I was born in the late ’80s and raised in the early ’90s. I am daughter of a gospel musician and music has always been a part of my life.
I remember taking road trips with my mother and listening to different artists from different eras and genres. Those road trips were the start of my love for music.
My mother believed in a well-rounded education. I enrolled in piano lessons but, trips to museums and plays were a regular occurrence; a practice I continue today. In high school I discovered my love of literature. Even though I read Harry Potter and Gossip Girls like my peers I found great delight in the works of Shakespeare, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison.
As a student of Wayne State University, I have had the pleasure of working with both WAYN Radio and The South End. Both mediums helped me discover how much I enjoy talking about the arts. I feel that by combining my first love of writing with my second love of the arts I will never have a job; I will have a career.
With this column, I will attempt to address culture as I see it.
Occasionally, usually, I will pull from other sources. For my definitions of culture, I will borrow from three researchers. “Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e. historically derived and selected) ideas especially their attached values; culture systems ma, on one hand, be considered as products of action, and on the other as conditioning elements of further action,” (1952) is borrowed from A.L. Kroeber and C. Kluckhohn. For a shorter definition, L. Damen (1987) contributes “culture: learned and shared human patterns or model for living; day-to-day living patterns, these patterns and models pervade all aspects of human social interaction. Culture is mankind’s primary adaptive mechanism.”
One of my friends once said “I’m not perfect but I have the potential to evolve into something beautiful.” I will never be perfect, nor do I wish to be, but my contributions to this society’s culture, through my career will be beautiful. This is my platform to show the world my beauty and my generation that they too are beautiful. Together we have the power to effect change and make our world beautiful.
Current Song: Don’t let ‘em say you ain’t beautiful. They can all get […] just say true to you. (Beautiful by Eminem)
Major thanks to the University of Minnesota for compiling different definitions of culture on their website, which can be found by clicking here.
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