Midnight Thoughts: Bad Bunny and Cultural Identity After Bristow

On January 30, 2026, Carnegie Hall opened its doors once again for a program devoted to the question of cultural identity in American music at the close of the nineteenth century. The evening concluded with a performance of George Frederick Bristow’s Fifth Symphony, The Niagara, played by the American Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leon Botstein. The hall was full. We were there to capture what we believed would be the final images of this documentary—a film that began with a simple premise: to understand the role Bristow and his generation played in the long, uncertain effort to shape an American cultural identity.

The performance was met with a standing ovation and generous reviews. For a moment, it felt like an ending. Like closure.

Bristow's Fifth at Carnegie Hall

But on the walk back from Carnegie Hall, on one of the coldest nights of that winter, a question surfaced that would not let go: how much of that identity is still alive today? How many people still speak, think, walk, and imagine the world as Bristow and his generation once did? They were already different from those who had lived through the Revolution. And perhaps Washington Irving was right—perhaps we all pass through moments of cultural sleep, only to awaken years later, like Rip Van Winkle, and discover that the identity we struggled to build and pass on now feels unfamiliar, even foreign.

Walking through Times Square, surrounded by light, motion, and relentless change, it became clear that cultural identity is never sealed. It may appear fixed while it is taking shape, but it is always subject to transformation. I realized then that I had been wrong to think of identity as something forged. Metals are forged: rigid, hardened, resistant to change. Cultures are not. They are shaped through exchange—through displacement, encounter, loss, and inclusion—processes as old as humanity itself.

America’s cultural life has always emerged from such movement. In the nineteenth century, German musicians fleeing revolution carried with them an orchestral tradition that did not merely survive the Atlantic crossing, but went on to revolutionize musical life in the United States. What took root here was not imitation, but transformation. As the city fills with music from sidewalks, subways, and street corners, the pattern becomes unmistakable: the future will not look or sound like the past. And it never has. We may not recognize what comes next—but history suggests that this, too, is how culture endures.

And what of Bristow, after all—since this film began with him? Bristow is here. Not as a monument, and not as a recovered relic, but as part of the fabric of this nation’s cultural life. His music, his struggle, and his belief in the possibility of an American voice belong to a larger, ongoing story—one shaped by movement, exchange, and transformation. That his work should reappear, resonate, and find new listeners would almost certainly have pleased the son of English immigrants who devoted his life to the idea that America could, in time, learn to hear itself.