I'm a freaking mutt -my friends are mutts - my parents are mutts

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

I love being American!!!!!!

[rwenos]

1. Mutt-Ness is the American Secret Weapon

Jazz, rock and roll, modern art -- all products of American mutt culture, all those European, African and Asian forces, colliding, coming together, synthesizing.

It's what scares the homogeneous societies of the world about us.

Two Mutt stories from WW2:

The Japanese didn't encode their radio transmissions -- so American GI's of Japanese origin, recruited from the internment camps, translated all the Japanese Navy radio transmissions, and the US Navy knew where the Japanese were going to attack.

Also - the Navajo code talkers -- with American Marine and Army ground forces on Iwo Jima, Tarawa, Corregidor, etc. The Japanese could listen in to the walkie-talkies, but couldn't figure out what the Navajo radio guys were saying.

E pluribus, unum. ("From many, one.")

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

2. OK - I'm feeling the message of your post but I have a comment

How is Modern Art an American thing? First of all that is a concept that is untenable by definition (modern art is a universal thing - like modern music) and the Europeans, Asians, Africans - you name it - were generally ahead of the US - if you are speaking of visual art.

Otherwise you're spot on!

:)

[rwenos]

4. Art Ain't My Field - Jazz Is

I'm sure you're correct about modern art -- what I know about it would fit on a postage stamp.

Primarily my point was about jazz, my great lifelong musical love.

Jazz, a product of Chopin, West African drums, Cuban folk rythms, 2/4 march time, slaves singing the Blues, voodoo, Bebop, New Orleans, Gospell, church choirs, West Coast Cool School, Louis Armstrong, Phrygian minor harmony, Jewish folk melodies, Italian musical notation, Dr. Sax (German inventor of the saxophone), God knows what else.

In my book the ultimate American art form. Our birthright, every one of us born in the USA.

I love it all. And it never would have happened without all those Mutt things, coming together.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

7. *bow* *bow* *bow*

I am humbly in your debt!

Truer words I have never read, Someone so knowledgeable about 1 artform should immerse themself in all - everything is everything, after all!

[rwenos]

5. Art Ain't My Field - Jazz Is

Inadvertent repeat. Sorry.

[rwenos]

6. Art Ain't My Field - Jazz Is

Inadvertent repeat. Sorry.

[Nikia]

3. I am, but I don't like the term

Some people disagree with me, but to me the word says that I am something less than pure bloods. I have heard it as an insult against multiracial people.
I have several ethnic groups, but I call myself American. My sister agrees that we feel a bit left out sometimes not to have a specific old country ethnicity.