Q&A: Claude Grunitzky

You've seen them in big cities, anytime over the last decade: Japanese kids with dreadlocks, listening to traditional Asian melodies mixed with modern electronic beats; African painters combining tribal customs with sophisticated Western formal methods; South American films influencing Hollywood directors; former first daughter Chelsea Clinton as a reported hip-hop head, with her favorite band the Roots. This is what Trace magazine founder and editor Claude Grunitzky calls "transculturalism," and it's the phenomenon his magazine, and his new book, are devoted to exploring.

Transculturalism: How the World is Coming Together was published last month by powerHouse Books, and Grunitzky edited and wrote much of the book. It's presented in a magazine style, a series of essays, analyses, art pieces, and articles, all somehow addressing the way in which Western culture and society is being influenced by parts of the world it once only exported culture to. It argues that modern transculturals live in a sort of global melting pot, where styles and tastes merge and feed off of one another more than ever before.

"Modern transculturalists are people who can move and learn and function by discovering and influencing cultures that are not their own," says Grunitzky, relaxing over coffee in a Soho cafe. "The idea is that you become better and richer and more interesting as a person as you experience other cultures. And more and more it's the nature of modern life."

Trace publishes three editions, in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, and the magazine's popularity seems to signal that Grunitzky's target audience of transculturals is growing. While the book is entertaining and interesting as a cultural artifact, it can also be seen as a kind of insiders' guidebook for marketers trying to better understand the tastes and ideas of transculturals.

A tallish man of 33 with a gap between his front teeth and a warm smile, Grunitzky has spent much of his adult life speaking about transculturalism and creating Trace. For him, the book is a kind of culmination of the ideas he has developed in the magazine.

"I feel like my whole life is in this book," he says. "Everything I've experienced, as well as what I've learned from all my friends. It's all encapsulated in this book. For me it's very personal."

Originally from a small town in Togo called Lomé, Grunitzky moved to Washington, D.C., when he was seven and his father became Togo's ambassador to the United States. He says that this move, as well as subsequent stints in other countries, informed his concept of transculturalism and made him want to communicate this idea to others.

"It really comes from the nature of translation," he says. "When you translate something, it's not going to be exact. You're adding your own feel to the word. Nothing can ever be translated perfectly, so you are always interpreting the thing as well. You're adding your own personality and your own experiences to a culture that is already pretty well defined."

Grunitzky says that the new book was born out of his experiences on September 11, 2001. He was in his apartment on Pearl Street in lower Manhattan during the terror attacks, and he was briefly a commentator for Radio France International as the events unfolded. In subsequent weeks, because his apartment was covered with dust and ash, he stayed with friends around different parts of the city.

"I couldn't go home," he says. "So I ended up walking around the city a lot. I saw my friends and I could see how everything was changing and I thought a lot about what it meant in terms of my message with the magazine. It was depressing to see everyone become paranoid. But some people were also drawn together."

Grunitzky says that his intention wasn't for his book to be political, but he realized that September 11—and, more important, America's reactions to it—was threatening the cultural openness that creates transculturalism. "The fear factor after 9/11 killed every possibility for debate," he says.

About half his new book is comprised of what he considers the best of Trace, as collected from the magazine's first 50 issues. The other half is essays, interviews, and art that he either wrote for the book or commissioned for it. Transculturalism is produced in a very visual, magaziney format, taking stylistic cues from street art and hip-hop culture, all of which, Grunitzky says, is intended to attract core Trace readers.

The book focuses on people with parents of different races; it's concerned with tracing one's roots. There are sections which explore the lives of people who grow up with two distinct and different cultures in their families.

"Half of black kids in the U.K. now are mixed race," Grunitzky notes. "They have maybe one grandparent who was Indian, one who was African, one who was white. And these days when you look around, mixed-race couples are everywhere. People don't look at them funny the way they used to. When I came to Washington in 1978, if you saw an interracial couple, people would stare at them." Transculturalism explores these changes, and their meaning.

So does Trace, which is currently targeted to transculturals in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami. But Grunitzky sees the transcultural phenomenon growing, not just in big cities but also in smaller ones, and around the world. He plans to soon expand circulation to places like San Francisco and Houston.

"In the past, there was a dominant European culture, which was spread to the rest of the world," Grunitzky notes. "But now all these independent states have their own voice. The culture of formerly unknown places is affecting and defining and expanding the culture of the West. Hip-hop culture, for example, came out of African culture, because of the beat of the drum, and then it went into black American culture and then into white culture and then it influenced the whole world. 'Drums of Passion' from the 50s is the real beginning of hip-hop, but the new sounds were also influenced by Miles Davis and jazz, and others. What I'm interested in is tracing it all back to the source."

Which is exactly what he's doing more deeply with the book. "It's very easy to do the magazine these days," he says. "I can do it in my sleep." That Transculturalism was more of a challenge to create makes it even more rewarding.

David S. Hirschman is a freelance writer and editor and the news editor of mediabistro.com. You can buy Transculturalism at Amazon.com.