A Word to My Fellow Men

This time last week, I was “cruisin’ and playing the radio, with no particular place to go.” Well, I was heading to Memphis on Rt. 55 north in Mississippi, but with that delicious American road trip feeling of freedom, listening to Chuck Berry’s song in the place where the blues began. From the Mississippi Delta, it later erupted into Rhythm and Blues in Memphis and changed the American landscape forever. 

 

All of the power to liberate the body, open the heart and bring some soul into the white-bread buttoned-down America of the 50’s was present in those Delta origins. But a country still in the grip of its White Supremacy narrative needed Elvis to show us how to gyrate our hips and Jerry Lee Lewis to give us permission to get a “whole lot of shakin’ goin’ on.” 

 

But because “follow the money” was (and is) one of the three driving unspoken and spoken principles of our country (alongside White Supremacy and Patriarchy), black artists like Chuck Berry and Little Richard were also given airtime once it became clear that both black and white fans would buy their records. Besides the dynamic, flamboyant and sexually suggestive performance styles, all four had something else in common: relationships with underage girls. 

 

Elvis was 24 when he met 14-year-old Priscilla Presley and according to some, began “grooming her” for their marriage years later. Jerry Lee Lewis was 22 when he married his 13-year-old cousin. Chuck Berry, at 36-years-old, was arrested for taking a 14-year-old across state lines for “immoral purposes.” Little Richard, at 34-years-old, began a relationship with a 16-year-old girl (though later he came out as gay). So began the 50’s version of the Epstein Files. 

 

And on it goes. Whether underage or not, the abuse of women by men in power has gone on unchecked. Heck, we’ve elected a President implicated in this behavior and are keeping him in power and unaccountable. Not to mention Supreme Court Justices and members of Congress. One is no longer surprised by the reprehensible behavior of members of the Repugnitan Party, but now we’re finding about people who actually did good work on the side of justice, spirituality and humanitarian healing. Bill Cosby was a shocking revelation, now Cesar Chavez and some dubious associations of Deepak Chopkra with the Epstein gang. Not to mention abuses from Indian gurus and Zen masters. Who’s next? The Dalai Lama? Mr. Rogers?

 

Nature thought it had a good idea to make sex pleasurable to insure the survival and continuation of the species. But when combined with White Supremacy and the Patriarchy, it seems to go off the rails and the men who rise to positions of power seem utterly incapable of simply doing the right thing. And like all the good-old-boys-clubs, have figured out how to stick together to make themselves unaccountable and watch each other’s backs. 

 

Two words to the fellow men in my gender: STOP IT!

 

And to all of us. HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE! RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES AND ACT! NOW!

 

And next time you’re shakin’, rattlin’ and rollin’ at the dance, stay away from the 13-year-olds.  

Easter Parade

Last night, instead of the next murder in whatever Britt-box detective show we’re watching, I suggested we watch Judy Garland and Fred Astaire in the movie Easter Parade. A wise decision! Except for the predictable naïve notions of falling in love after two minutes standing in a doorway with someone, the film held up! Memorable dance numbers —Fred Astaire’s drum/ tap dance number, he and Judy as two tramps— and great Irving Berlin tunes—It Only Happens When I Dance with You, Stepping Out with My Baby, Easter Parade. (Remember that Berlin was a Jewish guy who hit it big with Easter Parade and White Christmas!) Some lesser-known Berlin tunes as well, but each so dang clever—I Want to Go Back to Michigan, A Fella with an Umbrella, Snookie-Ookums, I Love a Piano, The Ragtime Violin. Check it out!

 

After it was over, I checked Facebook and was amazed to see their Facebook memory from 15 years ago. It was my Orff colleague Elisabeth who I had just spent a week with in singing Over the Rainbow at the Orff Institut in Salzburg. She sang it with a ukelele in the style of Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwo’ole and then, I came in on piano with the jazz version. She sang it well and I was happy with my accompaniment. But what were the chances that Facebook chose this particular memory since I had just watched Judy Garland (who made the song famous) and spent the week with Elisabeth! This is the kind of serendipitous occasion I’ve experienced many times in my life, always with a feeling that there are other invisible hands at work bringing such things together. I’d like to believe that this was the case here.

