Pass It On and Let It Go

My takeaway from the last two courses I’ve taught is to keep reminding myself to give the whole show over to the group and let them fly. I’m pretty sure I routinely do this, but as anyone who knows me and my work can testify, I have a lot of material, a lot of ways to think about teaching and developing material, a lot of understanding as to how to sequence and scaffold it all and a lot of pleasure in the simple acts of playing games, singing songs and playing music. In short, I love to sing in the ring with the group as one participating member of the community and also am quite comfortable being the sage on the stage sharing what others have called wisdom in regard to this lifetime work in music education. No need to rank those roles, but the proof of success in the two just named is when I shift to the guide on the side and so happily witness the excitement and bubbling energy in the room as the kids—or adults in the workshop– take it on themselves to create something together. 

 

And I felt it just before lunch as I announced their afternoon project, that shift from listening attentively, respectfully, with interest and intrigue to whatever I’m presenting to the explosion of energy as they began to already form groups. Their task is threefold:

 

1)   Take something they know— a Chinese rhyme/ song/ dance/ musical piece— and creating a performance of it. 

2)   In so doing, they should apply something they didn’t know before and now have learned— for example, the principles of elemental orchestration or the integration with body percussion or movement or including their newly-learned recorder skills. 

3)   Finally, they should include something they don’t know, something that bubbles up from the imagination as they improvise musically or trade ideas compositionally or let the material suggest a way forward. 

 

All of this is routinely included in Orff workshops and widely acknowledged as a great practice. However… Many times the teacher skips the stage of actually teaching something new that can now enter their compositional/ choreographic project. Far too often, a teacher throws a little idea out and says, “Go off into small groups and make something up.” I, for one, often find this profoundly unsatisfying, as we simply charge ahead with the way we already think. Without the step of being led by a master teacher/ musician who has been further down the path, it feels a bit indulgent. And yes, if the sage never steps off the stage, that’s a problem in a different direction. But sometimes one I prefer over the superficial small group brainstorm. 

 

After three and a half days of offering so much new information and material and ways of developing material and structures that build dependable foundations for the creative instincts, I’m fairly confident that the results will be stunning. Especially as by singing songs embedded in the cultural tradition, the sense of their ancestors entering the room will probably be palpable. As I’ve often commented, I’m fine being the perpetual outsider with just enough understanding about how particular musical styles work to get some dynamic music-making out into the air. But a simple folk song sung in the voice that should be used in that style is always a moving moment for me. 

They’re working now while I write. I’ll report back later. 

 

PS In choosing the title for this post, I was thinking how this dynamic is the workshop microcosm of our life’s task. To pass on what’s worthy of our attention to the next generation and let them re-create it in their own time and their own voice. The history of jazz is a great example of that process at work. But the current climate of disdaining elders because they’re not on Tik-Tok and not looking to them or expecting the necessary wisdom to keep the human experiment evolving is a grave mistake. As it would be for the elders to expect the young to preserve their work as museum pieces. Both sides must do their proper work. As the oldest guy in the room almost everywhere I teach (though found a participant today born the same year as me!), I feel great pleasure in both passing it on and watching the next generation begin to run with it. 

Why I Love Facebook

Five days since arriving in China, I’m still up every night from one to two hours with a jet lag that just won’t let go. Probably not a good idea to open my computer, but since Internet is spotty, I grab the chance to check in when I can and it seems to work better in the wee hours of the morning. 

 

I’m fully —and painfully—aware that the Zuckerbergian dynasty behind Facebook is cut out of the same cloth as every evil billionaire running the show and refusing it could be a logical act of resistance. And yet. In my little bubble of Facebook friends, I daily find little essays, poems, sharings, that inform and uplift and water the seeds of both resisting the daily beating given to Life-lovers and reminding us that we’re not alone. Many people whose names I’ve never heard of and have come to know simply through their Facebook postings. Like this poet who captured so eloquently what we all know in some deep recess of the soul and we benefit from the reminders. I don’t know why there can’t be a people’s Facebook that allows such sharing without filling the coffers of the evil, but until there is, using the venue to reach those we otherwise can’t seems like a good choice. 

