OKLAHOMA CITY — On practically any given Friday, you’re likely to see crowds rushing into The Plaza and you’ll hear music pouring out of every bar and club up and down 16th Street.
But on Friday, August 9th in the heart of The Plaza, there’s set to be a show with a bit more relevance and background than the average dance party or punk rock free-for-all.
That’s because local art-rocker, singer, and musical polymath Santiago Ramones will be performing toward a legitimate milestone in his life as he raises money to help pay for his United States citizenship.
Drawn to singing and music
Ramones was brought to Oklahoma from Venezuela with his family on his sixth birthday and has lived without citizenship for more than two decades, navigating DACA, Permanent Resident status, and even his longtime marriage to an American citizen.
Through all of those years, it was music that he found himself gravitating toward, and that he said now feels like a natural element in completing his long citizenship journey.
“I’ve never really been like upfront with saying ‘look at me, I’m an immigrant,’ because the nature of it is that you feel more comfortable saying ‘don’t look at me, I don’t exist,’” Ramones told me. “So there is a sense of finally being able to say ‘hey, look, I’m actually here, I’m supposed to be, and this is what I do here. I’ve been doing this thing, this music, in Oklahoma for all of my life.’”
That’s not an exaggeration. Ramones found himself drawn to singing from a very early age, joining the regional school choir program Circle the State with Song in elementary school just a few short years after immigrating.
“My parents aren’t exactly musical people,” Ramones explained. “My dad’s a mechanical engineer and my mom has a degree in hospitality. But being Venezuelan, music is just such a part of the culture. But, again, it’s a weird kind of identity crisis for me, because I’ve never spent enough time immersed with other Venezuelan people to really know.”
For a Venezuelan child growing up in far northwest OKC and dealing with ever-present questions of identity, the sense of community and friendship afforded by those school music programs offered an immediate hook.
Ramones was drawn to trombone in school band, and he became the rare student to juggle both band and choir simultaneously, eventually jumping into musical theatre and studying even more instruments.
Anything, he said, to keep pursuing music.
“I just felt like ‘I like it here, I’m making friends,’” he said. “It was just the feeling of being around other people all doing the same thing. That felt like my people.”
He carried that feeling and that community through school and beyond, receiving a master’s degree in Music Composition from UCO and exploring a wide range of styles in his own songwriting, from grunge and indie-rock to electro-pop and even deeply experimental electronic studies.
Always in the background: citizenship issues
But in the background of his life, there were always the issues of citizenship and status, issues that have not only required tireless, vigilant attention and endless paperwork, but a remarkable level of financial cost, an element of immigration that’s not as often discussed.
“DACA cost $470 every two years,” Ramones explained. “And then applying for Permanent Resident status is the most expensive part. That costs $1,440. Now to do the final application for citizenship, even after being married to a citizen for years, it’s going to cost $710.”
As he’s finally on the cusp of completing the long, sometimes hopeless-seeming bureaucratic path to citizenship, Ramones said that he feels more comfortable and more empowered for the first time to stand up and draw attention to his life’s immigrant story.
The Spero Project to benefit
In doing so at his upcoming Plaza show, he hopes to not only raise funds to overcome that final application hurdle but also to raise extra funding and awareness for others with similar experiences through The Spero Project.
“The Spero Project is a local non-profit in OKC that helps refugees and asylum seekers integrate into the US by providing lawyers, translators, application assistance, and even things like transportation,” Ramones said. “So anything we make at the show above the fundraising goal will go to them.”
The show will also feature a performance from Ramones’ friend Sun Deep, the Indian-born, Hindi-rapping half of OKC’s Finite Galaxy, who navigated his own immigrant journey in Oklahoma in early adulthood.
Larger goal of the performance
Beyond the night’s financial goals, though, Ramones hopes that the event can be a small spotlight on the greater reality of the costs, complexities, and emotions of the immigrant experience.
“We don’t have to explain or justify our lives,” he said. “My existence should speak for itself, but my existence can speak for other immigrants, too. I’m the example, you know, I’m not the exception. I’m not ‘one of the good ones.’ I just am. And so is every single one of us.”
Santiago Romanes and Sun Deep will be performing Friday, August 9th at 1700 NW 16th Street in The Plaza to raise funding for Ramones’ citizenship application and The Spero Project.
Follow Santiago Ramones online at his official site santiagoramones.com, on Facebook at facebook.com/santiagoramonesmusic, and in Instagram at @santiagoramonesmusic.
For more information about The Spero Project, visit thesperoproject.com.
You can find out about local music and performance happenings in the OKC metro weekly in this music column by Brett Fieldcamp. | Brought to you by True Sky Credit Union.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.