Realizing A Cultural Shift

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Carry On Friends, the Caribbean American Experience. Remember when you knew almost every song Panda Radio? When the big dance, theatre show, concert, our party definitely was not going to miss you. Yeah, me too.

From Current To Comfortable

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I've been gradually accepted that I've somehow graduated from being culturally current when it comes to music to something else entirely. This evolution, what I'm calling a cultural evolution, happens so subtly. One day you're judging your parents for being out of touch, and the next thing you're hearing yourself say things like, who that? Who are sing this? Then Pitney don't know real dancer. It's not just newer artists, but even artists you listened to back in the day. What is their latest song? As I'm getting older, I'm not connected to culture in the same way. My identity as someone who knew the latest dance moves, who could dance, someone who knew the latest songs, or at least the good ones across genres no longer applies. Now, don't get me wrong, I still listen to dance all. I just mostly listen to music from maybe 2015 and earlier. However, if a newer song catches my ear and I like it, I might add it to my playlist. The difference is I'm not actively seeking out the newest songs.

Redefining Authentic Caribbean Identity

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And this made me recognize a shift in my relationship with an element of Jamaican culture that wants to find my connection to my identity, my Jamaicann-ness to back home. This evolution happens to all of us. We consciously or unconsciously make decisions about which parts of our cultural heritage we bring forward and what we leave behind. So maybe it's not music or the latest dance move for you. Maybe it's the latest saying or phrase or a slang. Are you experiencing this shift? Or you know someone else that's experiencing this shift? Some clues that they may be experiencing this shift could be dismissive, they could be annoyed, or they could just, as we said, take with themselves from a goat, them all up themselves. For the longest time, I felt weird. I couldn't explain what I was experiencing. Was I truly disconnecting from my Jamaican culture? So as I marinated with this over years, it's not just a month, it's been a while. We carry this idea, and I'm not sure where we got it from. Maybe it's a diaspora thing because people back home may not have the same thing, right? But maybe we created ourselves that being authentically Caribbean means staying current to what's happening back home and everything in the culture, knowing the latest music, speaking the newest slang or phrase, being at every party, every fete, every cultural event. And when we can't keep up with panic, we think we're losing our culture. And again, this could be specific to the diaspora. But what if I told you that your cultural identity is supposed to shift? That evolution is not disconnection, it's actually how culture survives. And that's what we're talking about today in lens four of the Caribbean diaspora experience model. Your identity will shift, and that's the point. So before we go any further, let me give you some quick

Introducing The CDEM Framework

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context. If this is the first time that you're hearing about the Caribbean Diaspora Experience Model or CDEM. So CDEM is a tool I created through Carry On Friends to help us understand how cultural identity forms, evolves, and expresses itself outside of the region. It's not academic, it's grounded in real life experience, as I told you, built on years of podcasting conversations and my lived experience and that of my family as well. So CDEM has six lenses. And today, as previously mentioned, we're diving into lens four, which is all about your cultural identity. Now, I've covered lens one, two, and three in previous episodes, and I will link those in the show notes if you want to catch up. But today, today, today, we're going to talk about lens four, about how your cultural identity will shift, and that is just the point. Even if this is the first time you're hearing about CDEM, you can jump right in. So, about my personal journey.

Youthful Consumption To Adult Production

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When I was younger, my uncles had a set. I used to go to parties in high school. I used to go to beer basement parties, like you know, regular in my early 20s. I was going to parties, I knew every dance, I knew the new artists who drop a song by the next day or by the end of the week. The latest we know the song. I was just consuming culture, going to the parties, concerts, stage shows, all the things when I was younger. Fast forward to my 40s. I still love music, but I'm not at every party. I don't know every new artist. And you know what change? I start producing culture instead of just only consuming it. I'm recording this podcast, I'm preserving, I'm talking about preservation of our culture, our history. And that is part of the shift. It is not loss, it is just evolution. What happens in this process is we go from consumption to production to transmission and preservation. So in lens three, I talked about what cultural anchors are and how they function. Now we're going to talk about how our relationship with these anchors naturally shift across our lifetime.

Life Stages And Cultural Roles

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And this is a pattern I've been seeing in my own life, my family, and through the conversations that I've been having on this podcast. So, what I've experienced and I've built into the model is that how we express culture naturally shifts. So, in the youth stage, when I was in high school and going to all of the parties, I was focused on the current trends, you know, being in the know, just hip on everything. As we move into the adult stage, we shift to appreciating the classics, the foundations, and we become family-centered. You know, we we a lot of us have start families, we we're adulting, we're organizing the gatherings, and we become more selective about what we engaged in and we're more intentional. So in this stage, we may not know every new artist, but we understand the foundations of the, you know, the veterans, the legends, and we begin to pass things down to our children. When we get to the elder stage, we become those who are wiser. You know, we are the tradition preservers, keepers. We are passing even more things down when it comes to the young people specifically. You know, we we know the history of how we do things, why we do things. We become history keepers. We really become on preserving and the keeper of the family history or understanding cultural history, why things were done a certain way. And each stage has its own relationship with culture. The key is none of these stages is more authentic than the others. They just are. As a matter of fact, each stage is important to each other in the preservation of culture. Now, this isn't about disconnection, it's about how your cultural identity is maturing along with you. Now, as your identity shifts, how you show it shifts