 

So here I pass on this gem from a poet named Matt Moburg. Hope you enjoy it as much as me and are not reading at 2:45 am in the morning!

 

I think every human being 

eventually has a moment

where they are standing outside in sweatpants

that have lost the will to be pants,

holding a trash bag, a divorce, a parking ticket,

or some other receipt from the universe

that says, “surprise, this too is part of it.”

 

And then the sky bruises purple.

And the air touches your face

like it knows your whole story.

And suddenly you realize:

all the real is actually unreal.

The dirt.

The breath.

The weird little bones in your hands.

The fact that we are here,

on a floating rock with pollen counts,

paying bills,

missing dead people,

loving living people

who say “leaving now”

while still fully naked and looking for socks.

 

And still,

the moon clocks in.

No applause.

No benefits.

No note from management saying,

“Great work being ancient and luminous again.”

 

Just the moon,

working nights

like a single mother with no applause,

packing silver lunches

for every dark thing

that still has to rise.

 

Tell me that isn’t holy.

Tell me there is a better word

than sacred

for the way light keeps returning

with no guarantee

we will actually stop and take note.

 

I know people who believe in therapy,

probiotics,

tarot,

twelve-step meetings,

manifestation journals,

and waiting exactly eleven minutes

before texting back

so they do not appear emotionally available,

even though their whole nervous system

is standing in the driveway holding flowers.

 

And underneath all of it,

every ritual,

every doctrine,

every smoothie with chia seeds,

the prayer is the same:

Please let me be loved.

Please let me be forgiven.

Please let this strange little life

mean something

before my lower back

submits its formal resignation.

 

What is going on?

For real tho—What is this place?

This unbearable tenderness

of being alive long enough

to watch steam lift from coffee in winter

like a soul practicing leaving.

To see your friend laugh so hard

they slap the table

as if joy is a mosquito

they are trying to kill.

To hear a child say “pisghetti”

and, for one shining second,

realize language

has finally been improved.

 

I know I already noted this in the first piece,

but the older I get,

the less use I have for certainty.

Certainty has never made me pull over

because the sunset looked like God

dropped a jar of peach jam

across the whole midwestern sky

and decided to be lazy

and not clean up.

Certainty has never made me gasp

at rain on hot pavement.

Certainty has never found me

in the cereal aisle,

holding Captain Crunch,

suddenly remembering

that everyone I have ever loved

was made from stardust,

hunger,

and a series of decisions

we probably should have slept on.

No.

 

It has always been awe.

Awe was the first church.

Before steeples.

Before committees.

Before men got involved

and started making rules about skirts.

 

Awe was there

with its wild hair

and muddy feet,

saying:

Look.

Look again.

Look until looking

becomes love.

Awe, and soup.

Awe, and someone rubbing your back

when you are sick.

Awe, and old couples at Target

arguing gently about avocados,

as if marriage is not one vow

but ten thousand errands

performed beside the person

who knows exactly

how you like the cart pushed.

 

Maybe gratitude

was never meant to sound elegant.

Maybe gratitude sounds like:

“Damn.

That woodpecker is trying

to beat that tree from itself.”

Maybe gratitude sounds like:

“Thank you, body,

for continuing to drag me through this world

despite the many slim jims 

I have done to you

at gas stations.”

Maybe gratitude sounds like:

“Thank you to the dogs

who lose their entire minds

when we come home

as if we have returned from war

and not Walgreens.”

 

For me, that might be my gospel.

That joy that does not wait for us

to be impressive but only needs us

to come through the door.

Because the truth is,

this life is devastating.

And ridiculous.

One minute you are 22 and invincible,

driving too fast,

eating gas station nachos

with the confidence of a Greek god.

