The Arab world and the Brazilian world will collide this weekend, beginning this afternoon with a lecture in Haines Hall and continuing Saturday with a concert featuring sounds from each culture at Schoenberg Hall.
“At the turn of the century, there was a large movement of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants to Brazil,” said A.J. Racy, a professor of ethnomusicology at UCLA. “I was born in Lebanon, and had literally thousands of relatives in Brazil ““ I have always been in the Brazilian world. And as an ethnomusicologist, I have always been interested in the music, as well as the history.”
It is this history that motivates Racy, along with his colleague and stepson, University of Georgia associate professor of Portuguese, Brazilian and Lusophone African Literature Robert Moser, to understand the immigrant experience in Brazil.
“There has been some research done, mainly in the social sciences, with regards to Arabs in Brazil, but very little done concerning the cultural life of Arabs in Brazil,” Moser said. “So what we are trying to shed light on is the significance of that.”
Both in music and literature, the influx of an Arab population into Brazil inspired change in each side, as the different cultures traded influences.
“We had the chance to meet a lot of musicians who had an interest in Middle Eastern music or were open to doing some fusions with Middle Eastern music ““ that was very exciting,” Moser said. “And there are quite a few Brazilian musicians, that because of their Arab background, on some level, they do incorporate an Arab sensibility in their music.”
Racy noticed the same exchange of ideas, and also identified their motivation.
“For the immigrants, music and literature helped them become part of their new world,” Racy said. “They collaborate with musicians in their new home, and in this way, the arts operate in the life of an immigrant to make sense of their new world.”
Over the course of their research, Racy and Moser attempted to find the point at which the two sides of this collaboration met.
“Professor Moser and myself spent two months in Brazil meeting Syrian and Lebanese musicians, and looking at early documents, trying to find how they incorporated Brazilian elements,” Racy said. “Moving on to the more recent era, we looked at a number of (immigrant) artists and found that many composed completely Brazilian music, while others, like the Assad brothers, have included (remnants) of the homeland.”
This homeland and the notion of a home remain the foundation to immigrants’ identities, no matter how immersed in Brazilian culture the immigrants become.
“When people are faced with new realities, people negotiate, they make sense of the place they live in,” Racy said. “Sometimes the sense of home is remembered, other times it is imagined. This sheds light on immigrant identity, and how identity is constructed.”
This notion of identity and its significance is something many UCLA students recognize, and the added weight that comes with being in a foreign land is undeniable.
“It is very important to maintain your own identity, but also to be able to combine it with the elements and culture of wherever you are,” said Priyah Kaul, a fourth-year business economics student. “And because music can reach out to a lot of different people, through it you have the ability to share parts of your own identity.”
While a sense of home plays an integral role in the formation of one’s identity, family is arguably of equal importance. And for Moser and Racy, sharing a field of research serves as an illustration of this.
“I lived with Dr. Racy for six years, and during that time he was a stepfather, and also friend. And here we are more than 20 years later, and as a professor to be able to do joint research with him was like a dream come true,” Moser said.
“My first exposure to Brazil was as a study abroad student in 1988 and 1989 in Sao Paolo, and (Racy) has family down there, so I actually got to know members of his family personally prior to (Racy) having such an opportunity. I was a peculiar representation of the family because I’m not Lebanese, but I had had a part in forging that connection many years ago,” he added.
Through this experience, Moser briefly became like the subjects he studied ““ a person initially feeling out of place, only to eventually find himself adapted to his new environment, with a new sense of home.
This is the immigrant experience, something many go through ““ be it in the most literal sense or in some other disorienting situation ““ and the universal language of art serves to ease the way back into comfort.