Originally my home was cuisine and flavor. The past three weeks have given me some time to sit and think on my home and I feel that food is no longer the choice for me.
Music, music is definitely the choice for me, more specifically Funk and Jazz. The same reasons that I was using food carry over into music and how it’s where I consider home. I am basically starting over in what I am linking but the content of those links I believe, will remain the same.
I chose flavor and food for it’s ability to instantly transport you to an entire different time in your life. For the ways in which specific flavors or ingredients tie two different groups together and begin the forging of connections. Like Eric Liu emphasized in Accidental Asian “Connections Beyond Color”.
My parents are “Deadheads”. For those of you that do not know a Deadhead is basically a die hard fan of the band “The Grateful Dead”. You know the kind of fan that follows the band around and is at all their shows? Well the Deadheads were the OG’s the original super fans if you will. I was just lucky enough to be born into a family of Deadheads.
To really paint a picture of just how interwoven into my upbringing one band was let me tell you why I have my name. Before I was born My parents were the quintessential hippie couple. My dad dropped out of college and his main hobby was organic farming. My mother was the black sheep of not just her family but her entire Catholic upbringing, She was the kind of girl who would get in trouble for cutting class to smoke outside, to put it simply she was a punk, black leather, late nights, loud music, cigarettes, cutting class, and anger lot’s and lot’s of anger. She was a punk not a pop-punk kid you see running around today but punk, you know full on punk.
Upbringing wise my Mother was raised catholic and rebelled later. My Father on the other hand was a fan of philosophy, religion, and many of the aspects of “Eastern” cultures. Musically my Mother was more inclined towards heavy psychedelic rock, hard rock, and jam bands. My Father on the other hand was much more into reggae, jazz, funk, afro-beat, Jam bands, electronic, “World” musics, and the more experimental sounds. The place where they found the most common musical ground was in the sounds and melodies produced by The Grateful Dead. Through this upbringing I was exposed to as you can see many different styles of music and their fusions.
Back to the point, Music and my upbringing. now with a small picture of my parents I can paint you a picture of Music and me. The first point to start would be my name. At first glance the name “Casey Jerome Safreed” is just what it looks like, any other ordinary name. But when you dig deeper it is more than that, originally I was going to be named Cassidy. It didn’t matter to my parents what I was born as, I was going to be Cassidy. Cassidy happens to be a Grateful Dead song. Casey was kind of a compromise because when the time came they decided to name me Casey, not Cassidy, but Casey. Casey was chosen because of the Grateful Dead’s song “Casey Jones”. my middle name Jerome comes from the lead of the Grateful Dead, the late, the great, the one, the only, The Jerry Garcia, whose real name was you guessed it Jerome.
Now that I have established music as my home the real struggle of connecting to an aspect of APIA pop-culture to to myself begins. Currently I am undergoing the research to tie in my relationship with music as my home. Will be working on APIA Pop-culture and how it ties into my home from this point on as I have just switched my homes.