There seem to be two general responses to this: Americans often say “New York is too expensive/busy/crowded” and non-American often say “Oh, I’d love to live in New York too!” I wonder why that is.

Reel 2 Reel’s I Like To Move It (insert giggle of recognition here) similarly clearly has traditionally non-European influences and performes, and who cares? That doesn’t mean much to me, or most of the Europewide listeneers either, I imagine. It’s our song, simply because it was a hit.

More recently, there’s Boom Boom Boom. The video has people in Illinois basketball jerseys and various American pop culture, but I’m fairly sure that it’s safe to say it’s not an American song. They’re just using the American stuff as props to make it look more international and new, but given how you can identify your taste in music by saying ‘electronica’ and that makes sense to people here (as opposed to rock, country, r&b, rap, or hip-hop), I would assume that most of these songs were always meant for local consumption. Here, you can see fairly clearly how what Americans might consider black music speaks on behalf of the US as a whole. (For those who are thinking about Rednex, think about how we laugh at that song compared to most Europop.)

Look at the comments under all these songs on YouTube in various languages. We’re all feeling united by the music, rather than divided. That’s just what happens in an era of globalization. People move around. They bring music with them. They get influenced. That doesn’t mean we’re all the same. It just means new things are happening.

I feel a little alone again – very few of my friends might know what any of those songs are. Even the largest club or Europop anthems never made it here, and neither did the unifying and open music culture.

My perspective, as a white third culture kid living in the US, is that there is a clear split in identity politics implications between saying anything at all about hip-hop depending on whether it is American or not. Perhaps because I am an outsider, I do not particularly feel like country music, which is apparently music that white people listen to, has anything to do with my identity. I am neither a connoisseur of American hip-hop nor country music, but I feel included in neither.

I know I don’t know anything from personal experience of what the more sophisticated hip-hop talks about. I’m a business brat who grew up on three continents because of my parents’ socioeconomic status. I’ve encountered cultural marginalization and repatriation difficulties, not racism or economic disadvantage. For me to pretend that I can personally relate to what hip-hop artists sing about would be ridiculous. (Also, my behavior and mannerisms attest to that.) That doesn’t mean that I don’t like it and don’t want to hear it. I like learning about others’ experiences, and hip-hop voices such experiences through one of my favorite mediums – music. Hearing about other people’s pain and oppression isn’t threatening, it’s an opportunity for connecting to others. On the other hand, the racial climate here makes me a little nervous about expressing that opinion, because I don’t know how Americans might interpret it in terms of identity politics. I have no idea if the message will be understood as meant.

Country music, however, makes me slightly uncomfortable. I’m certainly not included – although I’ve hiked, canoed, and spent a lot of time in the outdoors, far away from big cities, it has little relationship to what the American countryside is portrayed as. Also, it doesn’t help that people from small places make me a little nervous, simply because people from small places were mainly responsible for my reptriation problems. The image of country music is all about American nationalism, localism, and parochialism. Obviously, they explicitly exclude me.

However, like I’ve written about before, hip-hop from other countries than the US makes the message less enveloped in identity politics of the sort that I’m not confident I understand. I can listen to French hip-hop or Chilean hip-hop without any concern over what kind of an racial identity or politics statement I’m making to Americans. I don’t necessarily understand any better what growing up in the banlieue is like either, but listening to French-Algerian rappers doesn’t make identity statements on my own behalf like listening to American rap or hiphop seems to.

Moreover, these identity statements stay put in the US. Listening to hiphop or rap only seems to have something to do with race inside the US. As I’ve also mentioned before, those music types are stripped of racial overtones almost completely outside the US, in my experience. It seems like a good example of Arjun Appadurai’s indigenization to me. The music style means one thing in a US American context, but when others use it, it ends up meaning something else. Something else I can enjoy without having to wade through the implications of US history on race relations here.

I played 你快樂我隨意, the S.H.E. song that an American didn’t think sounded American at all, to another guinea pig American. This time, the results were different: my friend could hear the American influence, but pointed out that there was a ‘foreign’ element in the synthesizer. I had to listen to it again, thinking about the synthesizer. I realized I never thought about it, I took it for granted. So perhaps it is really indigenized music that makes me comfortable after all. No need to understand any one country’s identity politics. I’ve got enough going on in that department on my own already. It’s nice to get a break.

