Holding the lotus to the rock: Creating dance community in Red-State America

Abstract

In describing the dedication necessary to transplant Buddhism to North America, the Japanese Zen master Sokei-an Sasaki (1882–1945) famously said ‘it will be like holding a lotus to a rock, expecting it to take root’. Since 2001, the Texas Tech University Vernacular Music Center (VMC) (whose mission statement includes ‘teaching, research, and advocacy in the world’s vernacular traditions’) has grown a community of collegiate dancers and musicians in the American Southwest, one that cuts across boundaries of class, age and ethnicity. Paradoxically, in this socially and culturally conservative part of the world, while receptivity to music and dance is very high – Texas is the only state in the Union that still maintains required music and art in the public schools – awareness of the art forms’ available stylistic and cultural diversity is very low. Here, vernacular music communities are separated, insulated and cut-off from one another: alienated both geographically, stylistically and sociologically. At the same time, university music programmes, while recognizing the benefits to all of inclusive and diverse excellence, struggle to actualize this recognition: lacking resources, personnel, materials and/or community engagement. Drawing on musicology, ethnography, arts advocacy and mass communications theory, this article investigates the history, goals, means and methods by which the VMC has developed a series of student-centered, boundary-crossing participatory arts communities in the American Southwest, and provides both a practical toolbox, a political vocabulary and a philosophical framework for building like bridges elsewhere