diversity and mutiple ethnicities.  The first was joining up with the Facebook group, "Hispanics Be Like."  A post asked readers how they respond when people say to them, "You're white--how can you be Latina?"  A LONG thread of responses followed, from white- appearing Latinx men and women alike, who have struggled and dealt with this issue.  It was fascinating and inspiring to hear what these folks had to say, and I suddenly felt like I had dozens of new siblings and cousins!  Thanks to all of you for sharing your experiences! We are the trailblazers for coming generations of diverse people who will demonstrate to the world that being Latin is so much more than having a particular skin color or type of appearance, or even how fluent we are in Spanish! To me, it really comes down to who we feel ourselves to be in our hearts!


The second multi-ethnic encounter I had over the week happened when I went to visit the accordion shop Liberty Bellows in Philadelphia's Center City to have an appraisal done for repair work on my aging Anglo concertina.  Yes, the name of the instrument is a bit ironic for me, but it is actually the cousin of the button accordion that's played in Tex-Mex and other Latin music. (Non-Latinos, think, Flaco Jimenez!)  It's diatonic, which means that a single key gives you get two different notes depending on whether you're pushing or pulling on the bellows.  It's sort of like inhaling or exhaling (sucking or blowing!) your breath and getting different sounds when you play a harmonica. A button accordion for this reason is different from the Lawrence Welk-type piano accordion, which is "chromatic" and produces the same note regardless of whether the musician is squeezing or drawing on the bellows. To my ear, the button accordion has a much punchier and funkier sound than the "stomach Steinway!"

 Of course, a diatonic accordion or concertina is much more complicated than a harmonica,  and they're pretty challenging for most musicians. I once owned (and played in a rudimentary way) two button accordions, and foolishly sold them when we moved to DC.  Now I have hope of eventually replacing at least one of them through a local business! (Note that what's pictured here is the more conventional piano accordion, taken from Liberty Bellows' web page  libertybellows.com.)

At Liberty Bellow, not only was I given a very reasonable estimate for the repair work, but David and I also came away with a sense of how many of Philly's immigrant groups have used the accordion in their music. Dustin, the salesman we talked to, told us that he has played accordion in Irish, Klezmer, Polka, and Samba ensembles!  And in the store's huge, museum-like free reed collection, we also saw instruments associated with music from Mexico, Italy, Argentina--on and on!

So let's all celebrate our roots with music, singing, and dancing; and affirm who we know ourselves to be in our hearts regardless of our physical appearance!