Two Birds

“Two birds live in the same tree. The first one pecks at the fruit, sweet or bitter; the second looks on without eating.”       - The Upanishads

 

And so my 41^st National Orff Conference came and went. And behold, it was glorious!. After the first two days, somewhat reported in the last two posts, came Saturday, the day of my double session titled “The Humanitarian Musician.” That deserves its own entry, but while it’s somewhat fresh, just a short look at what happened that night. 

 

The usual ritual is a banquet dinner followed by dancing to a live band. Conference after Conference, music teachers from around the country put on their party dancing selves and off we go. At some point, there is a spontaneous conga line and usually some moment with some in a circle while  people strut across the middle one at a time showing their stuff. Often the electric slide line dance makes its appearance. 

 

I enjoy dancing as much as the next person, but noticed that my heart wasn’t totally in it and while I was doing the mandatory booty-shaking, I was kind of thinking about other things— like looking for someone I wanted to introduce to someone else. When the band took a break, I decided to head back to the hotel and play the piano in the lobby. Good choice! For after about five minutes, my friend Laura, who sang with me for a couple of years at the Jewish Home before she moved to Seattle, showed up and we went through some of the songs we used to do. And then Rene and IJ,  two old colleagues I’ve known for some 40 years, dropped by and joined in the singing. A crowd started to form and at one point, unhappy with the key I chose for Georgia on my Mind, Rene nudged up the bench and accompanied herself while singing.

 

Now I’ve long known that Rene is just about the most soulful singer I’ve known, but sitting next to her on that bench, I was drawn into a spiritual power that embraced me from head to toe. I was in the presence of majesty, of an eagle who had swallowed whole the sweet and bitter fruits of this life and transformed it all into magnificent splendor, brilliant exaltation, deep Soul fully released out into the world. And behind Rene and by her side and moving forward into the future were all the ancestors, descendants and living in the moment carriers of the African musical genius. We know some of them by name—Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin, Ella and Billie, Muddy Waters and James Brown, but truth be told there are millions who carry that power in their church’s gospel choir or in the blues or jazz clubs. It is a spiritual legacy that shouts, “Jump into the dancing circle with your whole self, testify with a voice that fills your whole body, play those thunderous drums as if you and drum are one.”

So here’s a confession. When I’m in the presence of such glory, I often feel small and impotent while simultaneously feeling uplifted and enlarged. Part of it might be superficially analyzed as my whiteness, but I think there’s something more that has to do with my character. As a writer, reader, constant thinker, I necessarily have to remove myself a bit off to the side. One cannot think with the left hemisphere neo-cortex and wholly participate at the same time. Some part of my purposefully holds back a bit, looks on from the side, refrains from eating to look at and think about the meal, like the second bird in the quote above. I’ve felt this learning drum parts in Ghana, when I’m trying to figure out all the rhythmic relationships before I wholly release myself to just playing them. Or watch the dance moves to see if I’m getting it right instead of trusting my body to just jump in and feel it. 

 

Both have their place in our life, both birds live on my tree—it’s just a question of when to step back and when to dive in. (In fact, this does relate to entering chilly lakes— sometimes inching in reluctantly one step at a time, hands on my hips and sometimes just diving right in.) Truth be told, whether it be swimming, dancing or soulful singing, I can do both. I’m just noticing how it’s not as easy and natural to me as it is for someone like Rene.

 

After “Georgia,” she told me to play Down By the Riverside and got up to get the enlarging crowd of some 80 people to join in. She’d feed them lines, spontaneously arrange little riffs in divided groups and got the entire room vibrating with Soulful Glory. Song after song for some 45 minutes!!! In a short pause, I played the intro to Somewhere Over the Rainbow, all joined in and I went to bed. A memorable end to a most marvelous conference.

 

As many know, my first and most important Orff teacher was a black man named Avon Gillespie. He and Rene and IJ and others like Judith Thompson and Margaret DuGard were a tiny, tiny minority in a primarily white world of Orff teachers. (Likewise, very few Asian or Latinx teachers). Finally that is starting to change and with it, a new American expression of this approach first developed in Germany and Austria. And a new worldwide expression, as evidenced both by the 25 countries represented in our annual San Francisco International Orff Course and the work being done in some 40 Orff Associations worldwide. (Much of which is described in the book I published titled Orff Schulwerk in Diverse Cultures.)

 

Thanks to Rene for the privilege of sitting by her side on that piano bench. A good reminder to release myself fully sometimes into the full catastrophe and glory of this life and sing from the bottom of my Soul. That’s where unbridled Joy and Spirit and Soul lie waiting to be revealed.