Every story should bring us closer to truth, closer to hearing and feeling stories that remain untold. So El Negro Mas Chulo fights to tell untold stories. We exalt in Africa and celebrate our parade across the Bering Straits. Honor our oceanic journeys, both voluntary and forced. Further we propose that in the consequential Diaspora of humanity, life also springs from the Americas. Now there exists a complimentary march from the Americas back to Africa. A billion years ago or at this very instant the connection of east to west is dictated only by individual capacities for accepting complexions, accents, and rhythms other than what we are told are our own. We break from regional identity and fight for the recognition of untold common histories.
We arrive somewhere in a new world. Here, unlike any other place, elements of
European, African, Meso-American, and Asian worlds collide, conflict and coexist
over the centuries. Today, Mexico is one example of a Latin American country
nationalizing integral international cultural influences without equally recognizing
and exalting each of those contributors. Without the recognition and appreciation
of Africa, for example, in the biological and cultural composition of Mexico,
notions of ethnicity and nation leave us cold. Still we are impressed by the
complexity of a culture unlike any other: Despite holocaust, rhythm advances
from Angola to Veracruz. Despite torture and murder, grace and benevolence survive
from the Gulf of Guinea to the Gulf of Mexico. Asia arrives from the west, Africa
and Europe from the east. All the while, Meso-America braces itself for four
hundred years of subsequent turmoil. Yet, the determination of men to be sovereign
shapes the way cultures intertwine and fasten to one another until distinguishing
one from the other becomes tedious. Drum rhythms transfer into guitar rhythms
accentuated by dance patterns. Eyes from Nigeria come to rest above Andalusian
cheekbones beneath a crown of Totonacan hair over a Lebanese complexion. Four
centuries later what choice are we left but to love it all as one body? Likewise,
tracing cultural traits back to their origins remains possible but each individual
contribution is overpowered by the manifestation of all traits into one family,
one pueblo, and one song. Via projects like El Negro Mas Chulo,
we recognize contributors to equal degree and with equal respect where due.
On a day like today we amplify feelings of pride in humanity as a single phenomenon
with diverse tributaries. There is no single source of humanity, but in culture,
there is infinite creative possibility.