Return to Elemental

Today is Carl Orff’s 130^th birthday. Each year I renew my thanks that he was born, finding it impossible to imagine what my life would have been without him. 

 

Amongst many facets of his genius, one I’ve always appreciated is his understanding and celebration of what he calls the elemental. He describes it as “close to the earth, natural, physical, pertaining to the elements, primeval, treating of first principles, awakening and developing the powers of the spirit.” In a similar way, the poet Gary Snyder talks about reversing the negative association of "primitive cultures" and talks about them as "primary cultures." Right at the heart of what is primary and important. Civilization over-clothes our child-like self with unnecessary layers, like living a life with thick gloves on unable to touch the things that matter, restricted in our movement, our booted-feet unable to touch the earth. 

 

In short, the antithesis of what we just experienced in our Ghana Orff-Afrique course! I walked barefoot to classes, played instruments made from wood, metal, skin, danced every day at many times throughout the day, communicated the day’s schedule with the spoken word in meetings and a hand-drawn chart on butcher paper. Each individual part of the music we played was relatively simple but combined with other parts to make a powerful and dynamic expression of great complexity. When the power went out a few times, it had no impact on our classes or communications with each other. 

Back in the good ole U.S.A., I had to wade through 10 prompts on the robotic voice mail to try to get a doctor's appointment and then was referred to my health care Website where there were 63 unnecessary messages waiting for me and a labyrinth of clicks that still failed to get me my appointment. I’m back in my city’s driverless car nightmare and everywhere I turn, the thrust of the culture is to erase human beings and human contact. 

 

While so many are fascinated by the next cool machine substitution, I believe we all suffer from it. Deep down, we hunger for something more real and touchable amidst all the brightly-lit two-dimensional screens invading every corner of our life and psyche. Hence interest in djembes and didjeridoos and yoga and meditation and perhaps Orff Schulwerk as well! But we also have the tendency to make commodities of them all and treat them superficially without a deeper understanding of what they truly have to offer. 

 

I just finished the book The Body Keeps the Score and it is devastating to realize that human-created trauma— especially child-abuse— is more epidemic than I thought. That hurt people keep hurting other people and at the root is their profound disconnection with the natural world, the human community, their own minds, hearts and bodies. Machines don’t necessarily cause the trauma— that’s a millennium-old story of human folly— but as we organize our society and communication and lives around them, we get sucked into the vortex of yet more disconnection, away from developing authentic relationship with our body’s intelligence and expressiveness, our heart’s capacity to feel, our mind’s capability to imagine. We drift away from face-to-face conversation, from simple pleasures, from the deep connections of singing, playing, dancing and creating with fellow human beings. Just about everything that the author of the above book suggests to both avoid and heal trauma is exactly the practice I've spent my life doing through the gift of Orff Schulwerk. Note:

 

“If trauma is encoded in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching sensations, then our first priority is to help people move out of flight-or fight stats, re-organize their perception of danger and manage relationships. Where traumatized children are concerned, the last things we should be cutting from school schedules are the activities that can do precisely that; chorus, physicql education, recess and anything else that involves movement, play and other forms of joyful engagement. “ - (p. 419)

 

And back to Carl Orff’s birthday. 62 years ago, he said the same thing in his own words. 

 

“Just as humus in nature makes growth possible, so elemental music gives to the child powers that cannot otherwise come to fruition. It must therefore be stressed that elemental music in the primary school should not be installed as a subsidiary subject, but as something fundamental to all other subjects. It is a question of developing the whole personality. This surpasses by far the aims fo the so-called music and singing lessons found in the usual curriculum. It is at the primary school age that the imagination music be stimulated and opportunities for emotional development, which contains the ability to feel, and the power to control the expression of that feeling, must also be provided. Everything that a child of this age experiences, everything in him that has been awakened and nurtures, is a determining factor for the whole of his life. Much can be destroyed at this age that can never be regained’ much can remain undeveloped that can never be reclaimed It worries me profoundly to know that today there are still schools where no songs are sung, and any others with very defective music teaching. “ (p. 154, Texts on Theory and Practice of Orff Schulwerk)

 

Happy birthday, Carl Orff. I wish I could give you better news that your vision has been wholly realized in schools around the world. In so many ways, things are worse than ever. But still you have made and continue to make an impact. On your behalf and the children’s, we’ll keep trying!

