Eclectic Company: Sorted Cultures

It’s been said that American culture has overtaken the cabled and wired world, and for the most part, regrettably, I find it’s true. Not because I mind others enjoying what we create and take pride in or just take for granted, but because it often eclipses and supplants the cultures of other peoples, other places, and I hate the thought that we have become a very homogenous planet, with everyone everywhere thinking and doing the same things in the same ways – mostly American ways. That’s why I’m so keen on celebrating and preserving the cultures and traditions of others, and why I want to make culture and tradition-preserving converts out of everyone I meet. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean that I like or even appreciate all the cultural artifacts and styles of all the cultures in all the world, or that I want things here at home to stay the same as they were when we were all making our culture at home in the kitchen or sitting around the fireplace, singing and playing our instruments while mom baked apple pie and dad whittled toys for us. I just like the fact that those forms of culture exist here and that other forms exist abroad, and that other people make and enjoy their own cultures as much as I make and enjoy mine.

And when I say culture, of course I mean pop culture too, because it’s today’s pop culture that will underpin what our grandkids will think of as the “traditional” culture of tomorrow. It’s almost impossible to go to a folk festival or folk song society sing around these days and not end up singing 1950s, '60s and '70s rock songs, with the occasional nod to Mumford and Sons or some other Top 10 band, or to attend an ethnic wedding, and after the traditional Greek, Irish, Polish, Russian, Jewish, Indian, Vietnamese, Native American or whathaveyou dances, not find the DJ spinning PSY’s “Gangnam Style” by overwhelming popular request.

That’s one of the things I’ve been thinking these past few weeks, while the POSSLQ and I have been cruising around from Barcelona to the U.A.E., making stops in Egypt, Oman and Dubai. Onboard Royal Caribbean’s Serenade of the Seas, and in every port we visited, there were plenty forms of American culture mashed up with local traditions, and while much of it was interesting and some of it was amusing, not all of it was enjoyable. I particularly disliked hearing your average band from Malaysia or Croatia or Mexico singing American pop songs with weird accents, the songs obviously learned phonetically. Oh the music sounded great, the instruments played well, and even better than that. But the lyrics, man, the lyrics, to some of my favorite songs, crushed or lost in the mix with sloppy syllables and misunderstood lines. And what’s up with the Neil Diamond fetish all British cruise guests seem to have? If I heard “Sweet Caroline” sung one more time, all the Brits waving their arms in the air and shouting along with the chorus (“So good, so good, so good, so good”) I think I might really have slugged someone.

But there were two notable things from the last hours of our day in Dubai: The airport has several prayer rooms to which Muslims are called by the amplified voice of a muezzin at each of the five daily prayer times. I heard the pure and resonant, mellifluous minor key intoning of a gentleman who could easily have been a Cantor in my synagogue, the sounds so reminiscent of Hebrew prayers, or of the weekly singsong of the Torah (Old Testament) verse readers. Three times over 11 hours while we sat in chairs of varying discomfort levels around the airport, the muezzin sang his call to the faithful to join him in praise to Allah. And each time, Muslims in various uniforms and different styles of Western and Middle Eastern clothing moved purposefully to the prayer rooms marked clearly, separately for women and men. The corridor to these spaces had simple labels warning that no napping or sleeping in the prayer rooms would be tolerated. Each time I heard the muezzin’s song, I appreciated his voice even more, and wished I could hear him chant a whole service in his sweet, sad, fervent manner.

And the other thing? Not musical at all. While waiting interminably to check in for our 2:25 a.m. flight, we read our books, and moved leisurely from place to place around the pre-check-in Departures area. We had one priceless moment with a young traditionally-garbed (in long white shirt-like robe or gallibaya) Arabic gentleman we met at a food court while he and his wife in full-body veil or burqa (and texting interminably, in culture-jarring fashion, on her smartphone) were waiting for their midnight leave taking. Although his English was very limited, and our Arabic almost nonexistent, he did make some small talk about Americans of note, telling us that George Bush was his good friend, and that our “King” Obama was a good man. Before offering us a share of his Subway sandwich, which we declined politely because we were stuffed with double scoops of Cold Stone Creamery ice creams with mix-ins (talk about cultural mashups!), he came over to whisper that Osama bin Laden had been a great big donkey, saying big in Arabic (kabir, pronounced kah-BEER) and donkey in English. I wanted to learn the Arabic for donkey and checked it out with Mr. Google via free airport wifi, and found both the Arabic script version of the word and its transliteration as Hmar, pronounced by our friend as himaar when I showed it to him on my iPhone. Which is how I learned that in slang Arabic, calling someone a donkey is mildly pejorative, just as it is in slang American, meaning, of course, stupid, or even “an ass.” Calling Osama bin Laden a big stupid/big ass was clearly an attempt at friendship and solidarity. I was quite touched.

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