Karmic Connections

It’s a Saturday morning and after catching up on business matters, I’m ready to take off footloose and fancy free to wander about Toronto. I’ll have some four hours before a dinner date with a friend, followed by a concert she’s singing in. Where should I go?

 

Truth be told, Toronto has never effortlessly lifted my heart the way that places like Vancouver, Barcelona, Salzburg, London, Paris, Venice, Bangkok, Kyoto, Rio de Janeiro and more do. No enticing rivers or beaches or hills or  parks or charming neighborhoods or thriving arts scene that enchant and delight me. Yet somehow I have a karmic connection that’s significant. Let me count the ways:

 

1.    Toronto is the first foreign city I ever visited, on a family trip back in 1962 (I think). It was the kick-off to a lifetime of visiting some 65 countries and hundreds of towns and cities. 

 

2.    On that trip, I had my first experience of puppy love. I seem to remember as a rising 7^th grader holding hands with a neighbor of my Dad’s friend, a girl named Lizzie. (I think it was a one-day romance).

 

3.    1962 was the year Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman brought Orff-Schulwerk to North America, an event that obviously wholly defined my life. If indeed it was the same year I first came here, I might have passed them in the street!

 

4.    Toronto is the place I came to year after year to teach whatever course suited my fancy (thank you Catherine West!). Between 2000 and 2019, I taught many Jazz Courses, World Music Courses, Music and Poetry/ Rhymes Courses and Pedagogy Courses. Alongside San Francisco, Salzburg and Madrid, this is the place where I have taught more often than any other place.

 

5.    I was teaching my Musica Poetica Course here in Toronto when I got the news that my Dad had died. We sang a song for him that day and I discovered that it doesn’t work when all try to sing and cry at the same time. 

 

And there’s more. Many people who came year after year to my various courses who became fun acquaintances and some lifelong friends. I co-taught at the Toronto Conference in 2006 with two beloved colleagues, Sofia Lopez-Ibor and Rick Layton. And now I can add teaching side-by-side with my good friend and colleague Kofi Gbolonyo at the Havergal School to the list. I listened to Oscar Peterson’s album We Get Requests in high school and passed by the line for his Memorial Service one time I visited. I listened to Glenn Gould’s recording of the Goldberg Variations and Joni Mitchell’s songs in college. All three of these musicians—representing jazz, classical and folk/rock— are connected to Toronto.

 

So despite my doubts about the delights of this fair city, it is deeply embedded in my own karmic unfolding and that is worth noting. Now that I have, it’s out into the day. 

 

Toronto Days

 

We all have our own strategies to slow Time’s swift foot, to blunt the lion’s claw of mortality. Mine is to lead multiple existences, each one a miniature life in itself that creates its own micro-rhythms and goes through the cycle of freshness and repetition that doesn’t continue long enough to get stale. Now at the end of my second of three weeks in Toronto, enmeshed in the daily rhythms that bring a groove to the day and help me feel aligned with my purpose and meaning. 

 

The day begins early, as the 6:00 am light filters into the guest room where I stay. Foregoing my morning meditation, I gather my things, enjoy a solitary Alpen breakfast with my hosts still sleeping and I’m out the door around 7:30 am, something unheard of in my San Francisco retired life.  Early morning air is both brisk and many days sprinkling or raining, more gray skies than sun. 

 

A short walk up to Yonge Street on Clarke, tap my Presto card in a machine at the bus stop and usually, a blue bus arrives within a minute or two. Off we go on Yonge Street, one of the longest (if not the longest) street in the whole world, with its chains of strip-smallish stores with signs in Arabic, Korean, Farsi and more. (Toronto remains one of the world's most international cities.) 

10 minutes to Finch Subway Station, where multiple blue buses gather on one side and red buses on the other. Out the door, past the man outside the station sleeping in his sleeping bag, head for the stairs with the throng at a rapid pace and wondering what everyone’s hurry is. Past the musician in his poncho playing panpipes or quena flute with his pre-recorded back-up band (never saw anyone give him money), past the folks lined up for morning coffee at Tim Hortons (yes, I’m in Canada), through the turnstile with another swipe of my Presto card and down the stairs where a train is always waiting to go. 