Showing Identity Across Contexts

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too. And this is where it gets really interesting. So some of us might have started out hiding our accents or trying to hide and blend in. And as I mentioned in lens one, that was probably survival in certain environments at certain times, depending on when you migrated or what era or decade the child was born. For others, we are always careful in choosing when and where we let our culture show. In a professional space, we're code switching. At family gathering, you done know a full racha patwa. For some of us, it's situational. We adjust based on who's in the room and what the context demands. So I can still be at work, but if me I talk to my Jamaican co-worker, you done knows that the pato that goes. For many of us, it eventually becomes natural where we're not hiding, we're just different in different spaces, and that is okay. What we say, time and place to everything. And then even for some of us, we reach a point where the identity is pronounced and we lead with it. We center it, and it's the first thing people know about us. What's also important here is that you might move through all of this through your lifetime. You may have been hidden at work in at certain times when you are younger. You are more careful in other times, and you know, in other times in your career, you might be more pronounced. It would really depends on your starting point, as we mentioned in lens one. The way you show your identity can change just like how your identity itself changes. And both shifts are perfectly normal.

You’re Evolving Not Disconnecting

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So if you're sitting thinking that you're losing your Jamaican-ness or your Caribbean-ness because you don't know the latest rhythm, by the way, is rhythm still a thing? That's another conversation. But anyway, or because you rather stay at home instead of go out of fit, the party, the jump up, whatever it is, or because you can't keep up with your little cousin them or your cousin them with the slang or everything, you're not disconnecting, you're just evolving. Here's the question I hear, and the question I've asked myself. If I'm not keeping up with the latest music, if I'm not going to every cultural event, if I can't even do all the dances, am I losing my culture? And the answer that I discovered through my own journey is no, I'm not losing it. I'm just holding it differently. So in lens three, we talked about six cultural anchors. We talked about food, music, language, celebrations, spirituality, and family structures. Those anchors don't disappear as we age. But different anchors become more important at different stages in our lives. And that's by design, not accident. You might not be the one dancing at the party anymore, but you might be the one who can explain the history of the dance. You might be the one cooking the food for the party. You might be the one organizing the family gathering and creating space for the next generation for most the latest dance

Cultural Anchors Shift With Age

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move, like I did when I was younger, right? You know, I was the one who was showing the dance move to the auntie and the uncle. Different role, same culture, different stage, same identity. Your work now might be more of preserving recipes or capturing granny and grandpa stories or teaching the kids the proverbs or building businesses to honor the culture. Different stages, different expressions, but all of it is deeply, authentically Caribbean. So as we begin to wrap up, here are three things I'd want you to remember about lens four. One, evolution doesn't equal disconnection. Your relationship with certain cultural elements changes. That doesn't mean your culture is weakening, it means your relationship with it is maturing. Different cultural anchors matter more at different life stages, and that's by design. You don't have to hold on to anchors the same way forever. Two, depth often grows even as how you engage decreases, right? So we mentioned you may not know the newest song, but you probably understand the culture behind the music more deeply than you did, let's say, in your teens or in your early 20s. Three, how you show your identity will shift over time. And that's not about authenticity, it's about context, comfort, and stage of life. The reality is we're still connected to culture, even if it doesn't look the way it used to. And that's the key. We're thinking of what it used to look like, and we're trying to reconcile with how we feel now versus what it used to. So, what cultural element do you engage with differently now than you did 10 years ago? For me, it's music and dance. Maybe for you, it's food or language or family gatherings.

Three Takeaways On Identity Maturity

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How are you holding your cultural anchors differently than you did five, 10 years ago? Have you been carrying some kind of guilt or unexplained feeling about the shift that you've been experiencing? Because if you have, I want you to let that go. I want you to start thinking about what you can pass on to your nieces, nephews, children, godchildren, all the younger ones in your family. Which cultural anchors mattered most in your youth that matter less now? Or which cultural anchors have become more important as you've matured? Your evolution is part of how culture stays alive. We're not meant to stay frozen in time, we're meant to carry it forward in ways that make sense for where we are now. Can you imagine when you know my grandmother was a certain age, she was trying to do whatever latest dance Elephant Man was doing? Oh, it was signal playing. Oh my gosh, she, you know, levels. But anyway, I digress. And to be clear, it's not like the elders can't ski can do them one move, but the mother skiank and do the dance that was hit for them for when they were growing up, right? So each generation has the thing that works for them and it's locked in. You know, some of the dance, some of them know, may look on them and say, and I might think that. But again, it's also about bridging and having that connection with the younger generation as well, right? So we use this as opportunity the way that I did growing up, using the different stages and having that relationship with the younger generation. So thank you for listening to this episode explaining lens four of Caribbean diaspora experience model, CDEM. I'd like you to drop a message,

Letting Go Of Guilt And Passing It On

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send me a comment, something on any other platform that you're watching this. Um, you can find me at carry on friends. And what I want you to remember is your identity will shift, your expression of your culture and your identity will shift. And that is okay. That is the point. That is how we keep culture alive across generations, across geographies, across our whole lives. And so remember that we keep culture alive. And until next time, we're good.