Slow Down, My Beating Heart

Slow down my beating heart
Man dreams one day to fly
A man takes a rocket ship into the skies
He lives on a star that’s dying in the night
And follows in the trail
The scatter of light

~ In a Little While, U2

The latest New Yorker cover story is about a truly “global musician”– Manu Chao. Chao’s latest album “La Radiolina” has 22 tracks in five different languages. Including English which he gleaned from music and crime novels while growing up. For those familiar with his style, this is nothing surprising. Considered the pioneer of Latin alternative music, Chao sings in French, Spanish, Arabic, Galician, Portuguese, English and the Senegalian language Wolof. Here is the New York Times review of La Radiolina and you can listen to samples here.

Elaborating on Chao’s multiculturalism, The New Yorker article informs us that:

Chao maintains apartments in Paris and Barcelona, and spends part of each year in Fortaleza, a town in northern Brazil, where his eight-year-old son lives. He is completing an album of songs in Portañol (a hybrid of Spanish and Portuguese) and collaborating on another, with patients in a psychiatric hospital in Buenos Aires.

Fascinating. I haven’t heard Chao yet but I will run out and get myself the CD soon.

This does make me wonder about something else though. Foreign travel has always been something of a privilege, a badge to be worn proudly. With words like “global citizenship” and “multiculturalism” becoming common parlance, it’s become almost a mark of something more — superior sensibilities and an evolved sense of humanity.

But being “global” doesn’t always come cheap. Maintaining apartments in multiple countries comes at a price. As does jetting around the world — even on cheaper flights. Vast numbers of people, especially in developing countries, may not be able to invest so much in developing a multicultural identity. Or their money may be better spent elsewhere.

But world travel has become more than a practical or even recreational need. It has become something of a coveted title. To some people, the stamped passport is probably as important as a doctoral degree. What does this mean for those who can’t or don’t “achieve international exposure” for whatever reason? Will they increasingly become something of a lower caste in this new kind of elitism? Or will they find other ways to engage with the world? There are other issues involved as well. Immigration has wider economic, social and cultural impact. Air travel is increasingly being looked at as an environmental hazard.

Not for one moment am I espousing that we should chain ourselves to our chairs. That we shouldn’t stand awe-struck before the Pyramids or gape at the Niagara. Taste the desert thirst in deepest Sahara. Sit at a Parisian cafe, moon over Italian sculptures, gaze into the waters at Venice. Drink Turkish coffee or cavort with kangaroos down under. All I’m saying is that as we move forward — and around — at dizzying speed, we shouldn’t forget some of the larger issues. Even if they slow us down just a little bit.

Meanwhile, here are some tips on greener travel.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 9:42 am and is filed under Artsy Stuff, The Global Village. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.