Suzanne Vega's adopted. Sort of. At age 9 she found out her daddy wasn't her real daddy. She was also shocked because that meant she was White. (Adoptive dad/stepdad was Puerto Rican and she'd always identified with that part of her "heritage.") She says she felt embarrassed to suddenly be different from her siblings, and later felt like an impostor when singing with a Latin Arts group.
She found her birth dad at age 28. Turns out he was also a musician, and he'd been fully adopted.
"I looked at his eyes and hands, and recognized my own. There was this spiritual connection, too. It was as if I suddenly understood myself better."
He'd found his own bio parents and guess what––they were musicians too. And apparently Vega had been an outlier in her family when it came to music:
"Finally," she tells Oprah Magazine, "I felt like I belonged."
It's stories like these that add to the nature/nurture debate. When you find birth family and sudden commonality in interests, personality, and those intangible, non-biological traits, it seems to tip the evidence toward the all-determining-birth-culture argument.
Enter the endless debate and source for scientific investigation. ABCNews asks, "Is there a Music Gene?" Sperm/egg donor clinics surely benefit from a belief in all-determining biology. Pick this donor! He's a super smart doctor and musician! But does your kid actually turn out exactly the way you want that way? What if you have a propensity for something but need a particular environment for it to manifest? Sometimes adopteds find that their birth parents are totally opposite of them in every way except appearance. I know folks with that experience, but you don't hear those stories as much because they don't have the exciting "ah-ha!" quality.
But back to Vega and her music. Naturally, she's written about her experience finding her dad. (If you're adopted and you're an artist, it's impossible not to have adoption themes appear in your work I think.) Check out "Blood Sings." My favorite line: "When blood sees blood of its own, it sings to see itself again."
She found her birth dad at age 28. Turns out he was also a musician, and he'd been fully adopted.
"I looked at his eyes and hands, and recognized my own. There was this spiritual connection, too. It was as if I suddenly understood myself better."
He'd found his own bio parents and guess what––they were musicians too. And apparently Vega had been an outlier in her family when it came to music:
"Finally," she tells Oprah Magazine, "I felt like I belonged."
It's stories like these that add to the nature/nurture debate. When you find birth family and sudden commonality in interests, personality, and those intangible, non-biological traits, it seems to tip the evidence toward the all-determining-birth-culture argument.
Enter the endless debate and source for scientific investigation. ABCNews asks, "Is there a Music Gene?" Sperm/egg donor clinics surely benefit from a belief in all-determining biology. Pick this donor! He's a super smart doctor and musician! But does your kid actually turn out exactly the way you want that way? What if you have a propensity for something but need a particular environment for it to manifest? Sometimes adopteds find that their birth parents are totally opposite of them in every way except appearance. I know folks with that experience, but you don't hear those stories as much because they don't have the exciting "ah-ha!" quality.
But back to Vega and her music. Naturally, she's written about her experience finding her dad. (If you're adopted and you're an artist, it's impossible not to have adoption themes appear in your work I think.) Check out "Blood Sings." My favorite line: "When blood sees blood of its own, it sings to see itself again."