 

No Potato

I woke up this morning with this revelation, spoken out loud: 

 

There’s no potato!

 

So today’s post is a shout-out to that grand mystery, the human mind. Especially the subconscious one, that knows so much about what’s needed. Like the fact that teaching a new variation on an old course in a new place next week will require some thought and preparation. So no better place to begin than in dream and my dreams last night were vivid coming attractions of the activities I will be doing. 

 

One of them is an old game, Head and Shoulders, that parenthetically was the first game I learned in my very first Orff workshop 53 years ago. It begins with the text and motions:

 

 Head and shoulders, baby, one-two-three, 

Head and shoulders, baby, one-two-three, 

Head and shoulders, Head and shoulders, 

Head and shoulders, baby, one-two-three. 

 

The next verse is “knees and ankles” and then in my dream, teaching the game to some 60 people, I blanked out on the precise verse about potatoes. I tried “bake potatoes,” “give me potatoes,” “I want potatoes” knowing that none of them felt right and confessing as much to the group, asking for their help. But no one knew the right verse and no one had the book that it’s written in. And I was equally confused about when that verse came in. After the “head” and before the “knees” one or later? I kept starting again, the way that you do when the mind is racing through its search engine, but no result. Finally, right at the cusp of waking from the dream, I realized I could go to the computer and look up the score I had in a folder there. I was literally about to get up from bed and walk to my computer when the insight flashed:

 

“There’s no potato.”

 

Not in that game, anyway. Certainly in the “One Potato, two potato” game, but while the dream mind is endlessly mysterious in its associations, it is wholly unreliable in relaying literal truth. 

 

So now I am awake and ready to plot and plan my classes with my conscious mind, while the mysterious, deep waters below continue to churn and add their voice to the mix.  

Homage to John Steinbeck

As a lifelong reader, I know what separates, for me, good fiction from great literature. Both depend upon memorable characters and compelling plots. But the latter infuse it all with deep insight into the human condition and some implied or stated faith in the perfectibility of humanity. Not idealism, but hard-earned grace having traveled the long road of human error and fallibility.

 

Two of my favorite authors who do that masterfully are Charles Dickens and John Steinbeck. It is harder to find these qualities in modern writers, but Barbara Kingsolver comes close. Today when I stumbled into a collection of quotes from Steinbeck, I couldn’t help but remember his genius. 

 

The first four speak directly to my profession of teaching (though only the last one intentionally). Here they are, with my short comments. 

 

 

 

I’m about to record a podcast titled “M is for Mistakes” and this well describes my approach to creating a safe space where one can take risks without fear of doing things perfectly.

I’d like to think that my passion for defending teachers and children is unapologetically a roar and not a squeak.

 

 

Substitute “teacher” for writer and “education” for literature and ain’t that the truth!

 

 

Yep!

 

The next series of quotes speak directly to our troubled times. Politicians, take note. Resisters, take hope!

 

 

All the news shows is the weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome, but there is so much more and we usually meet it out in the street when we rally. 

 

 

 Teachers, hang this in your classroom and teach accordingly. 

Though easy to lose sight of in the barrage of outrage, I feel it happening. Stay together, friends, and knit the garment of resistance!

 

I cannot wait for the funerals of so many! Please hurry up and leave this planet so we can get to work to care for it. 

 

Thank you, John Steinbeck, for your needed reminders. 

Inside the Chrysalis

One of the xylophone pieces we learned in Ghana was about a caterpillar and her grandmother who always came home late at night. I made up a story about it for teachers to consider using in a little drama with the kids. As follows: 

 

Caterpillar Grandma goes out every night and leaves her granddaughter home alone. She walks slowly home with her friend enjoying the evening and each other’s company and arrives quite late. (Xylophone music and supporting part at medium slow tempo, with song.) The granddaughter was nervous being home alone and asks her grandmother why she was so late, pleading with her to come home earlier the next night. So the next night the grandmother walks just a little bit faster (Xylo music). The granddaughter is still upset and so the next night, the grandmother walks faster yet. (Xylo music) but still gets there a little late. Finally, the last night she runs home (very fast xylo music) and the granddaughter hugs her in relief and asks, “Where did you go every night?” The grandmother answers, “I went to a nearby village and I learned how to weave and now I have a gift for you. “ (Reveals a beautiful fabric and wraps it around the granddaughter). 