Six stops to Lawrence Ave., all predictably on their phones, no animated (or any) conversations, up to the street and the first week, took the 20 minutes walk down busy Lawrence Avenue before arriving at the school.

 

But the other day, discovered a parallel street one block to the South that is quiet and pleasing with its brick houses and front lawns, the kind of American aesthetic of mid-size houses, not two alike and the “Leave It to Beaver” mythology of families living their dreams in comfort with friendly neighbors, flowering daffodils and tulips in the yard, magnolia trees blooming, folks out walking their dogs. As I approach the school, there’s a path with trees leafing themselves into Spring and a softball field to my left, where early morning enthusiasts are out and about playing a game. The realist in me knows that houses were always peopled—and still are— with the full human drama of spousal abuse, child neglect, gay people in the closets and black people kept out of the neighborhood. But the dreamer still enjoys walking these comfortable streets and imagining people living fulfilling lives, showing up at PTA meetings, lending yard tools to each other, hosting back yard barbecues and such and some of that is as true as the others. And these days, there are people of all colors and persuasions living in some of these neighborhoods. 

 

On to the school, hello to the person who checks me in, spirited greetings to the many students I pass whose names I don’t know but am starting to recognize their faces. And off for yet another day of delight, making music, playing games, dancing, watching all those who begin “I can’t” slowly realize “I can!”, feel the group chaos of melodies not quite mastered yet and rhythms not quite in sync finally hit their groove before the hour is up and isn’t that satisfying! When you are engaged together in a worthy project, actually know (or learn) how to listen to each other, understand the deep benefits of group cohesion and let go of your “look at me!” nonsense— well, it gives a shape and meaning to the day which we all should be so lucky to experience. 

 

Mid-day is lunch with Kofi and a conversation that is dependably stimulating and thought-provoking and also the rare opportunity for us to work together with a couple of classes. Never a moment’s planning beyond “Who should go first?” and the organic, spontaneous sense of how to support and enhance each other’s work. And yesterday, our mutual astonishment that a 2^nd grader played to perfection a challenging Ghanaian bell rhythm, by herself, with the drums and with the song. And Kofi said today a 1^st grader did the same! We both were shaking our heads and reminding ourselves, “Never underestimate what kids can do.”

 

Around 2:30, it’s the reverse commute and as mentioned in a previous post, it feels good to have my exercise (usually 4 miles a day) folded into my work schedule. On the way in, planning and re-planning the days classes while on the move, on the way back, either reflecting on it or indulging in my Audible book. “Home” to log in the days classes, check my e-mail, re-connect with my hosts and either cook or help cook some pretty great dinners. 

 

So there it is, my new life, with a free weekend coming up where I’ll visit a few other folks I know here and grab some solitude time wandering about in a new neighborhood in the city. Then four more days and back home next Friday to begin my next new life— some 10 days back home before the next adventure beckons.

 

Amidst all this, I’m not oblivious to the constant assault of the cheaters and bullies and hypocrites— even micro-dosing on the news still penetrates the protective sheath of love, truth and beauty. But I simply can’t let them win and so keep my eye on the prize— the glitter in these students’ eyes when they discover both what they themselves can do and how good they all can sound together in a group. And so it goes on… 

The Winning Bet

Janet Greene, an Orff colleague who has shared a parallel journey with me for some 45 years, sent me this stunning poem below. Here’s what I wrote back to her, followed by the poem she sent. 

 

Thanks so much, Janet. That's a keeper! Such evocative imagery—" the discount bin of the universe"/ "from trilobite to telescope"/ "this tenement of breath and bone." That is some eloquent poetry.

 

And then the meta-message inside the imagery. None of this should have been, and yet here it all is. Just like the wild bet that we can clean the cesspool we've created and flush out the fools and the fascists. Seems like a long shot in the face of the daily news, but some part of me is convinced that we will do it. So thanks for being part of the cleaning crew.

 

I'm excited to announce that my little contribution in the form of my new Humanitarian Musician book has now been born into print. No Orff dealers have it yet, but it should be ready for sale by the end of May. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I suspect you will feel its full flavor and warming taste. Thanks again and see you at the clean-up!

