On the Most Beautiful Cumbia

On the Most Beautiful Cumbia

Robert Gao

Do you wish you could return to a moment from your past?

National YoungArts Week—a week of interdisciplinary collaboration between classical musicians, filmmakers, singers, fashion designers, dancers, and writers—still presents itself as the most influential week of my life.

Indeed, there exists an intangible power in the arts. Through divergent mediums and the rawness of being human, we as artists can act as agents of change—imbued with the ability to romanticize the mundane, turn the trivial beautiful. Yet, this euphoric epiphany is not always self-discovered—instead, it quietly manifests within the artist individually, only releasing itself when artistic souls converge.

At YoungArts, under cerulean Miami skies and a city infused with jazz and soul, I began to play disciple to this notion—networking with artists, developing my craft, remaining unshakably curious. Although only one of a few sophomores in a junior and senior-heavy cohort, I never felt less-than. My art, my poetry, and my curiosity spoke for itself, and I wielded by own individual story as an avatar to connect with others.  

During an interdisciplinary class, I first became introduced to the notion of a “story exchange” — one that involves first listening to a highly personal story told by a complete stranger, then a verbalized recounting of that story to an audience. This process repeats vice versa, with your own voice and life being told through the lens of someone else. 

Amid the story exchange, I witnessed firsthand the rawness of being human. Tears ebbed and flowed, voices cracked, laughter resounded. Indeed, we are all bearers of our own authentic stories. However, being gifted the momentary privilege to cradle someone else’s—fleeting and true—results in a cathartic experience beyond comprehension. The story exchange is perhaps Earth’s most beautiful love language—as it is not one bound by foreign syntax and pronunciation, but by trust and understanding. 

Additionally, that Miami week illustrated the beauty of the interdisciplinary—the care put toward marrying seemingly divergent disciplines into one coherent art form. Through conversations with filmmakers, photographers, fashion designers, I reckoned with the notion as to how writing—a field I’d previously imagined as unshakably isolated—can seamlessly cohere with the visual medium. Whether in the realms of film, photography, or fashion design, creative words can provide the guidance for how makeup artists, shoot directors, set designers, and individual photographers operate. We lend our voices and poetic styles—whether driven by social justice issues, self-proclaimed inadequacies, or reckonings with siblinghood and boyhood—to disciples of the visual. 

Perhaps the most striking notion of all is that this feedback loop persists—writers motivate visual artists to pinpoint their concepts in color, and these artists drive writers to add movement to our work. Artistic communities operate like a beautiful cumbia, its inner wanderers swaying with each other, giving their own individual art life.

Please Help me expand I am at 450 Words