COVER STORY : FEAR OF THE M WORD : Multiculturalism is sweeping the arts community of L.A., ‘the capital of the Third World.’ It promises to shift power and money to minorities--and that’s making some people anxious

In Los Angeles, the arts community has its own mantra:

MMMMMMMMMMMulticulturalism.

Talk about a buzzword--there’s no escaping this one.

No one knows who coined it, or when, and its definition depends on whom you talk to--and everyone is talking about it.

In the broadest sense, it stands for the recognition and cultivation of our increasingly diverse society. Out with the “melting pot”--in with the “tossed salad.”

It sounds all well and good, but in Los Angeles, home to more peoples and languages than virtually any place else in the world, multiculturalism has the community poised between detente and fighting words.

More people want pieces of the pie and some are asking for major changes in the city’s cultural priorities. Mainstream institutions are struggling to adapt to the new L.A.

There aren’t many answers yet, but there are plenty of questions: Will multiculturalism be our salvation or has it already been co-opted? Is it a fad or is it here to stay? Will it come at the expense of what has been known as the “dominant culture”?

More than in any other city, the new diversity isn’t just a possible future for the arts: It’s already here. Even the citadels of the L.A. cultural establishment are beginning to reflect the changing population.

After the success of Philip Kan Gotanda’s “The Wash,” about the disintegration of a Japanese-American marriage, the Mark Taper Forum recently broke box-office records with George C. Wolfe’s African-American musical “Jelly’s Last Jam.” The Los Angeles Philharmonic has announced two noted Mexican conductors for its coming season. The Los Angeles Theatre Center is bringing Culture Clash, the Latino trio whose “The Mission” was a hit last year, back for a new show this month.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has a mammoth Mexican art exhibition waiting in the wings--the linchpin of a citywide celebration of Mexican art and culture--while the Museum of Contemporary Art has hosted performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Pena, whose work focuses on the visible and invisible borders between cultures.

An unprecedented number of culturally specific arts centers--from the 25-year-old Inner City Cultural Center and East-West Players to such younger groups as the Celtic Arts Center and Macondo Espacio Cultural--offer presentations for both community and broader audiences.

Besides productions, there are also ongoing programs to nurture new artists. The Music Center’s Community Access Program intends to develop celebrations geared to holidays in a variety of ethnic communities. LATC has labs for Latino, Black, Asian-American and women artists. The Peter Sellars-directed Los Angeles Festival, noted for its non-Eurocentric focus, brought artists from around the Pacific to the city that author David Rieff calls “the capital of the Third World.”

If multiculturalism can make it anywhere, Los Angeles is the place. It is the center of the new wave of Latino, Asian and Pacific immigration that is changing the face of America. The insurgent populations face a cultural establishment that is relatively young. And the resources available to the city’s arts aren’t shrinking here as they are elsewhere.

Indeed, multiculturalism could be the straw that tips the balance, finally pushing Los Angeles ahead of New York as the center of what’s new in American art.

But it could also drive the city toward conflict. To date, Los Angeles has shielded itself from the raging national debate over the artistic and academic canon, but a recession that’s limiting arts resources may force hard choices on a city that historically has preferred to avoid them. Either way, Los Angeles is wrestling with the arts challenge of its lifetime.

“Multiculturalism is the issue of our time,” says Juan Carrillo, deputy director for programs at the California Arts Council. “And we’re in the midst of it.”

“We’re dealing with a lot of emotions,” adds Gerald Yoshitomi, executive director of the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center. “We’re putting ourselves on the line. If we’re going to function as a city, we need cultural understanding.”

Los Angeles is incontestably less entrenched than New York, and that could mean less resistance to multiculturalism’s innovations in access and funding. By contrast with the East, Los Angeles’ major cultural institutions date only from the ‘60s.

The strength of pop culture in Los Angeles, ironically, has also kept the bastions of high art less self-assured, less prepossessing and more open to change than their New York counterparts.

The West’s institutions of higher education are also different: There’s no Ivy League to foster allegiance to the canon and, by extension, the European-based arts. Significantly, Stanford, possibly California’s most prestigious school, led the multiculturalist wave with a controversial curriculum revision in 1988.

Additionally, the journalistic dialogue in Southern California lacks old-school figureheads and a critical mass--so to speak--of writers willing to stake out traditionally Eurocentric positions. There are no L.A.-based Hilton Kramers or George Wills.

Most important, racial tensions in Los Angeles in the years since Watts have remained relatively less inflamed than in other urban centers. The city has also repeatedly reelected an African-American mayor.

