The Story of a Young Immigrant: An Identity Created By Music - From Hendrix to Samba

Give It A Beat

I play the same note on two different strings of my guitar, and it does not sound pretty. It’s the same note, located on different areas of the fret board, so I should be hearing the same tone. Instead, my ears are left to take in what sounds like an ambulance siren. I’ve heard this oscillating, whammy-like noise hundreds of times before; it is a sign that the frequencies of the two notes do not match. The pitch difference causes the sound waves to come together in dissonant ways, creating areas of constructive and destructive interference. The physics term for it is a beat, and the science behind it is pretty darn cool, but I won't delve too much into that. My guitar needed tuning, but how much effort does it take to bring the two strings into perfect harmony with one another?

A Clash
My two identities resonate in the same manner, and for most of my childhood, I never bothered to listen to their interaction. I used to be that kid who would ride his bike up and down the street with a vuvuzela in one hand and a Brazilian flag in the other, all the while strutting my blue-green-yellow shirt, and somehow managing to balance a soccer ball between my ear and shoulder. My bi-annual visits, two months every summer and two weeks every winter, were enough to remind me just how much I loved Brazil. It was my home, where I grew up for the initial bit of my life before I got on a plane and left everything behind.

Viva Brasil!
The idolization of one country led to the resentment of another. I wanted nothing to do with the United States. As a first generation American citizen, I felt as though the burden to keep my Brazilian heritage alive was on me. In my mind, this meant shutting out all American influences. I never held my hand to my chest during the assembly pledges, I made sure to be home at 7:00 every day for traditional family dinners, and the English language was almost never spoken at home. The joke that “I didn’t speak English” quickly caught on amongst my friends, and I have to say I was slightly proud of that.

Let Music Guide The Way
By the time middle school came around, I could play more Brazilian than American songs on my guitar, and even occasionally picked up my “cavaquinho”, the most traditional, samba instrument. But it was also around this time that I was introduced to a few classics, primarily Dylan and Hendrix. I fell in love. Music began transforming from an art that allowed me to express and prove my heritage, to a source that abridged a wide cultural gap. Having The Eagles and Exaltasamba on the same iTunes playlist taught me how to listen to both cultures, and understand that they are capable of coming together. I heard the constructive and destructive interference; the ambulance siren was now almost a cry for help.

Harmony At Last
So as I sit in my room and twist the tuning pegs, I realize that it took me almost four years of guitar experience to be able to properly identify and match the resonance. Training the ear to become accustomed to specific frequencies is a time consuming skill to develop. There was no single morning when I woke up and suddenly knew how to tune a guitar. My identity has developed in the same way. The ambulance-siren-like resonance slowly dissipated. I found myself reciting the pledge alongside my classmates, this time with my hand over my heart. Everything felt more relatable. English slowly made its way into my household vocabulary, and the “I don’t speak English” jokes started to playfully get on my nerves. Music was my gateway into the United States, and although I may not understand half the idioms that come at me, I can say that my two cultures have arrived at a point of decent harmony.