Like many of you, there’s been a lot of talk in my house about the Bad Bunny halftime show. I’m sure everyone is dying to know what a 55 year old heterosexual white guy has to say about it, so I’ll tell you.
What an incredible achievement.
I was enthralled from beginning to end. The performances, the dancing, the musicality, the singing, the musicianship, the timing: they were all superb.
But what really struck me was the symbolism and the message. Because they were everything.
I won’t point out the deep meaning of the incredible symbolism, because anything I have to say about that, I learned within the past few hours.
I had to.
See, I grew up in the whitest white bread community imaginable, raised in a literal “Levitt” house on Long Island. And nothing about my white Catholic upbringing allowed me to be introduced or exposed to any culture other than my own.
I always sensed something was off, and one day, it dawned on me:
This worldview sucks!
I was 33 years old when I had that revelation. That’s when I began to self-educate on politics and culture, and learn what was really going on in the world outside the pretty vanilla facade that had been built for me. Around me.
It was blocking my view, and I took a sledgehammer to it.
Fast forward 20 years and my son Luke, who is also a musician like his dad, is a big hip hop fan. Now, I have never been one of those guys who still only listens to the music I grew up on. I tend to listen to modern music more than the classic rock or hair bands of my youth. But I rarely ventured into other genres.
Luke and I would begin to have conversations that stemmed from his interest in hip hop, particularly about black culture, and the history of racism in our country.
Difference is, he figured out how to wield his sledgehammer as a teenager. And when he saw what he saw, he came to me to talk about it.
He also asked me if I would be open to exploring hip hop music with him, so we could both better understand a culture we were never exposed to.
And so we did. You can’t imagine how excited I was when my favorite hip hop artist did the Super Bowl show last year. Did you hear about that one? Probably not, it wasn’t nearly as controversial.
We have continued our work of listening to various albums, usually one or two a week. Together. And then talking.
I never had “become a big fan of hip hop” on my list of things to do when you’re in your 50s, but man, I was missing out.
Then the other day, with this show coming up, he suggested we do Bad Bunny’s new album next. So it was really nice to recognize some of the songs during his performance. And like I said, it was an incredible achievement.
Which leads me to the message, which needed absolutely no translation for me whatsoever.
“The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
And not because he wrote it in giant letters in English, but because it was the message we could all feel.
We may all have different cultures and histories and clothing and hairstyles and languages. But underneath it all, we ALL want the same thing: People in our lives that we can love who also love us.
We are in a cultural battle right now where some people feel that means only those like us and closest to us.
But the reality of humanity is that it involves all of us. Whether you know anything about the distinct culture of Puerto Rico or not, it was undeniable that we all recognize joy, love, camaraderie, and respect when we see it.
Wanting it for ourselves is universal.
Letting others share in it with us is a choice.