I was in a pub with a television turned to CNN with a college friend and my boyfriend recently. I was facing the TV and could read the captions. Some sort of discussion show was on, and to my great astonishment, two white, middle-aged, male Americans were talking about “the media” as if they in the act of being televised weren’t part of it, and then started discussing the “liberal media”. The “liberal media” is a conspiracy theory that some American conservatives believe that’s like a mutation of the libel that Jews own all the newspapers, except in this case it’s “liberals”. (Don’t be confused like I was initially upon re-expatriating to the US: the word “liberal” may have nothing to do with the political movement of liberalism and might be defined very loosely as “person American conservatives don’t like”, including libertarians, communists, and gay people. There is no ideology attached to “liberal” here.) So I’m sitting in this bar, choking on my pint, and I remember the paper I wrote and the professor’s comment, and realize in a flash what he meant was that to believe that the US media isn’t biased was unusual. But I had just re-expatriated to the US and had been taking in a fare of European news over the past 10 years or so, followed by CNN International and BBC World.

Perhaps American politics gets its unique attributes from the poor communication of real news to the American people. I don’t know if it’s been this way for a long time, or whether this is something that started occurring with the rise of the neoconservatives around the time we repatriated. But one thing is for certain, namely that most US newscasts are about on par with Chinese when it comes to objective reporting and truth-seeking. I’ve been trying to understand how Bush got re-elected and how people in the US were so taken in by what (to me) was obviously propaganda. Maybe the news is the key to understanding what happened.

Essentialist views of identity are responsible for a great deal of the cultural marginalization that third culture kids can encounter. The ‘push’ to be one nationality or another, once race or another, whatever stark choices we are asked to make – stems fundamentally from the idea that we have some sort of magic ‘essence’ inside us, bestowed by some unclear combination of genetics and birth place, that determines who we are. Perhaps one of the strongest resistances third culture kids as well as multiracial people in race-salient environments face comes from the emotional discomfort and lack of closure we create for people with essentialist views of identity.

When your parents don’t give birth to you anywhere remotely close to where your genes evolved, it becomes hard to argue that there is magic essence in your birth place that can make you completely different from your parents. (Of course, unless you abandon essentialism and acknowledge the role that society plays in shaping us.) On the other hand, when you repatriate and act like you’re a foreigner, it is hard to argue that genes and ethnicity holds magical essence powerful enough to eradicate cultural divides. (I myself am an example of that.) Multiracial people challenge essentialism, even when they’ve only lived in one country. Third culture kids challenge essentialism in both ways mentioned above. And multiracial third culture kids just give people identity politics dyspepsia.

I’ve seen expats do some (to me) bizarre things that just seem maladaptive for themselves, things that don’t hurt or annoy the locals but cause significant inconvenience for the expats. I’ve gotten the feeling before that expats do impractical things in host countries (like after 4+ years in China, wearing diamond and gold earrings to markets) because they think that if they integrate, they will disappear somehow. As if not wearing expensive jewelry that serves as an identity marker in their home country but means something else in their host country will make their identity erode day by day. It sounds and seems so ridiculous to me that I figured that there must be some fantastically compelling emotional reward for doing these sorts of things that I’m unaware of. After some more observation, thinking about what I do instead and why I do that, I started to zoom in on identity issues.

Perhaps it is fair to assume that expats who are integrating poorly are simply afraid, then. Identity is a very potent thing, as third culture kids that identify as such know, and maybe pre-move training for expats ought to include an explicit discussion that challenges essentialist views of identity in a constructive way, by showing how you will not disappear if you adjust to a new culture. In fact, if you expatriate for the first time as an adult, you are virtually guaranteed that you will never cease to be what you started out as culturally. The odds that you are so good at cultural adjustment that you forget all about your life so far are so small, they can be dismissed. You are far more likely to not integrate enough, and have daily frustrations and problems as a result. Out of the two, the latter is clearly the case to worry about.

It has some clear r&b influences in both singing and the music, and the play with the words is fun. (On a more third culture analysis level, I think the American influences are easy for me to relate to in this form, because as a waiguoren (foreigner) I can “play” the style, whereas I think most real Americans would fall over laughing if they saw me do it.) Also, the dancing in the video is clearly American-influenced.

Now, the funny thing is that my boyfriend (here playing the role of the token American, speaking on behalf of the American People) doesn’t think the song sounds American at all. When I was on the retro music kick, several of the songs I was listening to have a rappy bit in the middle that sounds American, and some are even like r&b songs with a basic techno beat over them so you can dance to them. Except my American (white) boyfriend didn’t think so. I thought I could make the European (and Mandarin) music less foreign by pointing out how there’s something from the US in them. So much for that tactic.

