Uncle Dan’s Blog: Music of a Small World

Posted by Uncle Dan on June 12th, 2008 | Categorized as Blog | 154 views and 3 Comments

Almost 3 years ago from now, I first came to Switzerland. In that fall of 2005 I started at my international hospitality college here. The first two terms were amazingly memorable. They were in one campus in a tiny village on the shores of Lac Leman, and it was more boarding school than college, except that we had more freedom than boarders.

Among my most vivid memories are from the student bar there, which was small, dinky, and only served light drinks (beer, wine, and Smirnoff Ice). It didn’t have a great sound system. The furniture inside it was worn from years of only students using and cleaning it.

But the music, now. The music was awesome. Not because it was especially good, trendy or otherwise, but because the people playing the music were students themselves, and it being an international college, we ended up with music from everywhere. I loved it. Within a few months I had favorites among Bulgarian, Serbian, Spanish, Latino, Indian, Brazilian, Arab, Norwegian and Turkish music, outside of the mainstream American/Western-European music. Something about these equatorial countries made their dance music just plain fun.

I wasn’t the only one to enjoy it, but there were some who didn’t either. Some people just don’t like something that’s different from their own. My German friends couldn’t stand Punjabi music at the time, for example.

Still, I loved how the Latinos and Latinas would salsa at first opportunity. I loved how the Bulgarians, after hearing one of their songs come on, would make room, plant a chair in thei middle and dance around it with one girl dancing on top. The Indians would Bhangra, the Arabs would yell “Yalla yalla!”, the Croatians would jump and the Norwegians would sing (badly).

Despite the fact that we felt like kids in this almost-boarding-school, and that we had long hours and days in a village with not much else to do but drink in the colder months… the place left a strong impression. Even people who didn’t like it remember it well. And for years afterwards, people will say “It’s not like how it was in Bouveret. We were more together, over there.”

Which kind of goes to show how people come together better in adverse circumstances. None of us by choice would have lived in that small village named Bouveret. But having done so, had forged some unforgettable memories. As in the army, going through whatever difficulties or otherwise with the same people more or less consistently bonds you more deeply and more quickly than just casual acquaintance can.

From what I’ve gathered, it’s the same in international schools. Often, we have no one else but the friends we have in school to relate to, and we go through it all together.

So the funny thing is that even when I don’t necessarily even know much about a person I call friend, I still consider them close. A lot of the friends I had and have I don’t know much that anyone else would ask about. Often I don’t know about their families, their lives before, what their parents do, or anything that other people might ask me about them expecting us to be friends. But nevertheless, the bond is there. The rest feels unimportant.

Anyway, these thoughts came into mind because I’m trying to track down the music we had, and finding them here and there is incredibly nostalgic.

Daniel Nguyen-Phuoc

Vietnamese in ethnicity, born in Houston, Texas. Lived in Jakarta, Indonesia for 14 years while going to a British International School to finish with the International Baccalaureate. Survived only two years in the University of Michigan before ending up in Switzerland. Graduated from an international (and that's meant in every word) hospitality college. Interesting life, to be sure. But not the only one.