 

That originally was the end of my little story, but then I added this: 

 

This cloth will be your cocoon and if you wear it every day for the next few 

weeks, you will come out as a butterfly and fly! 

And that reminded me of a composition project I did with kids some 30 years ago based on a poem called Chrysalis Diary. It got me interested in looking up that transition from caterpillar to butterfly. And here is one explanation I found:

 

A cocoon is a protective casing, typically made of silk, that some insects, like caterpillars, spin around themselves during the pupa stage of their development. It provides a safe space for the insect to transform into its adult form. The term "cocoon" can also be used metaphorically to describe anything that provides protection or isolation. 

 

A caterpillar transforms into a butterfly through a fascinating process called metamorphosis. The caterpillar, after eating and growing, forms a chrysalis (or pupa). Inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar's body undergoes a dramatic reorganization, breaking down and rebuilding into the form of a butterfly. Finally, the adult butterfly emerges from the chrysalis. 

 

And so. We are all creatures of meaning and I seem particularly obsessed with trying to make sense of whatever is happening, put things in a larger mythological context that supports my intuition that we are meant to evolve and live lives worthy of our spiritual promise. These two terms of the Orangeman’s regime have been maddening on multiple levels and causing real physical and life-threatening damage to so many innocent people. But it also has been so hard to understand why all the things we set in motion back in the late 60’s and early 70’s that aimed for inclusion, ecological sustainability, compassion, justice, love, beauty and more good stuff suddenly are being washed away in a flood worse than what’s happening in Texas now. 

 

So I’m always looking for hopeful clues that there is a deeper layer of meaning that will eventually redeem all the horror. That as a species we need something more than business as usual to become who we are meant to be. And it struck me that the caterpillar to butterfly metaphor is as good as any image to keep hope alive. 

 

At the same time that we need to be crawling along out in the world in our caterpillar form, many of us are realizing that we need some time to isolate to both protect the delicate threads of Soul within us and begin to grow into something else. I am particularly struck by the way the caterpillar body breaks down the tissues of its body and completely reforms them into a new physical form that will allow it to fly away. Perhaps that is what is happening as we shelter inside the cocoon of art and meditation and gathering with loved ones and like-minded ones. It’s a time to complete reform who we have been and build our new body of Spirit and Soul to fly forth in freedom. 

 

Think about it. 

Home Sweet Home

After some 18 hours of travel and one-hour of airplane sleep, I had a series of little challenges getting back from the airport to my home. A growing number of people— me included— are coming to understand that it’s not what happens to you that counts, but how you respond to it. Whether it’s a 4-alarm disaster, a series of small annoyances or winning the lottery, we are responsible for our own reactions and the more consciously we can be aware of them, the less of a grip they have on us.  We can learn to greet them all with equanimity instead of being tossed hither and thither by the apparently random slings and arrows of fortune, outrageous and otherwise. Which doesn’t mean covering our feelings, as a fellow high school alum described in a poem, by putting “meditation bandaids on whatever feelings were seething under the surface.” Feel the feelings, groan with displeasure, shout with rage, whoop with exultation as appropriate, but also step back a bit and note them mindfully as waves on the surface of deep, calm waters. 

 

So I grunted my annoyance at the airport and then finally riding BART back home, wrote a blogpost trying to express my little story as eloquently as I could, with minimal whining and a touch of amusement. That helped. Then went to work getting the notes to my xylophone classes done and that helped yet more—work is always a great way to refine one’s focus and attend to the things one can control amidst all that we can’t. 

 

Now back home after a three-hour horizontal sleep, an unpacked suitcase, a food shopping trip and soon, my reunion with the piano. Should I publish my little account I wrote about the airport? No, I should not. The story, a variation of things we all have experienced, is not of particular interest. But the point of how to respond to it might be. Or not. As you will.

 

Meanwhile, from sleeping shirtless under a ceiling fan and days of walking barefoot while teaching, playing and dancing at the White Dove Hotel in Ghana, I’m back in blue jeans and jacket and napping under three layers of blankets in the windy, San Francisco fog. No surprise, wholly expected and though I prefer less clothes and relieving the skin of its border guard duty, I’m okay with it. It’s part of my home, as will be the first green salad I’ve had in weeks. Then the first TV I've seen in weeks, Inspector Morse to try to recognize the sights in Oxford where it is filmed and where we visited. Maybe with the heat turned on. 