The reason I’m quite convinced that the influences are American, despite the veto from the real one, is that Black American music is pretty special, and therefore easy to recognize. Not to mention lines like “Look at me, come on!” and “Whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do?” I’ve gotten the feeling before that many Americans, both Black and White, don’t realize how representative Black American music is to the rest of us as just plain American music. Nothing in particular comes to mind when I’m trying to think of what contributions White Americans have made to music. I guess there’s bluegrass and country, but neither is really that spectacular or unique other than on a musicology level. Culturally, I don’t have a clear concept of White music.

I’m sure Americans see it differently. (Of all colors.) But from the outside looking in, Black American music pretty much is “color-free” American music. It uses language, singing, rythms and beats in a completely different way than anything else I’ve heard. There are some cultural ’sounds’ that composers from certain countries seem to come up with ‘naturally’, probably just playing around with things they’ve heard before in that region. (Ever notice how a lot of Swedish music becomes internationally popular (compared to Finnish music) because it’s so incredibly bland?) Melancholy and minor keys are common in the Nordic countries, as are keys that are easily played on a violin. There’s a strand of melancholy and cold that can be found in a lot of Nordic music. There are scales that feel familiar everywhere. Ways of singing that feel familiar. How voices are supposed to stretch (or not), how singers interact with each other. Even though apparently Americans themselves aren’t aware of how uniquely American Black American music is, it’s got its own regional logic that feels different (or foreign, depending on your relationship to the country) from other music. Perhaps that Americans themselves don’t see it if proof – they can’t see the forest for all the trees.

Maybe it’s being a TCK business brat in particular, but knowing rough exchange rates off the top of your head for major world currencies just sounds like a basic piece of being informed. And knowing whether any of those major currencies are doing anything unusual, like falling for a few years, also goes in that category. I wonder if she knows that the Thai baht crashed? I wonder how many other people in the US have no idea what their currency is doing, or what impact other currencies’ behavior have on their economy?

Ultra Bra – Kahdeksanvuotiaana

Kahdeksanvuotiaana tiesin
että maailma tuhoutuu
kaksintaistelussa suurvaltojen
kahdeksanvuotiaana tiesin
että ihminen murskautuu
silmänräpäyksessä
historiaan

Kävikin niin, että sodat ovat
monimutkaisia kansallisia konflikteja
joissa ammutaan
ja joissa kuolee
aina vähän ihmisiä kerrallaan
joissa kuolee
aina vähän ihmisiä kerrallaan

Kahdeksanvuotiaana tiesin
että maailma tuhoutuu
kaksintaistelussa suurvaltojen
kahdeksanvuotiaana etsin
kartalta kaukaista paikkaa
joka välttäisi
laskeuman

Kävikin niin, että sodat ovat
monimutkaisia kansallisia konflikteja
joissa ammutaan
ja joissa kuolee
aina vähän ihmisiä kerrallaan
joissa kuolee
aina vähän ihmisiä kerrallaan

Kumitossut ja huppari päälläni
otsa kurtussa
löysin Pääsiäissaaret Tyyneltämereltä
myöhemmin tuli ilmi
että juuri sillä merellä tehdään ydinkokeita
missä on Pääsiäissaaret

Translation: When I was eight years old

When I was eight years old I knew
that the world would be destroyed
in a duel between the superpowers
When I was eight years old I knew
that humanity would be crushed
in a blink of an eye
of history

It turns out that wars are
complicated national conflicts
where they shoot
and where a few people
always die at a time
where a few people
always die at a time

When I was eight years old I knew
that the world would be destroyed
in a duel between the superpowers
When I was eight years old
I looked for
a distant place on the map
that would avoid the fallout

It turns out that wars are
complicated national conflicts
where they shoot
and where a few people
always die at a time
where a few people
always die at a time

Dressed in rubber boots and
my forehead wrinkled
I found the Easter Islands in the Pacific Ocean
later I found out
that on the very same ocean they do nuclear tests
where the Easter Islands are

If you’re American and hadn’t realized this sort of interconnections exist all over, little children far outside your borders have worried about what you will do for a long time. In fact, if you’re from any large country, your foreign policy creates reality for eight-year-old kids in a lot of places.