 

But… I rented the movie from Amazon Prime so the Big Brother bots and AI predators know I did so. Perhaps they passed it on to Facebook, had also seen me with Elisabeth on Facebook and got the machines whirring in search of the perfect Facebook memory. If so, you might ask, "What's the big deal? The result was not only benign, but somewhat sweet to pull up the nice memory." But even so, I don’t want it. I prefer leaving it to the gods than the machines. There’s just something creepy about it and cynical, stomping on my lifelong belief that serendipity is real, that there are unseen benevolent forces at work and they don’t need a damn machine to do their work. 

 

I hope I’m wrong about the above and that it actually was a sweet, serendipitous connection. I guess I’ll never know. But just the fact that I have to doubt it is disturbing. I’ve loved returning to San Francisco from my trip, but hate being bombarded anew by the AI billboards and Waymo cars every damn block. If the Resurrection happened today, most modern people would just think:  “Nice work from the Special Effects folks!”

 

Happy Easter!

 

PS Speaking of modern tech, I looked it up on Google and apparently the Easter Parade with its accents on bonnets is still happening in New York!

 

  

Theme and Variations

Back to my home city and besides being back with friends and family, my piano, Golden Gate Park and more, two grand pleasures:

 

1)   Choosing and cooking my own food.

2)   Singing with the folks at the Jewish Home.

 

I like to have some reason to choose the songs and pieces I do, so freshly returned from my trip, I started with a few songs related to Tennessee in general— Chattanooga Choo-Choo, The Tennessee Waltz, to Memphis in particular—Memphis Blues, Whole Lot of Shakin’ Goin' On (recorded at Sun Records), to the Mississippi River—Proud Mary, Old Man River. 

 

Having just been to Stax Records in Memphis, I also sang Sam Cooke’s You Send Me and realized that this song joins a long list of others based on the same chord progression. (For your musicians, that’s I vi.  / IV  V and for just about everyone, it’s the bass pattern that you played as a kid on the piano to the song Heart and Soul.)  So off I went, seamlessly from one to another. A short list: 

• You Send Me

• I Love the Mountains

• Blue Moon

• Silhouettes on the Shade

• Dream, Dream, Dream

• Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man

• The Way You Look Tonight

• Heart and Soul (with the actual words)

 

After singing each one, it’s fun for everyone to pick one and sing them all together at the same time. (That’s called a quodlibet). Not convinced my choir in their 80’s and 90’s was quite ready for that, I gave it to them as a homework assignment and maybe we’ll try it next week. But fun to treat them like they were my music students in my class. On a roll, I continued the class’s focus of “Theme and Variations.”

 

This approach to artistic development is a powerful one. The artist is restricted to a set form or theme and within those constrictions, it turns out that creativity really thrives, as does intelligence in general. The aspiring poets try their hand at sonnets or haiku or sestinas, following the strict forms of meter, syllables and rhyme. The artists paints dozens of still lifes of the same arrangement or like Hokusai, 36 views of Mt. Fuji. (Poet Wallace Stevens combines two art forms in his poem 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.)

 

 From Bach through Mendelssohn and beyond, stating an opening piece and then spinning out variations following the chord progression is both an honored practice to help develop compositional skills and a means to creating some memorable music. And so off I went to the piano to play some of these examples (the first, for example, includes 32 variations so I only did a few):

 

• Bach’s Goldberg Variations

• Handel’s The Harmonious Blacksmith

• Mozart’s 12 Variations on Ah! Vous dirai-je, maman (what we know as Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star)

• Beethoven’s Six Variations on a Theme ( from the opera La Molinara) 

• Chopin’s Berceuse

 

On I went into jazz, where the two famous chord progressions that have spawned hundreds of tunes are the 12-bar-blues and the Gershwin song I Got Rhythm (referred to in jazz as “Rhythm changes”). The latter were a particular potent springboard in be-bop compositions. Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were particularly prolific in their variations. A short list includes: 

•Anthropology

• Shaw Nuff

• Moose the Mooche

• Salt Peanuts

• Dizzy Atmosphere

• Dexterity

 

(FYI, the song The Flintstones also is based on these chord changes.)