Currently, the head of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department is Latino. Multiculturalism is on the lips of arts leaders and in the funding guidelines of granting bodies. And both public- and private-sector groups have been formed to help usher in a multicultural Los Angeles.

Yet these changes in L.A. cultural life could just as easily alienate an already fragmented and decentralized population as they could foster understanding.

Nationally, multiculturalism confronts a political climate that is increasingly hostile to ethnically specific programs. Locally, it takes on a city whose apparent tolerance masks a longstanding segregation of races and cultures. And liberal Los Angeles’ traditional solution for such matters--increasing the allocations to all communities--is going to be more difficult in hard times.

“There are a lot of hackles being raised,” Carrillo says. “The underlying struggle is, ‘How are we going to divvy up the resources for the new L.A.?’ I wish leadership would develop that would say, ‘We’ve got to continue to increase the number at the watering hole.’

“But there’s another leadership that would say this is a fight, a mano-a-mano struggle,” Carrillo continues. “It’s a real possibility that the city becomes more divided, with higher walls between the camps. This is a hell of a way for the arts to talk, but we’re not unrelated to what’s happening on every block.”

“What we’re really doing is questioning the basis of people’s culture,” says Yoshitomi, who is chairman of both the 2000 Partnership Multicultural Arts Working Group and its editorial advisory board, which produced the partnership’s upcoming report--intended as a policy guide for government and private-sector leadership.

“We’re saying, ‘Make a little room.’ We’re also saying there’s more than this genre of work you’ve spent 40 years and so much money studying, breathing and living,” says Yoshitomi, a key player in both local and national arts decision-making bodies. “If I say to someone that the tradition of Grand Kabuki is just as important to the world as grand opera, then what it says is that there’s a part of the world that they don’t know or understand.”

This kind of assertion, says Yoshitomi, makes people defensive. “It’s frightening to them. It’s reflective of a loss of their sense of what it is to be an American, their sense of what culture is.”

The multiculturalist position argues for equality among cultures, against the dominance of European-based arts and for a reconsideration of policies supporting creative activities.

The fracas over the changing cultural landscape has been more visible--and seemingly polarized--in East Coast periodicals and in universities across the country.

Opponents see multiculturalism as a diminution of “quality” in the arts, an attack on professionalism and sophistication.

“The tremendous energy of multiculturalism, which now reigns in universities, on public television stations and in arts organizations, comes not from its noisy enthusiasm for other cultures but from a frightened response to, and an animus against, the (Western World),” wrote Edward Rothstein in a February article in the New Republic, a magazine that has devoted several cover stories and much space to this issue in recent months.

“Multiculturalism’s hard-liners, who seem to make up the majority of the movement, damn as racism any attempt to draw the myriad of American groups into a common American culture,” wrote Fred Siegel, also in the New Republic. “For these multiculturalists, differences are absolute, irreducible, intractable--occasions not for understanding but for separation.”

Yet some would say it’s the anti-multiculturalists who are afraid--of having to share what they’ve got, of forsaking the traditional European emphasis within U.S. arts--of the unknown.

The debate is by no means absent from Los Angeles.

“It isn’t just an arms-length public policy discussion--it goes to the roots of what people see for themselves,” says Yoshitomi. “I’m talking about a place for myself and my children--and someone else is saying this place is already staked out.”

The conflict, however, isn’t only between the pro- and anti-multiculturalists. Even among those who agree that the new diversity needs to be reckoned with, there is disagreement about what it means and how to reach goals.

For established mainstream institutions, multiculturalism typically means the integration and expansion of audiences, the addition of persons of color to the masthead and some programming changes.

For culturally specific organizations, though, multiculturalism can mean having access to resources to build their own institutions and audiences.

That pits the mainstream’s faith in an integrationist approach against the so-called “new tribalism,” or the voluntary segregation by ethnic or affinity groups as a source and sign of enpowerment.

Wanting to minimize these differences, mainstream organizations are nearly falling over themselves to proclaim their conversions to multiculturalism. Perhaps nowhere is the debate as prominent, or as crucial, as at Los Angeles’ culture Acropolis. “The Music Center is a multicultural institution,” says its president, Esther Wachtell. She cites diversification on the board, staff and audience levels, programming, a broad-based educational program and the Music Center’s Community Advancement Committee.

“If you were to take the word as it’s rooted in the Latin, it means many different cultures coming together,” Wachtell says. “It means the bringing together of cultures.

“If you define multiculturalism (that way), we are. How could we be anything other than that? We have been, are and will continue to be addressing the culturally specific audiences and activities of Los Angeles. If you look at our audiences, they are becoming more diverse every year,” says Wachtell, pointing to the increase in Asian and Latino surnames on Music Center subscription rosters and such support groups as the Asian Pacific American Friends of Center Theatre Group.

