Background music
It wasn't until Brendan that I realized what an odd childhood I had by most standards. In my mind, I was very average. Mom, Dad, three sisters, two female dogs, several female hamsters, and a parakeet (or three) in a pear tree. Technically they were in a cage and I was the one climbing a pear tree... and falling out... but I digress.
To start, my mom is Canadian. She never got her citizenship, specifically so she could take my sisters and I back to Canada if anything happened to my Dad. Yes, this means I'm a dualie (DOO'lee). I fell like this isn't particularly unusual, especially in California, but we were hardly the exotics in the family.
On my Dad's side my great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather was an immigrant from Scotland (via Nana), or so I've been told. Dad loved this side of his heritage so my lullabies were Black Watch pipes and drums. Still, that was a few generations back. Dad was American through and through.
On my Mom's side, Grandma's parents and Grandpa were all immigrants from Poland. Fun fact - there's no comparable sound to "H" in Polish. My grandfather refused to have his kids learn Polish, so Mom didn't think about that when they named me and my Grandpa couldn't pronounce my name for several years. I'd include music from Poland here, but we never listened to any that I know of growing up, other than Chopin.
As for the rest of the crew:
- my aunt is from the Czech Republic
- her son married a woman whose parents immigrated from Korea (or maybe grandparents? I thought they were first gen)
- a different cousin's wife is Quebecois (she and my cousin are bilingual, but her family only speaks French)
- that cousin's uncle is from Germany (I really wanted to put link the Rammstein video Amerika, but it has cussing, if you understand German)(and my uncle didn't listen to Rammstein that I know of, so it wasn't really appropriate anyhow)
- the uncle's son moved to Germany to play professional hockey (he won the national hockey championship last year!) and married to a girl from Finland. (I used to have one of these instruments, btw)
I think that's everyone on Mom's side...
My closest cousin on my Dad's side is married to an African-American, and her oldest sons are half Latino. I married Brendan, and his Dad immigrated from the Netherlands when he was 19 (He has a thing for Fleetwood Mac). Get-togethers in my family are like a mini-UN.
Toss in that we "adopted" townhouses of international students and our Thanksgiving and Christmas parties included Elephant-back rides ("We don't ride piggies in India"), homemade dumplings from the Taiwanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese students, songs in Indonesian, Korean, and a slew of African languages, and I was completely confused that Brendan (and apparently a lot of other Americans) would think that other cultures are some sort of threat to "'Merica!" Since getting dumped in with my family B doesn't think that anymore, but it was a weird point of contention for awhile. How could I be a loyal American without disowning the rest of the world? But I was equally confused - why would anyone want to live in just one culture?
And now you know where my love of "world" music comes from.
To start, my mom is Canadian. She never got her citizenship, specifically so she could take my sisters and I back to Canada if anything happened to my Dad. Yes, this means I'm a dualie (DOO'lee). I fell like this isn't particularly unusual, especially in California, but we were hardly the exotics in the family.
On my Dad's side my great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather was an immigrant from Scotland (via Nana), or so I've been told. Dad loved this side of his heritage so my lullabies were Black Watch pipes and drums. Still, that was a few generations back. Dad was American through and through.
On my Mom's side, Grandma's parents and Grandpa were all immigrants from Poland. Fun fact - there's no comparable sound to "H" in Polish. My grandfather refused to have his kids learn Polish, so Mom didn't think about that when they named me and my Grandpa couldn't pronounce my name for several years. I'd include music from Poland here, but we never listened to any that I know of growing up, other than Chopin.
As for the rest of the crew:
- my aunt is from the Czech Republic
- her son married a woman whose parents immigrated from Korea (or maybe grandparents? I thought they were first gen)
- a different cousin's wife is Quebecois (she and my cousin are bilingual, but her family only speaks French)
- that cousin's uncle is from Germany (I really wanted to put link the Rammstein video Amerika, but it has cussing, if you understand German)(and my uncle didn't listen to Rammstein that I know of, so it wasn't really appropriate anyhow)
- the uncle's son moved to Germany to play professional hockey (he won the national hockey championship last year!) and married to a girl from Finland. (I used to have one of these instruments, btw)
I think that's everyone on Mom's side...
My closest cousin on my Dad's side is married to an African-American, and her oldest sons are half Latino. I married Brendan, and his Dad immigrated from the Netherlands when he was 19 (He has a thing for Fleetwood Mac). Get-togethers in my family are like a mini-UN.
Toss in that we "adopted" townhouses of international students and our Thanksgiving and Christmas parties included Elephant-back rides ("We don't ride piggies in India"), homemade dumplings from the Taiwanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese students, songs in Indonesian, Korean, and a slew of African languages, and I was completely confused that Brendan (and apparently a lot of other Americans) would think that other cultures are some sort of threat to "'Merica!" Since getting dumped in with my family B doesn't think that anymore, but it was a weird point of contention for awhile. How could I be a loyal American without disowning the rest of the world? But I was equally confused - why would anyone want to live in just one culture?
And now you know where my love of "world" music comes from.
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| CANZONIERE GRECANICO SALENTINO |
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