PUERTO RICO BAND TRIP
Over winter break of 2020, I had the opportunity to travel with the Maverick ‘Machine’ Athletic Band to Puerto Rico to perform in their Three Kings Day celebration. During this trip, the band learned how to play traditional songs of the celebration in order to perform in a parade with one of the local bands. In addition, we played traditional marching band music with a second band in the area for one of their parades. In addition to learning about the community’s culture, we brought some of our culture to the area. We played some of the “fan favorites” of the Maverick Machine for the community including War, Hey Baby, Land of 1000 Dances, etc. for them. While having the opportunity about learning about a different culture through music, I also had the opportunity to learn about their culture through dance, history and cuisine.
This experience allowed me to experience a lot about a different culture than mine just through the music and art of the area. I had so much fun learning how to play music from a different culture and learning why it was important for them to celebrate the holiday in the ways that they did. At first, it was really hard to learn the music style. I, and the rest of the band, thought that we were interpreting the music correctly. However, when we got to the rehearsal with the group that we were performing with, we realized that we had the groove and style all wrong and it sounded completely different from when we had practiced it. Although I was stressed that I had learned it wrong, I thought it was so cool to be able to relearn the pieces and actually play them culturally correct.
This experienced highlighted to me how differently cultures interpret music and how the culture of the region drives the music. In addition, while I was in Puerto Rico, I experienced several Earthquakes. This was definitely a shock for me because I have experienced natural disasters before, but never an Earthquake. I found it so cool how the community responded to this devastating event. There was so much binding together between individuals and they were all supportive of each other in the crisis rather than just trying to save themselves. I think this really highlights the community aspect of their culture. Puerto Rico is a territory of the U.S. and not a state. This means that they are under the leadership of the United States and members of the territory get U.S. citizenship, however, they do not get all the same benefits as U.S. states receive. The main reason for this is that the country is divided in a 50:50 split of its citizens wanting to gain statehood or remain independent. Many believe that if they become a state, they will lose some of their culture because they will be forced to assimilate to U.S. customs rather than keeping their own. Not being a state really affected the aid that they received from the U.S. after this disaster. It took days to get their water and electricity back on because the U.S. government withheld some aid. If a disaster of this magnitude where to happen in a U.S. state, the timeline of recovery and aid received would have been much faster. Because of this, it was as if they need to lean on each other for support while they waited for the support that they needed to come. In the US, since aid usually comes promptly, there less of a reliance on each other during a time of disaster and more of a reliance on the government.
In addition to experiencing these events, it was also just fun and interesting to talk to the high school students and groups that we were performing at and learn about them. We had many points of downtime where we sat and had a snack or ate a meal with the groups and it was fun to learn about what they like to do in their free time, what they do for sports/activities, and also how they perform in the music area. One challenge that I had while on this trip was a language barrier. I know a little bit of Spanish from what I had to take in middle school, but I chose to pursue German as my foreign language. It was amazing for me to see that almost all of them were fluent in English yet only a few of us in the band had enough Spanish to speak in full sentences with them. It made me realize how reliant we are as having English as the “global language” and that we should really take more time to learn other languages so that we can communicate with others in their language rather than always using ours. English is the most spoken language in the world and thus it has the most cultural capital. In international business, you are more likely to find someone who can speak English to communicate business with rather than someone who can speak Spanish. Because for the people of Puerto Rico it is more common for them to need to use English at some point in their life, they start learning it at a young age, so they are relatively fluent in it. However, since English is our native language and the most common language that we would need to use in our professional life, we are not pushed to learn other languages. So many schools have already dropped foreign language requirements. Thus, it makes us more reliant on others being able to speak English rather than us speaking their language. Like I previously stated, I took German for seven years and can hold conversations in this language pretty well. Knowing this language will greatly help me if I am speaking with a colleague from Germany and we can have our conversation in either English or German. This will allow me to be more culturally engaged in the exchange that I have rather than when I was in Puerto Rico and everyone had to speak English to me because I did not have the capability to understand and speak back to them in Spanish.
From this experience, I was able to learn so much about the importance of sharing your culture with others and learning about other cultures different from your own. This experience has shown me how fun it is to learn about other cultures through different avenues rather than just learning about it in a classroom setting and I am excited for the other opportunities that I may have in the future to travel and learn about other cultures.