The next minute you are googling,

“Can sneezing cause a hamstring injury?”

and the answer is,

apparently,

“Welcome to the second half of your life.”

 

But even now—

even tired,

even grieving,

even emotionally held together

by iced coffee, playlists,

and one very specific wolves hoodie—

we keep finding reasons

to stay soft.

 

We plant tomatoes

even though grief is real.

We bake bread

even though the news is on fire.

We send photos of the sky

to people we love

with captions like,

“LOOK,”

as if beauty is an emergency

and we are all volunteer firefighters.

We keep saying,

“You have to see this,”

because wonder

is the oldest form

of resurrection.

 

So here’s to the believers

and the atheists

and the agnostics

and the people whose entire theology

is just trying not to cry

in the DMV line.

Here’s to the people clinging to faith.

Here’s to the people clinging to Xanax

and oat milk

and the one group chat

where nobody pretends to be okay.

Here’s to the tender-hearted weirdos.

The accidental mystics.

The ones who can contemplate mortality

for six straight hours

and then become emotionally attached

to a perfect peach.

The ones who know

despair has a mouth,

but so does laughter.

 

May we never stop being drop-kicked by beauty

in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.

May we never become so polished

that we forget how to stand

in the Starbucks line of existence

with our dumb, gorgeous hearts open,

feeling the enormity of it all

rattle around in our bones

like thunder

looking for somewhere to laugh.

 

And may we remember:

whatever else this is,

whatever mess,

whatever miracle,

whatever cosmic group project

no one was prepped for—

all’ve it is astonishing.

that we are here.

that we have loved enough to be ruined.

that the moon keeps showing up.

that bread exists.

So pass it on.

Tear off a piece

with your bare hands.

Take it in as you take it down. 

And then go outside and look at that moon.

 

The Universal Heartbeat

Having taught in almost 50 different cultures, I am perpetually an outsider searching for some universal heartbeat that we all share. According to modern misguided thought, it is culturally inappropriate for me to presume to teach people in other cultures about teaching music to their children. And I agree that it potentially could be seen as the legacy of colonization for Western classical music, for example, to be taught in China. Yet when people listen to Yuja Wang or Lang Lang play piano, I don’t think anyone objects. 

 

At any rate, I’m after something very different here. I believe there’s a way to offer something valuable to diverse cultures that doesn’t lean on an ethnocentric viewpoint. Both my own experience teaching in so many different places and the fact that there are Orff Associations in some 45 countries worldwide testify to this. But without care, teachers from abroad— and so far they mostly have been teachers from Germany, Finland, Australia, Canada and the U.S. doing this kind of work— can indeed impose Euro-centric repertoire and even educational assumptions and ideas. It indeed calls for some careful thought.

 

So on this trip, I thought I’d put these issues out on the table and share my own approach with the participants. After acknowledging an imbalanced meeting of the cultures springing from imperialist and colonialist mentality, I came up with five approaches in my workshop to help turn it another direction. As follows:

 

• Using original English rhymes: For better or worse, the British Empire left its imprint on the world with English far outdistancing Esperanto as perhaps the most universal language. In the face of this, many children in diverse countries are studying English and if this is the case, improving language skills through chants, rhymes, poems and songs is an excellent way to support English as a second language. It also opens up Orff’s idea of using language to teach rhythm and rhymes to create original compositions. In my teaching, I choose short rhymes with much repetition, rhyme and often alliteration so children can gain access to the music of language while also learning music through language.

 

• Using rhymes from many cultures: So far in this course, we’ve learned some rhymes/ songs in Spanish, German, Italian, Shona (Zimbabwe), Japanese. Each brings a different kind of music to the activities and leans towards certain rhythms over others. 