 

 

Leaving Dzodze Blues

 The date palm tastes so sweet, but at some point, you have to stop eating it.

-       Ewe Proverb (approximately)

And so we come to the end. Almost 100% participation in one final “Wake Up to Life” morning exercise with Kofi. He chose a beautiful Ghanaian song for guitar and voice as we stretched this way and that and wasn’t it fine to not only awaken the body and integrate the two halves of brain and limbs, but to do it in unison like birds flocking in the vast sky. To release ourselves into the movement of the day, participate in the wonder of creation as the world is made new each morning. 

 

One last breakfast with my daily porridge, irresistible Ghanaian donut wreaking havoc on my belly fat, the always sunny greeting from Paul. Back to the room to pack, bring my suitcase on the bus, grab a guitar and improvise the Leaving Dzodze Blues with my xylophone colleague Aaron on flute:

 

We came to Dzodze (guitar riff) and it’s been fun (riff)

We came to dance and play (riff) and now we’re done. (riff)

We’re feeling so happy (riff) and feeling so sad (riff)

To end the best dang time that we’ve ever had, we got

The leaving Dzodze blues, from our head down to our shoes,

Got the leavin’, leavin’ Dzodze blues. 

 

Etc. 

 

By 10 am, one bus was packed going to Accra and the other going to Ho and another 5 days of touring. Hugs and goodbyes and off we went, imagining the faces of the Nunya kids who had been lined up to greet us a mere two weeks (a couple of lifetimes?) ago. Goodbye, White Dove Hotel! Goodbye, High School! Goodbye, fish in marketplace! Goodbye, Traveler’s Inn! Goodbye, turn-off road to Nunya Academy! 

 

And down the road we went, one person singing Spanish songs, another later medley of Sound of Music songs, the chatter of 21 forever-bonded people, some quiet descending as people napped. Then a stop for some “free-range peeing” out in the fields, another stop at the place we bought snacks when we were entirely different people on our way to the White Dove. Cross the Volta River, shout-outs of “Anthills!” (including the biggest I’ve seen here), slowing down at the police barricades (no, we were not smuggling anything). Finally the signs of the approaching urban Accra and back to the MJ Grand Hotel, again a marker of the very different group of people we were at the same place exactly 14 days ago. Most here to leave their luggage until we grab taxis to the airports for our 10:30 flights. 

 

Some went off to the Arts Market, one to a Mall, some just walking around the neighborhood. I sat with 5 people in front of the big-screen TV with soccer games playing, sharing beers, a little food, and more stories from our lives. 5:00 pm now and I moved to the pool (but with bathing suit packed away) to get a break from the distraction of the screen, seated at a table under a thatched roof, watching the lovely couple playing a game of flipping plastic water bottles while the pool water shimmers and a light breeze brings its blessing of cool air. Life is grand. 

As for the big dramatic wrap-up, what more can I say that I haven’t already? Just my customary immense gratitude for the extraordinary hospitality and generosity of the Ghanaian people, the immersion in complex, dynamic, energetic, joyous and life-affirming music and dance, the company of such stellar human beings sharing the craft of music teaching. Thanks for it all! Including the gift of health, just one short moment of “funny tummy” and my little motorcycle burn. No dizziness this whole time (though this is precisely where that little syndrome started two years ago). 

 

My big takeaway from the entire eight weeks of remarkable travels, from the first night in Paris, to the Dordognes bike ride, to more Paris and London and Oxford and hiking in the Cotswolds to London again, workshop and lovely days with a new friend, to workshops in Vienna, Salzburg and Linz and more reunions with people I care deeply for and of course, Ghana, is perhaps best stated by this passage from W.B. Yeats:

 

                        When such as I cast out remorse

So great a sweetness flows into the breast

We must laugh and we must sing,

We are blest by everything,

                    Everything we look upon is blest.

What lies ahead? No need to anticipate the challenge of returning into the belly of the beast. Just allow myself to look forward to the reunion with my wife and daughter, some friends I have walk dates with, two sessions at The Jewish Home, salads, hazy IPA beer and dark chocolate, my piano and Bach and Jazz. Nine bows to it all and on we go.

