They are fifty-three of the nearly 800,000 registered, with 17 nationalities, living in 17 U.S. states. Fifty-three Dreamers named Daisy, Juan Carlos, Alicia, Denzel, Caliph, Daniel, Salvador, Maria, who sing, play trombone, the drums, the clarinet. They arrived in the United States when they were three or eight years old, without documents, like their parents, who arrived earlier or arrived along with them.
They grew up to young adults, they made a profession out of music, and they are now prodigious performers. On Sunday, they won three Grammys, for their work in the album “American Dreamers, Voices of Hope, Music of Freedom.” John Daversa, the grandson of Italian immigrants, summoned the fifty-three Dreamers and put together a big band. They recorded this album, released in September 2018.
Jazz became the vehicle for expressing their fears: their future –the destiny that depends on identity documents –are subject to fragility: this temporary program, the 2012 DACA, that provisionally protects them from deportation, the decision by Trumps’ administration to eliminate it, and the courts sentences, the Supreme Court included, to maintain it.
“As a musician, all I know is to make music, and I said, ‘Let’s use this as a way to tell the story of these undocumented youth, and that we can make a poetic statement with this’,” Daversa told Univision the day before the album work won Grammys for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album, Best Improvised Jazz Solo, and Best Instrumental Arrangement or A Capella.
Daversa is a recognized interpreter of this genre, with several albums published, as well as a trumpet player, composer, arranger, producer, educator and bandleader.
“I wanted more people, even those who didn’t know this was happening in the country, to be able to hear and feel the stories of these young people in a different way,” he added in the same interview with Univision.
Upon receiving the Grammy Awards on Sunday, Daversa called to the stage several of the Dreamers musicians who participated in American Dreamers. He said they are “talented and courageous role models,” as reported by Variety.
In his speech, according to the publication, Daversa stressed that winning a Grammy is “incredible for a [U.S.] citizen, but seismic for an undocumented American.”
Salvador’s clarinet is at the bottom of the story he narrates on the album’s first track. His parents had first come to the United States; he reunited with them at the airport. Music appeared in his life when he was in sixth grade. He decided he wanted to pursue a career with that instrument that he first rejected and then loved.
“My name is Salvador, I am a Dreamer. I was brought from Mexico to the States at age three. I’m a clarinetist (…) I didn’t really know until seventh grade I was an undocumented child. That’s what my parents warned me: ‘Sorry, you’re not like your friends.’ I’m just like, what?, what do you mean? I don’t understand
Alicia found the drum, her instrument, at a childhood camp, in a percussion circle. She tried it and played one hour after another, so long that the next day her hands were swollen. She knew that some deep emotion was coming out with those harmonious bangs.
“My name is Alicia and I am Dreamer. I was brought to the US when I was three, from Peru I play the drum. I’ve dealt a lot with the resentment towards my parents, even though all they have tried to do is help me and my brother fulfill our lives. I would yell at them sometimes, ‘why don’t you just go back!’
In her piece, it is the percussion, its Afro melody, the one that is singing the refrain of the West Side Story classic, I like to live in America.
Daisy started singing in a church choir when she was eleven. She says so in the track that precedes the version of the classic “Deportee”, which Daisy sings with the big band: Good bye to my Juan, good bye, Rosalita.
“My name is Daisy and I’m a Dreamer. I was brought to the United States when I was nine years old, from Venezuela. I love to sing. My sister had a tumor and her medical treatment was in Houston. My mom and I arrived in 1991.”
John Daversa calls these stories “internal battles”. Alicia’s, Salvador’s, Daisy’s and the rest of the Dreamers musicians’, even those who didn’t verbalize them for the album but interpreted them with their instruments. In the same interview with Univision, Daversa commented that translating them into this work was such a powerful and emotional process that they had to stop recording many times.
On the album there are versions of songs like “Deportee”, “Living in America”, “Dont’ Fence Me In”, “Immigrant Song” and “Stars and Stripes for ever, which won one of the Grammys.
Juan Carlos, another of the fifty-three Dreamers, said in another interview with Univision that he grew up with these pieces. “Singing these songs, there’s something in you that says, ‘these are my songs too, I grew up with these songs, I’m part of this mosaic that makes America [United States].
“Sometimes you have opened your heart to the United States and sometimes you feel as if the United States has closed its heart to you.”, he added.
Immigration experts and advocates have argued repeatedly that a proper law would give Dreamers the security that would allow them to live and work legally in the country. On February 11th, the CEOs of more than 100 powerful companies, including Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Twitter, published a full-page letter in the New York Times, addressed to U.S. congressmen who just inaugurated a new legislature, to pass a “bipartisan and permanent” law to protect Dreamers.
“With the re-opening of the federal government and the presumptive restart of immigration and border security negotiations, now is the time for Congress to pass a law to provide Dreamers the certainty they need. These are our friends, neighbors, and coworkers, and they should not have to wait for court cases to be decided to determine their fate when Congress can act now,” says one part of the letter.
Then they talk about numbers. They calculate that the loss of workers benefited by DACA would also mean losses to the U.S. GDP for $350 billion and for $90 billion in tax revenues.