Yoshitomi was one recent addition to the board of the Music Center Operating Company--an example of its diversification efforts. Yet even he doesn’t agree with Wachtell--differing with her pronouncements about the institution’s operations and audiences. Asked whether the Music Center is genuinely multicultural, Yoshitomi answers, “Not today.”

“The mix of people is less, and I don’t mean just color,” says Yoshitomi, referring to the economically elite patronage. Despite Wachtell’s protestations, such shows as “Jelly’s Last Jam” and “The Wash” typically draw largely white, middle-class, middle-aged audiences. Ironically, as Yoshitomi points out, the Music Center presentation that has drawn the most integrated audiences of recent years is the highly conventional “Phantom of the Opera.”

Colleagues in Music Center business and in the greater L.A. arts arena, Yoshitomi and Wachtell exemplify the poles of disagreement within the multiculturalist camp. Although they work together, they don’t see eye to eye on the relative merits of integration versus separatism.

“I don’t believe in separatism, because I believe the arts are a wonderful bonding and communicating mechanism,” Wachtell says. “We can’t isolate ourselves. That’s unhealthy for the community. When you segment and become separatist and divisive, that’s when everybody dies.”

Yoshitomi, though, thinks Wachtell’s idea of the great “bringing together” is neither correct nor sufficient. Such a campaign would entail making the work--and the culture--fit into Western European models.

Further, many artists of color call for tribalism as a way to preserve their own culture.

“I can only speak for the black community,” Shabaka, director of LATC’s Black Theater Artists Workshop, says in speaking of the need for separate, culturally specific groups and institutions. “Our entry into this country was a cultural lobotomy, which created a need to re-create a culture, to find a place to keep ideas alive, to pull together the collective memory. That can never happen if the cultural and artistic institutions are in the hands of someone else.

“My biggest gripe with multiculturalism is that most of it is being done by white male theater owners who have decided that it’s good for them,” he continues. “Who shifted the paradigm and who will benefit from the shift? Will the ethnic artists and their communities, or will it be these white institutions who are now expanding?”

Hope Tschopik, former associate director of the Los Angeles Olympic Arts Festival and consultant to the 2000 Partnership, says the Music Center is a “culturally specific institution.”

“I don’t see how they can be (multicultural),” she says. “They don’t have the cultural expertise or sensitivity. When someone outside of a culture makes decisions, they end up being right-minded but wrongheaded.”

Tschopik says, however, that there’s nothing inherently wrong with culturally specific companies--including European-based ones--doing what they do best. “The burden of multiculturalism on an institution such as the (L.A.) Philharmonic is oppressive,” she says. “It does one thing well, but it’s narrow. Of course these institutions have to pay attention to barriers of access, but I don’t think the Philharmonic should be anything other than what it is. It’s so wrongheaded as to defy belief.”

It is a case, Tschopik says, of seeing the Music Center for the resource that it is, not trying to pretend it’s other than that. “The approach at (Partnership) 2000 was, if we are going to be a diverse community, then we need to know more about the diversity. We are not going to learn about the cultural wealth of someone of Mexican ancestry by attending the Music Center. It’s just not going to happen.”

What may happen is continued Eurocentrism despite politically correct policy statements, unless some premises are questioned. “America’s arts policy is based on an idea of ‘a superior culture,’ ” states the Partnership 2000 report. “This rests on a European definition of art. . . . And even though this policy is intended to serve our pluralistic society, we actually place little value on art that is based in another cultural tradition.

“In our pursuit of ‘excellence’ first and ‘accessibility’ second,” the report continues, “we have managed to ‘professionalize’ and ‘disseminate’ the arts, but we have not really strengthened participation in arts and culture in any substantive way.”

Says Tschopik, who also served, briefly, as a consultant to the 1990 Los Angeles Festival: “We need to rethink what we call art and what we call culture. It has to do not only with demographics but with urban design. In the ‘60s, (the paradigm) was an urban core. But we’ve proliferated urban villages (and) decentralized. Cultural support went along with urban planning; now we have to refocus on the neighborhood.

“We’re trying to make sure the big social institutions that are considered L.A. are reflective of the community that’s here. There are a lot of institutions that haven’t yet emerged that should. Plaza de la Raza (in East Los Angeles) is probably as important as the County Museum of Art. The market system is based on a notion of choice, yet when we get into government policy, we limit rather than expand choice.”

