I’ve been listening to Rosalía’s new album a lot lately (loving it) and have been thinking about identity and culture when it comes to musical expression nowadays. I know she was accused of cultural appropriation for her work in the past, and now I’ve seen people question her exploration of languages and musical genres that aren’t “hers”. It’s nonsense.
To me, Rosalía explained it perfectly in this interview she did with the NYT in which she says:
“I belong to the world.”
This made me think of this TEDTalk on the intricacies of identity, culture and music evolution. I include a brief summary below, but watching Jorge Drexler literally clap and sing his way through hundreds of years of cultural propagation is very much worth the watch.
"Deep down, neither one of us is from one place entirely, while each one of us is a little bit from everywhere"
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TEDTALK SUMMARY BELOW 👇🏽
In his TED Talk, Jorge Drexler explains how complex identity is by sharing the very entangled story behind his song “La Milonga del Moro Judío.”
The song began with a challenge from Joaquín Sabina to use this chorus, “I am a Moorish Jew who lives with Christians, I don’t know which God is mine, nor who my brothers are,” and to write the verses in the ancient décima poetic form, consisting of 10 lines.
Drexler details the décima’s journey from 16th-century Spain to Latin American music, where it adopted local styles while preserving its structure. He then explains how combining these décimas with a milonga, a genre he linked to his Uruguayan roots, revealed its rhythmic origins actually spanned to Africa, Persia, and Spain, influencing music from Klezmer to Tango.
He concludes by reflecting on how this exploration of poetic form, musical history, and his family’s Jewish and Christian heritage led him to see identity as blended rather than “pure.” He emphasizes that the more closely one examines a culture, song, or person, the less “pure” it reveals to be. In that way, one can recognizes identity’s infinite complexity and beautiful blend of many roots and places.
“Things only look pure if you look at them from far away. It's very important to know about our roots, to know where we come from, to understand our history. But at the same time, as important as knowing where we're from, is understanding that, deep down, neither one of us is from one place entirely, while each one of us is a little bit from everywhere.”