Blur – He Thought Of Cars

Moscow’s still red, the young man is dead
Gone to heaven instead, the evening news says he was confused
The motorways will all merge soon, lottery winner buys the moon
They’ve come to save us, the space invaders are here

He thought of cars and where, where to drive them
Who to drive them with
There, there was no-one, no-one

There’s panic at London Heathrow
Everybody wants to go up into the blue
But there’s a ten year queue
Columbia is in top gear, it shouldn’t snow at this time of year
Now America’s shot gone and done the lot

He thought of planes and where, where to fly to
And who to fly there with
Where, there was no-one, no-one

He thought of cars and where, where to drive them
Who to drive them with
There, there was no-one, no-one

So part of the craziness of the modern world is that America just goes nuts with its army. I will not insult my audience by pointing out the obvious connection to current affairs – this song came out on The Great Escape in 1995.

Ultra Bra – Lähetystyö

Panama, Panama, ihana maa
siellä saa palvella Jumalaa
oi lordi, saanko mennä juoksemaan
kohti kaukana siintävää Ameriikkaa

Voi sitä mekaniikkaa, toimintaa
mitä Ameriikka harjoittaa
ei ole muuta valtakuntaa
jossa taivaan valtakunta kajastaa

Panama, Panama, ihana maa
siellä saa palvella Jumalaa
oi lordi, saanko mennä juoksemaan
kohti kaukana siintävää Ameriikkaa

Haluan asua Ameriikassa
haluan kastua Ameriikassa
haluan paisua Ameriikassa
haluan vaipua Ameriikassa

(Translation: Missionary work

Panama, Panama, what a lovely country
you can serve God there
oh lord, can I go running
towards the dimly visible America in the distance

Oh all that mechanics, activity
that America practices
there’s no other realm
where the realm of heaven shimmers

Panama, Panama, what a lovely country
you can serve God there
oh lord, can I go running
towards the dimly visible America in the distance

I want to live in America
I want to get wet [or baptized] in America
I want to swell [up and become fat] in America
I want to sink [into the ground or sink down] in America)

Heavy association with fundamentalist Christians. Note to Americans: Europeans don’t really use “Lord” about god, certainly not in the Nordic countries, at least. That’s an American thing.

Also, public religious expression isn’t very socially acceptable. The line of reasoning is, crudely, that people who feel such a compelling need to shout out their religion and their religious beliefs could easily be compelled by said religion to do all kinds of objectionable things, because if you see yourself so strongly in terms of religion you are less likely to consider others and societal harmony. Unlike the US, there are no laws (except for France, now) against religious symbols, prayer, whatever in public places or schools – people will just wonder if you’re a bit of a religious nut if you want to be public about your religion.

For devout American Christians, here’s a little more explanining for why that is. There’s history, of course. People were forced to go to church for a long time. Priests held an extraordinary amount of power, and many of the darkest and most immoral days of Christianity happened in Europe. Freedom from religion is very important, to the point where people want to see signs of it every day, not just in a law book. However, before you feel too sorry for your religious compatriots, (whom, by the way, you may have a lot less in common with than you think in how you interpret your faith) the worry is mostly with respect to Muslims. There have been some spectacularly gruesome crimes committed by male immigrant Muslims from very sexist and socially repressive societies against women in their own families which are at the very least linked up with how Islam is practiced in the country they immigrated from, like honor killings and organized serial rape of women as punishment for being too secular and living like girls in the host country. I don’t want to get into what Islam really says and all that, but the common view is that some of it is culture, but that Islam is also culpable because it hasn’t condemned the practices to the point of disappearance and because they often invoke “Islamic” ideals of behavior for men and women to explain their behavior (being the most generous to Islam here). So, people get nervous about religious people who can’t keep their religion to themselves – you have to wonder what happens behind closed doors.

I guess what I’m saying is that for various reasons, Europeans tend to suspect you might not be able to play fair with others, be understanding toward others who are not like you, that you might have views that are incompatible with the views of society at large, and in the extreme case, not obey the laws of the country, if you insist on public expression of your religion. European Christians seem to have no problem. It’s the immigrant Muslims’ problem, not your religious compatriots’.

Blur – Magic America

Bill Barrat has a simple dream
He calls it his Plan B
Where there are buildings in the sky
And the air is sugar free
And everyone’s very friendly
Well, Plan B arrived on a holiday
He took a cab to the shopping malls
Bought and ate till he could do neither any more
Then found love on Channel 44
La la la la la
He wants to go to magic America
La la la la la
He’d like to live in magic America
With all those magic people
Bill Barrat sent his postcards home
To everyone he’d ever known
They went
“Fifty-nine cents gets you a good square meal
From the people who care how you feel”

Rammstein – Amerika

We’re all living in Amerika
Amerika ist wunderbar (America is wonderful)
We’re all living in Amerika
Amerika
Amerika

We’re all living in Amerika
Amerika ist wunderbar (America is wonderful)
We’re all living in Amerika
Amerika
Amerika