Yoshitomi, along with Tschopik and the Partnership Report, urges increased support for culturally specific organizations as well as the continued funding of integrated spaces. “What needs to happen is the creation of both places that support, sustain and develop culturally specific work as well as places of common ground where those cultures are shared with other people,” Yoshitomi says.

Defending itself against the current political climate, the Partnership Report includes a pro-forma disclaimer that “this is not a recommendation for a quota system in the arts.” Instead, it says, such policies constitute “good business practice.”

Ultimately, what divides the players is whether they foresee battles on the horizon.

The Partnership Report “recommends increased support for our diverse community-based cultural institutions. This means pursuing additional finances.”

Al Nodal, general manager of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department and its $5.8-million endowment, agrees. His department’s master plan advocates policies basically in line with the Partnership Report.

“We won’t have conflict if we don’t have to cut any (programs or organizations) out,” he says. “Our efforts have been to bring up to a certain level things we have underfunded in the past.”

Wachtell concedes that “mainstream organizations might have to step back a little bit in areas like government funding in order to make it possible for those groups that have been underserved until now to develop their full strength.”

“That’s a difficult thing to say,” the Music Center’s Wachtell continues, “because we don’t have any money either. It doesn’t seem possible because of the crystal chandeliers, but we live as hand-to-mouth as any organization in the arts.”

Yoshitomi is more willing to talk about potentially controversial solutions when he makes clear that he’s speaking as an individual, not as head of the 2000 Partnership Working Group. He argues for de-establishing some of the city’s cultural establishment in order to make space for other cultures of the new Los Angeles.

“Some people would want a reallocation of funds toward many of the groups that have not received support,” he says, referring to local, state and federal grant sources. “There should be a freeze in the amount requested by the largest mainstream groups, particularly in the case of capital funds.”

Yoshitomi, though, thinks there needs to be changes in more than funding. “There are now a fixed number of producing entities. There has to be an opportunity for other producing and presenting entities to have access.”

That would entail revamping who holds the power at any number of venues. “What we need are more situations that encourage artistry of others, rather than saying one artistic director is going to control the artists,” Yoshitomi says.

Theater is a case in point. Gordon Davidson now controls four theaters--the Ahmanson, the Mark Taper Forum, the Taper, Too and the Ahmanson at the Doolittle. The Music Center has discussed plans for an additional black-box space, which also would be under Davidson’s purview.

Los Angeles Theatre Center, whose facility was recently purchased by the city and must now afford some time to other producing companies, has often been accused of colonialism. LATC’s various labs for ethnic minorities and women all ultimately answer to artistic director Bill Bushnell.

Yoshitomi thinks it’s a less than satisfactory situation all around. “In the long term, we have to look at the creation of new facilities and changing the number of weeks any one group has in a facility.”

Theater, though, has apparently made more headway toward diversity than some other mediums-- with a variety of African-American, Latino, Asian-American and, to a lesser extent, Native American productions available on L.A. stages throughout the season.

Yet theater also has its resistance--albeit more benign than the diatribes of the Eastern press. There has been a renewed interest in “classical” theater--generally Shakespeare, sometimes Ibsen, Shaw and others--that may be a response to the multicultural incursion.

LATC’s most recent vintage lab, for instance, was a classical theater work group (recently stopped because of budget cuts). The Taper, Too, long the venue for new works, recently broke with practice to showcase a trio of conceptual productions, including Moliere and Brecht redux. (Paradoxically, the multicultural wave may have the effect of bringing the canon to a Los Angeles historically unenthusiastic by the classics.)

A Music Center document lists “top priorities of the Mark Taper Forum” as “Gordon Davidson’s ‘black box’ ” and “a repertory company.” In support of the latter, it cites the success of London’s Renaissance Theatre Company with Taper audiences and laments the fact that “there is no regularly scheduled classical theater.”

Other support for traditional priorities may be found in the contribution patterns of what the state arts council’s Carrillo describes as Los Angeles’ “strong patron base--the economic class that says we have to have institutions of international proportion, with large budgets, and European-based arts.”

In a time when nearly all public and private budgets have tightened, 37 major corporations--including aerospace, savings and loans and banks--have increased their funding to the Music Center by 20% this year.

Wachtell says that figure is evidence that the Music Center is “serving well.” Others might read it as the old guard girding its loins against the new.

No matter how you interpret the facts, though, multiculturalism is an issue whose ramifications are far from resolved. It promises to continue to provoke Angelenos, even as it points the city toward an identity for the 21st Century.

“City policies are moving quickly toward diversity,” Yoshitomi notes. “Clearly there are a number of people who are very worried about it.”