Pool Party and Fashion Show

 

“Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary…
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.”

-       Walt Whitman

 Today was the last official day of Orff Afrique. After a morning of reviewing all drumming, dancing, singing, games and xylophone pieces, we had a videotaping session where Kofi reviewed words to songs and drum patterns and such one by one. After all, we are all teachers committed to remembering at least some of what we’ve learned here and bringing it back into our classrooms.

 

For much of my life, I’ve been graced with moments when the world stops and I look on as if from the outside, in it, not wholly in it but savoring the scene. When the video review was finished, we headed to the pool and that’s the moment when some part of me stepped outside myself and watched the groups of people so joyfully talking and laughing and posing for photos and floating around together in the pool and toasting with plastic cups of beer. People might have come here for “professional development,” but in the end, most have forged friendships that will carry on far into the future, wholly bonded together by mutually experiencing what so many have said is the most remarkable two weeks of their lives. 

 

From the pool to a “fashion show” where people showed off the various clothes they had the local tailors make. The colors were vibrant and designs dazzling and the energy of watching people strut their stuff in their new outfits just pure fun. At the end, several sub-groups gathered to take photos and I was so pleased to be asked to pose with the 5 people who took my New Orleans Jazz Course last year, the 3 people who took my San Francisco Jazz Course two years ago, the 2 people who I had taught at the Special Course in Salzburg, the 1 person who took my Tennessee Jazz Course. There were 3 people who took Level III together with me one year and 2 more from another year. There were another 5 or so who had done workshops with me as long as 25 years ago. Many acknowledged that their presence in Ghana was due to me announcing the course and enticing them to consider it. 

 

So watching that scene at the pool and again at the Fashion Show, I felt blessed that my work has opened doors for people into places that they’ve come to cherish and put them together with people they’ve come to cherish. That brings a grand satisfaction to me and it happens year after year in so many courses I give. Some of the people I teach become my genuine friends, but for many, I’m somewhat apart and just enjoying watching them enjoy each other. I’m sure being old enough to be some of the participants’ grandfather is part of the dynamic, but at the same time, I’m perfectly comfortable hanging out with 25-year-olds, especially if they’re musicians or music teachers. 

 

We had a lovely closing circle, ending with a needed hug line—well, hug circle— even though we still have one more “Wake Up to Life” exercise routine tomorrow morning, breakfast and a couple of hours before one bus takes half of us to Accra and the other heads to Ho for a one-week extended Ghana tour. I’m on the Accra bus, poised to fly home tomorrow night. 

 

But first, my last sleep under a ceiling fan before I return to a foggy San Francisco. Good night. 

  

The African Queen

The film The African Queen is on my list of top 25 favorite movies. I’m sure there are parts I would cringe at now as it’s in the genre of Africa as backdrop to the European invaders front-line story. But the chemistry of Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn and an edge-of-seat plot is part of its memorability. But there is one extraordinary scene that stands out above all. For me, it’s a metaphor for life’s dark moments and I find myself returning to it time and again in my mind’s eye when in need. And that time is certainly now.

 

The African Queen is the name of a boat and Bogart and Hepburn are trying to escape coming disaster by going down a river to reach safety in a nearby lake. The river is filled with leeches and gets narrower and narrower, choked in the surrounding jungle. They finally get literally bogged down in a bog of sorts, neither able to move forward or back. Night comes and in the depths of despair, they have no choice but to accept their doom. 

 

In that moment, the camera pans up and out and we see that the lake they’ve been seeking is literally a mere hundred yards away or so. They are wholly ignorant of how close it is and again, are resigned to their fate. 

 

And then. During the night, the rain comes and lifts them from their stuck position and floats them out to the lake. They awaken in the morning to their miraculous salvation. 

 

That image has sustained me time and time again and I hope against hope that it may be the perfect metaphor for where we are. The f’in’ Senate and House have driven us deeper down into the bog, those “who live like leeches on the people’s lives” (from a Langston Hughes poem) keep shamelessly sucking the blood from their fellow citizens and selling our democracy to the highest bidder— on the day before the 4^th of July, no less! Those of us fighting for life and love and freedom and justice feel overwhelmed by our country’s apparent fate, stuck in the bog and sinking down into oblivion. 

