Racing Along

an aside...

Mozart's "Abduction from the Seraglio" includes a chorus by the Janissaries. These guys were typically 'recruited' from captives of the Ottoman empire (starting around 1330 - it's amazing how easily this type of thing can be looked up!) and given a kind of elite training in customs very foreign to the land of their origins. In a way, this created a new race of sorts, which grew to a point of revolting and later, control. And they made a type of marching music.

There's an essay about 'Race and Language' in the Harvard Classics by E. A. Freeman which explores the question of what defines people groups. (A great line from that essay: "We may thus seem to be landed in a howling wilderness of scientific uncertainty")

Just wanted to park this here for reference.