Sergio Mendes is in the background. Samba gives me energy, drives away cares and even taught me my first Portuguese phrase: "y vamos ya," "let's go."  Brazil is alive to me through music, even before the World Cup introduced all the venues and forced an awareness of the size of the nation. Music built a bridge, created a positive association and curiosity to know more of this exotic multiethnic people where Boca Juniors (soccer or as locals say fútbol) are decidedly Italian and a runway model marries our hometown favorite quarterback, Tom Brady. The beat is cultural and spans the globe.

In the classic conceptualization of integration, music is both bond and bridge, particularly serving as cultural identifier and cultural ambassador.  For some foreign born there is a 'retribalization' (Keil) accomplished by reconnecting, claiming roots and allowing increased ethnic identity. Within the complex issues of identity formation of a heterogeneous society, finding distinctiveness and the basis of relationships beyond the nuclear family evolve into meaning, security, attachment and often a shared contribution to a microsociety. In the same sound wave, the opposite sociological elements are manifest. New sounds attract the sophisticated listener, the auditory connoisseur, who both values cultural contributions for either the aesthetic contribution to the landscape (or, soundscape) or affirms the inherent value of cultural diversity and seeks the new while preserving the old.

Music is particularly cultural, often reflective of cultural moods and political times. Both indigenous and global consumers learn through music about subtle and seismic shifts while history is conveyed to new generations without dependency on textbooks or personal experience. Le Marseillaise stirs passions and reiterates the struggles of a revolution to those wrapped in a contemporary democratic state or even to those who are new to its society. Yet, these formative struggles are inherited and internalized through the music's frequent reiterations.

At the end of this music spectrum, Muslim Hip-hop has become a vehicle for shared culture and reinforced values while uniting youth who want an identity beyond negative portrayals of terrorists and alienation. With roots in the Nation of Islam, Native Deen poetry gathers American teens all the while transcending societal and cultural borders. 

One might ask if salsa music is changing America. Obviously, yes. As tacos and Argentine Malbec have changed the cuisine, so has the rhythmic beat of Latin music accomplished integration, dynamically changing both the immigrant community and the receiving community. Tito Puente brought the music to the big band and jazz world as a superstar. Marc Anthony, following Ricky Martin, brought in a generation of aficionados.  Selena was very Latin music but was a native Texan. Anthony is from New York. Both represent the melding of cultures embodied perhaps.

In social work, the issue goes various directions. Those working with foreign born elders, in virtually any nursing home or retirement center, would do well to enliven the senses and spark the memory flood that is activated by culturally-relevant music.  From ambient music to special musical events, cultural sensitivity is not just speaking another language about services and health; it is conveying inclusion and a sense of connectedness within the Muzak of the dining room. One can carry on from here... thinking of the great potential with marginalized youth from the Horn of Africa who struggle with the barriers of language, religion and race but who know a contagious beat and can contribute to the block party as a crowd pleaser...or thinking of refugee resettlement centers where trauma hangs like a cloud in the room but lifts with familiar chords. One day the new Bosnians were gathered awaiting instruction and hardly an English word seemed to work. But as soon as a Bosnian cowboy brought a guitar and struck tunes that seemed surprisingly familiar to American caseworkers, the group broke into singing and with it, laughter. If healing is a psychosomatic journey, the guides best know a few singable tunes to keep up the energy and sustain community. And children... well most of us remember childhood songs throughout our lifetime, and these songs both teach language and draw a circle that includes everyone. Music education first became part of public school curriculum in Boston in 1838, but it was not until 1960 that multicultural music was introduced to all students. As we have matured in our cultural perception of ourselves and the processes by which integration is accomplished, society moves from having everyone sing all the same songs, to a celebration of the many rhythms that make up our national life.

If there is an American music lexicon, it is written by immigrants. Alfred Lemmon of New Orleans wrote: "Before the Louisiana Purchase, everything cultural in America was pretty much focused in New England, which means it was white European musical culture. With the Louisiana Purchase, the complexion of life and music in America changed abruptly." His observation honors our integrated musical roots.

All at once, slave chants, African prayer, Creole songs, street music, parade music, marching bands and more rang out under the American flag. The most profound contribution came from Place Congo, today known as Congo Square, the New Orleans gathering place where slaves were allowed to convene periodically to participate in the singing, dancing, drum-beating and hand-clapping exhortations of their distant homeland.

"Upon entering the square, the visitor finds the multitude packed in groups of close, narrow circles, of a central area of only a few feet," wrote Henry Didimus in a rare eyewitness report of the slave-era ceremonies at Place Congo. "And there in the center of each circle sits the musician, astride a barrel, strong-headed, which he beats with two sticks, to a strange measure incessantly ... for hours together, while the perspiration literally rolls in streams and wets the ground. And there, too, labor the dancers male and female, under an inspiration or possession, which takes from their limbs all sense of weariness, and gives to them a rapidity and a durability of motion that will hardly be found elsewhere outside of mere machinery." Here was ground zero of the new American music, rooted in the ancient cultural practices of Africa but soon to morph into original, distinctly indigenous art forms.

Our American mix has strands from everywhere. As heard in the memorable harmonies of My Country 'Tis of Thee, sung to the tune of Britain's national anthem, to the polka that invaded US homes with Lawrence Welk to Psy who added a Korean step to dance floors everywhere. Music is culture. It transcends cultural barriers and creates new cultural bridges, as well as ebbs and wanes as cultural brokers. Music is not reflective of immigrant integration; it is the fullest expression of immigrant incorporation.

Music is both a tool and a force for social change. It lies at the intersection into which every foreign born new resident steps as they adopt a new homeland. The power, connectedness and inspiration of music are forces that defy the misery of political roadblocks and naysayers. Instead, it welcomes nostalgia and progressivism in the same breath, a bridge to our common life.