At first, it was about the rhythm, but it was never just about the rhythm. Music didn’t captivate me because of the power it had to make my body move, beginning with the tapping of my foot and ending with the opening up of my vocal cords. In fact, it was about my mother and the joy I saw on her face as she listened to traditional Peruvian creole music in a restaurant. On October 31, 2016, the night of Halloween, my little brother was predictably complaining because we were celebrating Peruvian Creole Music Day instead of “trick or treating”. Though I knew he did not feel it as I did at his young age, his complaining reminds me of the internal conflict known to me as “being stuck between two cultures”. Having grown up in the United States for