 

So I offer this image, the visual equivalent of the night is darkest just before the dawn. We can’t see it, but the open waters of freedom and redemption are just around the bend and while we must continue to make every effort to keep the boat moving, it is the blessing of the rain from the other world that finally frees us. Whether or not this will be literally true is anybody’s guess, but better to keep hope alive any way we can. Pan up and out and see that the healing waters await us. On this day that I write, Louis Armstrong’s mythological birthday, may it be so!

 

Same and Different

The miraculous as the norm settled down a bit in these last days of classes. Fun, satisfying, inspiring, but nothing that hinted of a visit from the other world. And perhaps that’s my working definition—the sense that another presence enters that illuminates and amplifies and heightens the normal as we know it. Call it what you like—the Ancestors, the Muse, guardian angels or just the perfect chemical combination accidently thrown together. Its name doesn’t matter. Its presence does.

 

Today it came from—or rather, through— Kofi’s sister Kosonde, a traditional singer who I had heard before and remembered loving and she didn’t disappoint. First off, the older style of pentatonic songs with evocative harmonies (provided by Kofi) in 4ths and 2nds touches me with its elemental power. Secondly, her own power as a singer, thoroughly owning the song and acting it out and dancing it out and singing with her face as well as her voice. Third, some intricate polyrhythmic bell-work provided by Kofi and helpers Aaron and Hope. Fourth, the lovely interplay between brother and sister. And finally, the profound meaning of the words later explained by Kofi. 

 

Amidst all the injustices done to the continent of Africa, all the pumped-in stereotypes of primitive dancing natives or children starving or constant wars, one unspoken disservice is our complete ignorance of the profound spirituality of the continent. In the late 60’s, we spirit-starved Americans turned to the Indian gurus and the Japanese Zen masters bringing “the Wisdom of the East.” Some were genuine, some were fake, but all rode in on the sense of Asia as the Mysterious East that would bring us to bliss and unity with the Cosmos. This continued on all the way through Eat, Pray and Love, where the author goes to Italy to learn how to eat and live well, to India to meditate and find inner peace, to Bali to learn how to love (a Brazilian, it turned out!). But nobody, not then, not now, suggests “go to Africa to immerse yourself in the profound wisdom of a culture that perfectly blends the spiritual world with the human community.”

 

But that’s what I’m finding yet again. I have enjoyed reading books by Michael Meade, listening to his Podcasts, going to his live talks. He’s the real deal, drawing from his extensive reading, work with Robert Bly, James, Hillman, Malidoma Some (from Burkina Faso, right above Ghana!) and others. One of his persistent themes is what he calls The Genius Myth, the idea that we are born with a guiding image and unique purpose, a need in the world that has chosen us to be its voice, a story set within our soul that needs our participation to unfold it and offer it to the world.  Our job is to heed the call and not refuse it, to do the necessary work without care whether our family, church, workplace, culture cares to see it. This kind of thinking offers a genuine meaning and purpose to life and I can testify that my own attempts to follow my calling have done just that and seemed to have offered some comfort, solace, compassion and appreciation to some who have been my students and/ or read my books. 

 

This sense of authentic meaning and encouragement to be wholly oneself is precisely what these songs Kosonde sang are about. What the proverbs and adinkra stamps and dance steps overall cultural practices and mythologies are designed to cultivate and nourish. Less spirituality as a “Wow! Cosmic!” individual experience like the kind LSD promised and more as a working model of how to serve the community in both this world and the other one and feel the link between them. In short, time and again I find life-affirming wisdom in people here whose names the West will never know, unburdened by dogma or book-bound theology. I can’t partake directly of it the way I might join an ashram or Zen Center (though the opportunity to study the music, songs and dance is wide open), so it will never have a cult following in America—and thank goodness! 

 

But I want people to know that when they ooh and aah over a celebrity motivational speaker or self-proclaimed spiritual leader, that there are thousands (millions?) of folks in this remarkable African continent that already know what seems so impressive to us who have lived disconnected lives without a sense of meaning. If you want some models of how this can be healed, not so much individually but collectively in our communities, you are most welcome to come to Africa to witness it in person. 