Wenn getanzt wird will ich führen (When there is dancing, I will lead)
Auch wenn ihr euch alleine dreht (Even when you are turning alone)
Lasst euch ein wenig kontrollieren (Let yourselves be controlled a little bit)
Ich zeige euch wie’s richtig geht (I’ll show you how to do the steps right)

Wir bilden einen lieben Reigen (We’ll make a lovely round dance)
Die Freiheit spielt auf allen Geigen (Freedom is playing on all the violins)
Musik kommt aus dem Weißen Haus (The music comes from the White House)
Und vor Paris steht Mickey Mouse (And in front of Paris stands Mickey Mouse)

We’re all living in Amerika
Amerika ist wunderbar (America is wonderful)
We’re all living in Amerika
Amerika
Amerika

Ich kenne Schritte die sehr nützen (I know steps that are very useful)
Und werde euch vor Fehltritt schützen (And I will protect you from missteps)
Und wer nicht tanzen will am Schluss (And whoever doesn’t want to dance right now will in the end)
Weiss noch nicht dass er tanzen muss (Just doesn’t know that he has to dance yet)

Wir bilden einen lieben Reigen (We’ll make a lovely round dance)
Ich werde euch die Richtung zeigen (I will show you the direction to go)
Nach Afrika kommt Santa Claus (Santa Claus arrives in Africa)
Und vor Paris steht Mickey Mouse (And in front of Paris stands Mickey Mouse)

We’re all living in Amerika
Coca Cola
Wonderbra
We’re all living in Amerika
Amerika
Amerika

This is not a love song
This is not a love song
I don’t sing my mother tongue
No, this is not a love song

We’re all living in Amerika
Coca Cola
Sometimes war
We’re all living in Amerika
Amerika
Amerika

Just in case any deshis are reading this, the mixing of languages is symbolically important – Europeans are very touchy about anglification of their languages, which is seen as cultural imperialism. Mixing English and an European language upsets people a lot because it’s seen as treason and/or “those damned yanks with their damned imperialist ways are here in our back yard!”

Another thing that might need clarification: EuroDisneyland was not a popular project, and it’s as far as I know never made a profit. It was at least making losses every year for the first five years or so. It is a symbol of crap imperialist pop culture to a lot of people.

Blur – Look Inside America

Good morning, lethargy
Drink Pepsi – it’s good for energy
The bath’s on, smoke in the bedroom
Sore throat, and on my neck a nasty bruise
And where it came from
Well I don’t know
But we played last night – it was a good show

Got to play a second rate chat show
A nationwide deal, so we gotta go
Jeff from the Company says it’ll be alright
Got an ad on KROQ
And there’s an in-store tonight
Well I build things up
Then I let them go
Got to get time share on the radio

Look inside America
She’s alright, she’s alright
Sitting out in the distance
But I’m not trying to make her mine
Looking for America
With its kookie nights
And suicides
TV says its alright
Cos everybody’s hung up
On something or other

Stepping off in twenty
So the driver says
I should sleep tonight
But I think I’ll watch videos instead
Annie Hall leaves New York in the end
Press rewind and Woody gets her back again
And the whole world could have passed through me
But I don’t know that it means much to me

Look inside America
She’s alright, she’s alright
Sitting out in the distance
But I’m not trying to make her mine
I’m looking for America
With its kookie nights
And suicides
TV says its alright
Cos everybody’s strung out
On something or other

And the whole world could have passed through me
But I don’t know that it means much to me

Some more explanatory notes to Americans: Your way of denoting radio stations with four wacky letters that are impossible to pronounce and mean nothing is unique to you. In Europe, they have proper names. The national state radio stations are frequently simply numbered: Radio 1, Radio 2, etc (UK), P1, P2, etc (Sweden – short for Program 1, Program 2..) NRK1, NRK2, etc (Norway – NRK is the acronym for the national radio and TV corporation), YLE1, YLE2 (Finland – YLE is short for yleinen=common). Commercial stations pick whatever they like – like NRJ, which sounds like “energie” (= energy in French, but fits better on the car radio LCD displays), or Vinyl 107 (Obviously oldies station), Kiss FM, or Radio Mafia. So, the four letter radio station means it has to be a portrayal of life here, and Europeans hate memorizing the call letters.

Also, soda doesn’t come out of the tap in Europe like it almost does here. In fact, it’s common knowledge it rots your teeth and it’s generally bad for you – so again, the positive connotation to Pepsi is not natural from an European point of view.

Everyone has a relationship or image of America. Like I said.