Thank You Vampire Weekend

Last week my husband Iñigo and I were scouting out books in English at one of the local international bookshops, and I couldn't help but notice there were quite a few Indian authors on display. Having just read (and thoroughly enjoyed) Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger, my curiousity was piqued by this seemingly sudden international interest in what Indians have to say. And with all these great books in the shops and Slumdog Millionaire being all the rage in the movie theaters, it seems like we're on the brink of an Indian invasion much like the Latin invasion we experienced in the US when Shakira, Ricky Martin and the like first shook their bonbons into the hearts of America right before I moved to Spain.

Perhaps it was this line of thought that led me to believe that the Vampire Weekend album I discovered on my mp3 player the other day and have been grooving to all week at work, just had to come from an Indian band. Now before you jump down my throat and tell me they are from NYC and what I heard were more African influences than Indian ones, know that Wikipedia has already beat you to it so you can keep your musical snobbiness to yourselves.

The fact of the matter is I got an Indian vibe from the album and mentioned both how much I like the album and my theory about the Indian invasion to our guiri friends Martha and Philip the other day when they invited us over for a lovely meal of clam chowder. This sparked an unlikely conversation about ethnic heritage and who can claim to be Indian, whether you have to be born and raised in India or is it enough to have Indian parents or grandparents. Examples were made of Indian imposters such as author Vikram Seth and Cornershop, who had the nerve to capitalize on their Indianness despite being born and raised on British soil. My politically correctness was questioned and I was accused of not knowing the difference between an Indian and a Bangledeshi surname (guilty as charged), but we all laughed a lot and a great time was had by all.

Throw in a bit of boredom at work the next day and you can see how easy it was for this discussion to transition into a slew of emails on the subject the next day. Philip downloaded the Vampire Weekend album and defended its African vibes. I relentlessly googled Vampire Weekend + India and sent any and all obscure references to Philip as proof that I'm not completely bonkers (singer Ezra is apparently quite into the British colonial period in India so there). Despite my efforts, Philip firmly maintained that "musically there's no India for me (triplet based polyrhythms or not - and there are eight African references to one Indian in the rolling stone review....not that I counted)".

Then we brought things back around to the previous night's discussion about whether or not a person can claim a certain heritage if they've only lived a foreign culture and customs from afar, which led me to think of myself and my future children. Will my children be American even though they will most likely be born and raised in Spain? Will my efforts to speak to them in English, foster relationships between them and my US family and friends and share all sorts of American pop culture classics with them be enough to make them secure in their American heritage? Or will they be called imposters every time they do anything which could remotely be defined as American? And in today's globalized world does it really matter anyway? Will Martha and Philip ever invite us over for such a lovely dinner again after exposing them so vividly in my blog? Of course I am open to all your comments.

In the meantime a special thanks to Vampire Weekend for motivating me to blog again.