Tucson Meet-Myself by Sheila Rocha

            Cantwell concedes to his own ways of objectifying during the folk festival in D.C as he takes in the variety of folk, interpreting the diversity of the world of the Other that he does not understand.  He acknowledges his perception of that world as a melding into the general and naming the general as “stereotyping”.  He dubs it as “simply a way of sorting information” (154) and interestingly makes the example with his observation of gospel singers, Native American basket makers as examples of “the urgency that drives this process” (154)…Interesting.  His view is keyed through the canvas fabric of his own knapsack of privilege.  It fascinates me that as I experienced the Tucson Meet Yourself festival this week-end, sat with the puppet maker and contemplated a purchase for my granddaughters, made flowers with Paula from the Pacua Yaqui nation, and visited with the baritone from the Motown review as he changed from Stacy wingtips to something more practical for age 65 and older…the idea of stereotyping…class distinction?  It was for me, one of the few events I have attended here in Arizona that allowed me to feel anything but at odds with class distinction.  I felt at home with myself and the multi-dimensional world I come from and at that moment, here in Tucson, was a part of.

            So, as I read Cantwell this week, I sat in a bit of awe and rather than become angry about his obvious sense of class distinction that contaminates the purity of his own ability to participate in the act of being folk, I felt a little sorry for him.  Isolated from the real world of the masses and their multifarious landscapes of color and song, there are those who allow their perception and class to segregate them from the actualizing themselves as part of a larger universe.  They become to a degree the homogenized by-stander by choice. They engage in the mono-society of an imaginary America.

            The homogenization of society is what makes Tucson Meet Yourself a festival so special, because it refuses to be a unified whole.  Rather it demands to be a compilation of individual legacies based upon tradition, languages and cosmology that unites in its uniqueness.  The only distortions that make themselves apparent in such an experience are the polos and cargos and blank stares of curiosity—the architects of stereotyping—the human manifestation of the American imaginary.  This weekend, as my photo documentary testified, consisted of very little distortion—I think it was hardly present.  What was present was the magnitude of empowering Otherness that gathered in a celebration of resistance through presence.