 

• Translating rhymes: Some rhymes lend themselves to translating into the mother tongue of the culture visited. Some not. If the rhythm is too different or style somewhat dependent on the original language or the needed rhyme is wholly lost, it doesn’t always work so well. But in this course, it worked just fine with several short texts and added a distinct flavor to do in both English and Mandarin. 

 

• Finding similar rhymes in pattern or topic. Beat-passing games, partner claps, rock-scissors-paper games and more tend to be universal and after learning one in English or Slovenian or Turkish or Spanish, it is a good challenge for the group to dig back into their own childhood and find similar games. Likewise with rhymes that share similar structures. I’ve found four-line rhymes structured a a b a or a b c a to be quite common. Finally, a song about food or numbers or animals in one culture can call up similar ones in another.

 

• Home culture material/ Orff process: I am aware that teaching Jazz in New Orleans, Mother Goose in England, Lobi/ Dagara xylophone music in Ghana, humanistic material promoting respect in Thailand, etc. can seem from the outside as arrogant, presumptuous and culturally inappropriate, an outsider bringing “coals to Newcastle.” And yet the modern misguided notions that would have me drink the Kool Aid of “staying in my lane” would reduce my “constituency” to zero— who would qualify to be in my affinity group as a as a New Jersey native with Jewish Belarus ancestors living in San Francisco and brought up Unitarian, then practicing Zen Buddhism and playing Bach, Count Basie, Bulgarian bagpipe and Brazilian samba, amongst other instruments and styles? Three things help me refuse that invitation: 

 

1)   While rightfully acknowledging my lack of qualification to represent the culture, language, musical style, the what of a music education program in a particular place, I am wholly qualified to share Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman’s ideas about the how of the process, modeling creative ways to introduce, develop and extend any given material. That is at the center of the notion that Orff Schulwerk has something to offer in multiple cultural contexts, an idea, as mentioned, wholly affirmed by the existence of over 45 Orff Associations worldwide and the people from some 25 cultures who have attended our SF International Orff Course over the years. (Much of that work of adapting to specific cultures can be found in the book I published through my Pentatonic Press, Orff Schulwerk in Diverse Cultures: An Idea That Went Round the World, with some 70 authors describing their work in adapting the Orff process to their particular cultural situation.)

 

2)   When possible, working side by side with graduates from the SF Course who teach as insiders but also have experience in Orff Schulwerk is both a grand pleasure and an appropriate pairing of skills. In this course, my translator/ former student Cao Li is teaching traditional Chinese folk songs and we both, alongside the participants, are investigating what makes sense to blend with the Orff process models of movement and games and drama and body percussion, as well as elemental styles of arranging on Orff instruments. 

 

3)   The fact that so many places invite me back is testimony that this approach has indeed transformed their teaching. In some cases, it actually has steered teachers back to the roots of a folk culture they haven’t wholly known as they’ve studied in Western-style universities or Conservatories or been brought up by American pop music or their own culture’s version (K-pop/ J-pop/ Bollywood/ etc.)

 

It felt good to treat these matters seriously and share it with the participants. But truth be told, the response from the group seemed to be “We weren’t really thinking about any of that.” Indeed, I told a joke at the beginning as we explored the pentatonic scale on the xylophones that Carl Orff had invented this scale. Rather than outrage or amusement, they just seemed a bit perplexed and then giggled a bit when I followed with “NOT! I think China knows something about this scale!!!”

 

At the end of the day, I taught a few folk dances from Israel, Russia and the Czech Republic, again apologizing a bit for the Eurocentric repertoire and inviting anyone who wanted to later share similar dances to do so. They listened politely, but once the dancing started, the room erupted into unbridled joy and laughter. They especially loved the Czech polka mixer and kept practicing the steps on their own after the class was officially over. 

 

It was a reminder that amidst all the well-meaning tiptoeing around about cultural appropriation, it was the universal heartbeat we all share that is the most important story. “Music is music and dance is dance and let’s not overthink this” they seemed to say. “Just come on out and dance!”

 

And so we will, for three more glorious days.