On this Independence Day

I was raised to be a proud, grateful American.
Proud of an experiment in freedom that gave the world a new way to think about self-determination. Grateful that my ancestors, escaping anti-Semitic pogroms in Eastern Europe, had a shining, golden place to come to and in which to rebuild their lives. Growing up, I celebrated every Independence Day with delight, with light and noise. 
Independence Day is the ultimate extrovert's celebration.

Then, over time, corners of the rug started getting pulled back, to reveal all the bad things about how our country was created and founded. Over the last decade or so I have learned that slavery was more than a horrible idea, that it in fact was a key pillar of our nation's founding. I have learned that we haven't come as far as we thought we had on issues of racial, gender and social justice, that there are still so many white people who insist on hating those who differ from them and insist on raising their kids and grandkids to feel the same way. I have learned that there are a lot of white Americans who are itching to fight another Civil War, who cannot wait to blow black and brown people and their allies back to the Stone Age and dance on their bodies.
The bloodlust and bigotry in our nation has not gone away.

I have loved rudimental drumming since I first learned of it as a schoolgirl. 
Something about it grabbed me by the collar and fired up my musical ears and inspired me to become a musical mathematician myself, to join the long line of rudimental drummers and keep the tradition alive.
Never mind that the long line of rudimental drummers was almost entirely male and nearly all white; I ignored that (or wasn't taught to notice it, or maybe I did notice it and wanted to be a drummer so badly that I didn't care -- I don't really know) and was all in.

Today, while my arthritic hands are not contest material by any means, I can more than hold my own in a community band drum line and I play well enough to really enjoy myself. I play almost every day now, partly as a way to deal with my shpilkes (Yiddish - restlessness) and partly because I still love the artform.

But the artform has its roots in a tradition of war and conquest, and I cannot deny that either.

This is where I have to sit in my ambivalence and stew on it.
Because while I still love the artform, while I still love the feel of picking up a pair of sticks and playing rolls, paradiddles and ruffs, I feel weird about the other messages that my drumming sends, the stories it reinforces.
And I wonder what my part is in reinforcing those old messages, that old history which so desperately needs to be corrected (since it cannot be undone).
Drums were present on the battlefield in every major Civil War battle. They drummed out a throbbing, painful pulse at "America First" rallies during the first and second World Wars; KKK gatherings and even some lynchings. And they continue to bring up vestiges of American colonialism and American exceptionalism that lately have made me sit less comfortably with the artform.

How can I turn my talent and skill into something for good? How do I take something rooted in the art of war and conquest, and turn it into a call for real justice?

I don't have the answer. This is probably the deepest I've ever gone in asking questions about the roots of my chosen artform and instrument, and these questions are uncomfortable.
I think they're supposed to be.

I'll still play on my pad every day -- it's therapeutic -- but I honestly don't know what I'll do about Independence Day this year.