By J.H. Tompkins

AFTER MANY YEARS , I realized that when I visit New York, I don't want anyone to know I'm from California. Urban centers across the United States disrespect the Bay Area so frequently and passionately that I've internalized their scorn.

I traveled east last summer for convention festivities and was with a throng of anti-George W. Bush activists closing in on the Garden. I had a feeling all hell was about to bust loose and was uncomfortably penned in by a five-member Kerry-Better-Burn-Bush-Family-for-Peace. I hate Bush, for sure, but I hate John Kerry too. And at that moment I hated that KB³F²P family a lot. They were from the Bay Area – I overheard them talking about the Chez Panisse organic lunch project in the Berkeley school system.

A fight broke out, and I was trapped – cops on one side, the PTA on the other. Cops charged, people scattered, and a cab lost its windows. A young woman was jammed into a storefront and couldn't breathe. Just when visions of a home-cooked meal began to give way to the turkey noodle casserole at Rikers, my Bay Area compatriots committed a crime. I know crime, and I know neighborhoods where grannies do PCP on holidays. This impromptu concert was a crime against humanity, one for the Hague, not the Tombs.

"People, people," the East Bay mother figure shouted. "Please, don't push! Calm down; everything's going to be fine!" And then, without consulting a soul, she took a deep breath and began to sing. "Hey people now / Smile on your brother / Everybody get together and smile on each other right now." The whole family joined in and were soon so absorbed in their mission that they couldn't see spectators quizzically craning their necks. The looks turned into smirks, which gave way to grimaces, and then to scorn and derision. A 40-ouncer shattered nearby, and the von Trapps were finally shut down. And I was too because the von Trapps are from the Bay Area and so am I. They lectured residents of the world's greatest city about urban behavior. They looked out at a crowd and could only see themselves. They were representing, Bay Area-style – and, yeah, it takes one to know one.

Consider, for instance, the "Sound of Young America," created during the '60s by Motown Records in Detroit. The tight, slightly rocked-up tunes with sweet harmonies concentrated the hope in the hearts of black folks arriving from the Jim Crow South searching for freedom and some fun up north. They brought soulful church harmonies and the blues into a fast-paced, integrating world, and the results were spectacular.

And now, music fans, relax and welcome to the "Sound of Strange America." We don't have a particular sound in the Bay Area – we've got dozens of them. The sounds don't cross over to different markets – people cross over; this region's music is as much a crazy quilt as Memphis soul was once as satisfying and predictable as Booker T and the MG's. It's a crazy quilt with something for everyone, and some days it drives us crazy. We had Dave Brubeck's iconoclastic take on jazz – the jazz establishment hated it, but American college kids made him a huge star. At the same time, even as Dylan was emerging in the east, San Francisco's Kingston Trio were working with Capitol Records to package folk music to the suburbs.

The folk influences were evident in the work of some of the Bay Area's '60s superstars, like the Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape, and the Grateful Dead; in the soul and funk of Bill Champlin's Sons of Champlin, Sly and the Family Stone, and Tower of Power; and in the blues of Janis Joplin's Big Brother and the Holding Company. The bands had great energy, great fun, and great fans and were often too busy experimenting or getting high to play very well. Only Stone was a true innovator, but no one cared. The bands celebrated life for a far-flung community of runaways, dropouts, and hustlers – who cares if every once in a while the drummer couldn't keep time?

The Bay Area's currently tepid rap scene suffers when compared to its early self. Too $hort's simple, funky beats sounded like nothing so much as the blues music that came up from the South during WWII. His dirty rhymes were part of a long African American tradition, and the combination made him the region's first national star. Shock G's Digital Underground – wacky, wild, and passionate about P-Funk – came from a different place than Too $hort, and it showed. The group's musical drive owed a debt to a white Berkeley DJ named Fuze, and, shortly after D.U. blew up, the lineup included a rapper from Marin City named Tupac Shakur. Vallejo's E-40 built a local rap empire with a gift for slang and the ability to rap more words per measure than anyone around.

Music was in a difficult spot in the wake of 9/11. What could have been a time of introspection and healing was turned into a clampdown run in the interests of a vicious, self-involved, members-only club. I don't think I would have made it through were it not for Boots Riley of the Coup and Michael Franti and his band, Spearhead. The cover of the Coup's album, Party Music (75 Ark), which was slated to drop on 9/11, showed a missile striking the World Trade Center. Riley gave thoughtful, courageous interviews to unfriendly media around the globe, setting an example for the many thousands of people who saw the situation as far more complicated than the trigger-happy thugs in charge of things did. Franti waited a week and then produced a free concert. Meanwhile, the rapper named Paris – once the most radical and sharpest in Bay Area hip-hop – poured himself into Sonic Jihad (Guerrilla Funk), which exposed the racism at the core of normal America.

That's what music has always done in these parts, and that's why the sound of music in the region has more to do with experimenting with alter identities, responding to international events, and trying to have a lot of fun. New Yorkers don't have much patience for this sort of thing, so when I travel there next week, I'm keeping my mouth shut. We don't generally have much to do with shaping the mainstream, and if anyone tells you that's because we're walking the point, watch out, he or she's also selling a bridge. What keeps things together here is how different we are from each other and from the rest of the country. That's why the rest of us are here too.