 

Of course, the most important thing in my visits to the Home is to give pleasure and comfort to the residents simply by playing (as best I can) good music. But it was fun to feed the thinking mind as well as the feeling heart and include a little lesson in history, harmony and the power of structure and form in housing creative impulses. As well as showing the variety of the same impulses with examples from popular music, jazz and classical music. 

Next week’s class? We shall see…

 

Make It Funky!

Well, the concert happened. My review:

 

• Was it spectacular? 

Yes, it was. 

 

• Did the kids make fabulous music while being relaxed and clearly having fun? 

Yes, they did.

 

• Was the whole spectrum of Orff Schulwerk showcased? Body percussion, speech pieces, children's games, folk dance, expressive movement, drama, costumes, Orff instruments, percussion, recorders, choral singing?

Yes, it was and almost all of the above integrated into each and every piece.

 

• Did the audience love it?

Yes, they did. And not only because of their good instinct to celebrate children, but from their authentic enjoyment of excellent music and dance well-performed.

 

• Did the teachers model a perfect blend of helping children learn how to respectfully focus and be serious with a caring and playful approach that also let them be kids?

Yes, they did.

• Was cultural diversity honored, not as a contrived “trip around the world” theme, but simply as a way to both expand the very definition of music by exploring many styles and acknowledging the beauty of each culture’s contribution?

Yes, it was. Pieces from Japan, France, India, Brazil, Liberia and American jazz. (Almost every continent!)

 

• Did kids, parents, teachers, school administrators and others leave the theater glowing with happiness?

• Yes, they did. 

 

My own life’s path that took a surprising twist to include me in this memorable experience is a story in itself. To be told later (or not). Meanwhile, I’ll end by sharing my little introductory talk before the kids performed my arrangement of a Black children’s game, Humpty Dump. 

 

My mother taught me it’s always polite to thank the people who have gifted you with something beautiful and important. In that spirit, I’d like to thank Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman for their extraordinary vision in making music education fun, effective and such a beautiful way for children to feel like they matter, like they have something important to express, like they—without exception— belong to the band. I thank my teacher Avon Gillespie for setting me down this marvelous path. Back when I met him in 1972, he was one of only a very few Black Orff teachers and I know he would be thrilled to witness what’s happening here on this stage. I’d like to thank Nancy Ferguson for both her dedicated work in helping found this concert series and for her pioneering work in bringing American jazz into a repertoire developed by German composers and adapted to mostly English material. 

 

I’d like to thank the entire legacy of musicians from the African diaspora, torn from their homeland, but never losing touch with their deep-rooted mother culture. They were forced to adapt to a wholly foreign and brutal culture that tried to erase their identity, but never could. Instead, everything these new African Americans touched was transformed into gold. When they sang an English hymn, their alchemical touch changed it to a Spiritual. When they tried their hand (and feet) at  ballroom dancing, it burst into the joyful Lindy Hop dance. When they had access to European instruments, the way they played them and what they played was something new under the sun that brought light and warmth to all who listened. When they sang their sorrow-songs out in the fields, they grew into the Blues, that powerful musical form that forever changed the American musical landscape. I think folks in Memphis know something about that! 

 

So here we’re going to take the European practice of the Orff approach, use some English Mother Goose rhymes and in a uniquely American way, make them funky!!! Humpty Dumpty will never be the same! Enjoy!