 

The Wildest Bet Is the Winning Bet 

 

You wouldn’t have bet on it,
the battered rock
orbiting a star
from the discount bin
of the universe,
wouldn’t have guessed
that it would bloom
mitochondria and music,
that it would mushroom
mountains and minds,

 

and the hummingbird wing
whirring a hundred times faster
than your eye can blink,

 

and your eye that took
five hundred million years
from trilobite to telescope,

 

and the unhurried orange lichen
growing on the black boulder
two hundred times more slowly
than the tectonic plates beneath
are drifting apart

 

and the marbled orca
carrying her dead calf
down the entire edge
of the continent,
carrying the weight
of consciousness

and consciousness

how it windows
this tenement
of breath and bone
with wonder,
how it hovers over everything,
gigantic and unnecessary,
like music,
like love.

 

            - Maria Popova

The Pleasures of Polygamy

Carl Orff was married four times. In his personal life, it’s possible that he wasn’t an ideal husband. But in his professional and visionary life, he made multiple marriages and each one seemed to be made in heaven.

 

First and foremost, music and movement. He himself wasn’t a dancer, but he felt the dance in the music and the music in the dance. (By contrast, his colleague Gunild Keetman was equally adept at both and made a significant impact officiating that wedding.)

 

Then there was music and drama. Carmina Burana, his major work as a composer, was not an abstract sonata or fugue but closer to a scenic cantata— a theatrical musical work that combines the dramatic storytelling and staging of an opera or ballet with the traditional choral and orchestral structure of a cantata.

 

Next was music and speech— lists, chants, rhymes, poems, songs, both as devices to teach the musical elements of rhythm and speech and springboards for elemental composition and improvisation. 

 

These expanded definitions of music and music education went on to include children’s games, body percussion, folk dance, Orff instrument ensemble, recorder and yet more. This large multi-colored circus with multiple rings all housed under the one tent of those four powerful letters—Orff.

 

But that was just the starting point. Orff went further to marry other possibilities and I’m proud to say that I often was the officiant at the weddings. 

Orff and Body Percussion deepened their relationship first introduced by Keetman when I integrated Keith Terry’s groundbreaking work in the work with children and went on to fold in some Steppin’, Gumboot dance and other body-based musics. Virtuoso body musicians like Keith Terry, Fernando Barba, Antwan Davis and others stepped into the Orff arena and found themselves both heartily welcomed and at home there.

 

Orff and Jazz is perhaps my favorite Orff couple and one I’ve gone the deepest into. Both are learned primarily through the body and voice, both invite movement and dance, both are built on simple elements that combine to great effect, both use ostinati, drones, color parts and pentatonic scales (called riffs, vamps, fills and blues scale in jazz parlay), both use arrangements that begin with a melody played twice and then invite soloists to improvise before closing again with the melody twice. Each has a different ancestry and rhythmic feel, but viva la diferance!

 

Orff and World Music is another marriage made in heaven. The Orff classroom is already filled with instruments from around the world—drums of all sorts, scrapers, shakers and metal-bell-makers, recorders related to whistles and flutes worldwide, xylophones inspired by West African models, Indonesian gamelan and European glockenspiels. Again, the aural/oral foundation of Orff pedagogy, the elemental structures and elemental qualities that live close to the earth, the fusion of music, movement and song, the invitation to improvise, adapt, re-compose, the deep connection with dance and so much more. 

 

Orff and Ghanaian Music is one example of the above and one we’ve explored in great-depth in our Orff-Afrique Course with Dr. Kofi Gbolonyo and other Ghanaian (and American) teachers. These marriages on my mind as Kofi and I just gave a workshop to teachers this Saturday combining Orff Schulwerk, traditional Ewe music from Ghana and American Jazz. We opened the workshop together with Kofi leading a dance warm-up and me teaching an African American children’s game that leads to jazz. Then we each had two sessions, one with each half of the group and ended the day coming together to play the 12/8 drumming rhythms Kofi taught as accompaniment to the Afro Blue song that I taught. It worked fabulously. 