 

PS Peering in on this culture from the outside is a benevolent form of “othering,” admiring a different culture as a teacher of some needed lessons. But during the question/answer with Kofi’s sister, I asked I she had any stories about Kofi as a young boy. Her face lit up and off she went and you could see Kofi’s face return to that 8-year old boy she was talking about. Amidst all the lessons we can learn from difference, here is the reminder of the heart of the matter. Brothers and sisters, families, the little and big dramas of families, are all common ground. We are all more the same than different. 

 

Patience and Perseverance

One of the great qualities of this particular group of 30 Orff-Afrique students is that over 2/3rds of the group are Orff-trained, most of them with myself, James and Sofia. That means that they not only have clear musical skills, love kids and have a good understanding of pedagogy (Orff-style and otherwise), but that they’ve played their share of xylophones and have a solid sense of the pentatonic scale. They come to the gyil xylophone classes with all of that firmly in place as a foundation and though they still have to work hard to transfer the familiar—xylophones, mallets, pentatonic scales, etc.—to a new instrument with no spaces between mi and sol, la and do, no letter names on the bars and new style of playing with sophisticated rhythms and relationships between the left and right hands. The Orff background means that the brain has a foundation of previous experience to draw from— this scale is familiar, coordinating hands with mallets is familiar, the sense of rhythm is familiar. That frees it up to attend wholly to the new challenges and work to make those neural connections until the strange new information becomes embedded as familiar. 

 

But a few folks have come never having played the xylophone— a piano tuner, a Humanities teacher, a Waldorf teacher and such— and that has been a challenge for teacher and student alike. Their brain has never had to make connections between what they can sing and what they can play, never had to coordinate the two hands in this particular way, had less exposure than others to the rhythmic structures of music. That means their brains don’t have the same foundation to draw from, are frantically searching for something that looks or sounds familiar that they can relate all the new input to. And in a group class, it’s coming at them faster than it would in an individual lesson and they’re struggling to keep up. Just as they begin to get it, the next new learning is introduced, but they’re already two steps behind and the system starts to go on overload. 

 

This is where a good teacher is put to the test. Out of the back pocket come the multiple strategies to make them feel included and begin to feel successful. Things like slowing the tempo, having them play just a few notes in the overall pattern (but at the right time), pairing them with a partner who can be right next to them and help them when they’re floundering. If they look like they’re edging to a melt-down, you can also give them the simple bell pattern to play or have them sing the song while others are playing. 

 

Most importantly, you need to acknowledge out loud in front of the class how the brain makes connections and that for a variety of reasons, some skills and understandings come easier to some people than others, but that 95% of it is simply enough previous exposure and practice and that with patience and perseverance and enough time (and the optional strategies of participation listed above), everyone will eventually get there. This is what is now commonly known as Growth Mindset, a new term for an ancient understanding, accompanied by one of the post potent 3-letter words in education—yet. When someone says in frustration, “I don’t get it! I can’t do this!”, we train them to add that word—yet. 

 

Today we had our last of six xylophone classes and it was so satisfying to see the progress everyone made, particularly the three of them who had never touched a xylophone before. It was the truth of everything I just said in action as each made breakthrough after breakthrough. If we had had six more classes, I believe they would be wholly there, playing every note side-by-side with their more experienced colleagues. 

 

I am very patient with all the music students I teach and pretty good at encouraging them to persevere, noting their progress, praising them both privately and publicly. But not so good when it comes to patience with those who have never read a single book or chosen to see a single movie or had an honest conversation with a marginalized person dealing with how injustice of all sorts works. People who don’t know history from multiple viewpoints (or these days, simply history at all) and the inner mechanisms of how people in power manufacture consent, protect money that was earned by others’ sweat and blood, keep the toxic narratives going so they continue to benefit from them. Someone without that foundation of knowledge and care is simply not capable of playing the simplest tune on the xylophone of social justice. Nor can they vote responsibly. 

 

If I was in charge of teaching them the responsibilities of citizenship, I would have to meet them where they are, as I do with my music students. Once voluntarily in my class, I think I could show the patience and perseverance to reveal the needed stories, facts and emotions to play the tune of Peace and Justice. But they would have to sign up for the class, show up like these Orff-Afrique students did, humbly acknowledge that they are beginners in this field of study and be open to both doing the needed work and accepting guidance. And the refusal of so many to admit their ignorance and aspire to do better and know more is what I have no patience for whatsoever.

 

But nevertheless, I persevere.