 

Memorable Music in Memphis

And so the turn of the calendar page finds me in Memphis and joyfully so. I spent most of the day in the Cannon Center, where folks like Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead and more have performed. But equally—if not more impressive— so have some 300 5^th grade children performed, each year since 1968 to a full-house in the 2,000 + seat theater. And two hours from now, will perform again, after two days of intense rehearsals. And I will proudly be up on that stage directing one of their nine pieces. 

 

Today’s rehearsal ended around 2:30 pm and it was a good time for me to get out in the fresh air and wander the banks of the Mississippi. To explore a bit of the trolley-tracked car-free Main Street in a small 10-15 blocks of downtown. To sit in the park near my hotel under a shaded tree in 83 degree heat and write a bit in my journal. The small pleasures in the life of a traveling music teacher. 

 

Memphis is unique in the small size of its downtown. It’s impressive in the preservation of old buildings, the various signs telling of its history and statues commemorating courageous souls— many of them women— who fought for the freedoms we grew to take for granted and are now squandering. At any rate, there is a sense of character in the neighborhood, punctuated by that “old man river who just keeps rollin’ along.”

 

And yet it is missing some contemporary vitality, the kinds of restaurants and bars that attract people and bring a buzz to the streets. Beale Street is not too far, but the word is that the patrons are mostly tourists and it has more of a museum feel than a current vigor and vivacity. Some neighborhoods my host and I have driven through have a bit of a bombed-out feeling and yes, there are some homeless people (though small compared to San Francisco!). Others, of course, have lovely modest houses with front porches and affordable prices. As mentioned, the museums are superb and the food is barbecue, but from my perspective, the grandest glory is this event with kids from 96 schools, each of which has a thriving music program. 

 

It is my honor to get to participate with them tonight and indeed, it’s time to get ready. In a lifetime of many memorable musical and music education events, I believe this will be in the top five or ten. I’m confident all will go well—but it is April Fool’s Day. We shall see!

Travel, Teaching and Music

My unspoken Mission Statement for this Blog is to speak what’s on my mind and what’s on my mind is whatever the day brings me. No surprise to any reader that I’ve been heavily focused on trying to make sense of and shed light on the current political situation. Between the No Kings Rally, visits to two Civil Rights Museum, posts I’m seeing on Facebook, it makes perfect sense that the last seven posts or so are heavily weighted to commentary on those issues. 

 

But here I’ll put my traveling music teacher hat back on and close out March with a few personal reflections.

 

Accenting the traveling, I find myself loving the stimuli of going to new places and seeing new things and meeting new people in a kind of Travels with Charley road trip in blessed solitude. (No dog by my side). The freedom to go where I want when I want and the extra perk of great weather, friendly people, the green trees of Springtime and the rolling Mississippi River. 

 

Accenting the teacher, it is sheer joy to work with 350 children doing an arrangement I created—without me having to teach it to them! Not that I wouldn’t have loved that, but something fun about having them prepared by other teachers and I just get to come in like the Lone Ranger and put on the finishing touches. Equally delightful to sit through rehearsals of the other eight pieces they’re preparing for tomorrow’s concert with an audience of over a thousand people. This is the Memphis Annual All-City Concert where four or so 5^th graders from each of the 96 local public schools come together to perform. An impressive undertaking that has been going on every year since 1968!! And to top it off, well over 50% of the kids and many of the teachers are Black Americans. This is simply unheard of in the Orff world within which I travel. 

 

Accenting the music, I went last night with my friend/ Orff colleague Elisabeth to the Blues City Café on Beales Street and heard some rockin’ R & B blues. Of course I did! It’s Memphis! The piano player played like Jerry Lee Lewis and I just found out today that he just bought a house where Jerry Lee Lewis lived! That’s one way to absorb the style! It was a great band and Elisabeth and I even danced a little bit. Later, she told me that she’s been going two or three times a week and she discovered that her unrelenting symptoms of Long Covid mysteriously disappeared. Alongside some other health challenges she had. Talk about direct testimony of the healing power of music! Wish I knew that story before sending my Humanitarian Musician book off to the printer!

 

Today after rehearsal, we went to the Stax Records Museum, another super-impressive exhibit honoring both the record company and its recording artists— Sam Cooke, Booker T. and the MG’s, Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, Albert King and more. Once again, the supreme and maddening irony that the people who virtually created the American musical landscape through which so many of us have driven and walked and danced and lived and loved are the same people with a forever target on their back tattooed on by the hateful half of our divided nation. 

 

And so ends this glorious month of March that began with my Flowers and Thorns post. Remember that calendar quote? The reminder that I have the power to choose a path of flowers or thorns? Not in a naïve way— the world will and has and will continue to scratch me with its sharp pointed thorns, but I can choose how to either sidestep them or endure the pricks while smelling the flowers. I’m happy to report that in these last 31 days, I more or less have been able to do so. 

 

Happy upcoming April to all! 

Don't Mourn— Organize

That was the motto of the resistance group known as The Wobblies? Never heard of them? Of course you haven’t. No schools generally have seen it as a good idea to teach children about the history of protest and resistance in this country and that decision to casually choose ignorance has now grown to full-out prohibition of telling the truth to children in schools. So short story:

 

“The Wobblies” is the nickname for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a democratic international labor union founded in 1905. It fought against the seven-day work week, long hours, low wages and harsh and dangerous working conditions. It sought to include those who had been excluded by traditional unions based on race, gender and creed. It stood for worker control of production and wages in the face of big bosses getting rich off their labor and who were supported by the police and government. Stories about great government-sanctioned violence done to striking workers to protect the sacred creed of capitalism— profits over people—abound. (Check out the book The Cold Millions by Jess Walter, Woody Guthrie’s song The 1913 Massacre and the movie How Green Was My Valley to get a taste of these stories.)

 

When a fellow worker died from a coal mine collapsing or was murdered by vigilante thugs or local police, the IWW response was “Don’t mourn—organize!” (I would amend that to “Mourn—and then organize!). And after visiting my second Civil Rights Museum in a row—the first in Jackson, Mississippi, the next at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, my takeaway was a reminder of the extraordinary grief of the ongoing (through centuries) purposeful plague, scourge, curse of White Supremacy and the extraordinary intelligence, determination and comradery of organized resistance each and every step of the way by the Black people in this nation. In the 50’s and 60’s, such strategic, non-violent and organized responses to the next wave of government-approved, initiated, sanctioned violence against its Black citizens included:

• Sit-ins at lunch counters.

• Sit-ins at libraries.

• Sit-ins at select businesses. 

• The bus boycott.

• Business boycotts.

• School integration.

• Voter registration.

• Caucuses at Democratic Conventions.

• More.

 

I feel so proud that resistance is finally on the rise from white citizens previously content to just let things be because they were not at risk, benefitted by our white supremacist history and just wanted to—and had the privilege to—get on with their lives. But if there is any upside to the horror of the Trumpist regime and agenda, it is in the way they have laid bare the facts that we all suffer when the 1% of billionaires are in charge, that systems built on hatred and exclusion damage us all, that none of us are immune from the next attack on our basic rights and dignity. 

 

But walking through these museums, it strikes me that we have to do much more than just show up on the streets in fun costumes and clever signs. We need to learn from our resistance forebears how to strategically organize our energies as they have shown us how to do. Can we consider a general strike? Boycotts? Continued voter registration at massive levels? The models are in place and they indeed proved to be effective. Study any one of them (I find the Bus Boycott in Montgomery to be particularly inspiring) and learn. 

And if you’re in shouting distance of the two museums mentioned above, by all means, go! As well as the African American History Museum in Washington, the Whitney Plantation outside New Orleans, the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham or any one of the dozens of such museums throughout the country. The foundation of resistance is strong and well-documented. Let’s move forward from that base.