 

The whole event felt like a poly-amorous love fest that included two more notable joinings— Orff and Progressive Pedagogy, as modeled in the how of what we taught and Orff and Humanitarianism, as we discussed how each of the things we did had a grander design behind it of helping to nurture more kind and connected and community-minded human beings. (The first copies of my new book The Humanitarian Musician arrived in time to sell after the workshop!)

 

So the jury is in. Polygamy in the Orff world is legal and all the multiple marriages are meant to be. 

An Almost Cute Story

 

In my first 5^th grade class at Havergal College School this last week, I taught the partner clap Head and Shoulders. One of the verses is:

 

“Milk the cow, baby, 1, 2 3

Milk the cow, baby, 1, 2 3

Milk the cow, milk the cow, milk the cow,

Milk the cow, baby, 1, 2 3.”

 

At the end I asked, “So who milked a cow today?” One child raised her hand. “Really?!” I asked. And all the girls chimed in, “Yes, she lives on a farm!!” Then I said, “Okay, who else milked a cow today?” The whole point was that this was a song created by rural kids and it reflected their experience. So we can sing their song, but also update it and make new verses about the things we tend to do each day. That can mean “read a book, go to school, play guitar, cook a meal, ride the bus, etc.” but of course, most think of “text your friend, baby 1, 2, 3…” So it is.

 

But lots of kids (remember, we’re in urban Toronto) kept insisting they had milked a cow, so I finally said, “Okay, if you want to me to believe you, you have to bring in a photo of you milking a cow.” We left it at that and went on with the game.

 

Three days later, the same class came back and one of the girls ran up excitedly and said, “Look!” In her hand was a printed photo of her milking a cow!!! Thinking it may have been the girl who lived on a farm, I told her I was so impressed that she actually had milked a cow and was so touched that she went to all that trouble to take and print a photo to prove it to me. She had a big smile on her face and just as we were about to begin class, she confessed:

 

“Well, actually, it was AI.”

 

Aaargh!!! On one hand, I still was impressed that she went to all this trouble from my casual remark about bringing in a photo. That showed both a sense of caring and a mischievous streak that I like in children (and adults). On the other hand, here we are, where kids are given fake substitutes for the real deal. 

Also depressing is this growing sense than none of can trust or believe anything, even with visual evidence right in front of our eyes. And what was a harmless prank for a child can also be a supremely dangerous manipulation (see the movie Wag the Dog) by people who do not have our best interests in mind. 

 

Like I said, an almost cute story. There is some charm about the mischievous kid side of it, but great concern about what it implies. So again:

 

AARGH!!!

Mayday

It’s the first day of May, with its multiple meanings and each worthy of attention. For example: 

 

International Workers Day 

A public holiday in over 90 countries honoring labor movements and workers' rights. Nations worldwide, including places like Cuba, Kenya, China, Mexico, and North Korea, take the first day of May to fight for better working conditions, celebrate, and advocate for workers. In the U.S., it originated from the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago, where workers peacefully assembled to strike for an 8-hour workday. On May 3^rd at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant, two demonstrators had been killed and many injured. The next day, demonstrators rallied at Haymarket Square, where an unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at policemen trying to disperse the meeting, killing seven police and four demonstrators.  

Police were in the pockets of big money, as always and the next day,  as reported in the Illinois Labor Historical Society,  “labor leaders were rounded up, houses were entered without search warrants and union newspapers were closed down. Eventually eight men, representing a cross section of the labor movement were selected to be tried. The two-month-long trial ranks as one of the most notorious in American history. The Chicago Tribune even offered to pay money to the jury if it found the eight men guilty. On August 20, 1886, the jury reported its verdict of guilty with the death penalty by hanging for seven of the Haymarket Eight, and 15 years of hard labor for the eighth. 

 

The 8-hour workday eventually became law and between 1880 and 1900, there were over 37,000 strikes by organized labor for better working conditions and more equitable salaries. There was significant movement to curtail the power of Robber Barons. Well, two steps forward and ten steps back. The Robber Barons are back with unchecked power and are all the poorer—literally, culturally and politically—for it. As before, the people are rising up and organizing against it and so today is (theoretically) a General Strike in the U.S.. I’m in Canada at the moment, but I’ll check out the news later. At any rate, May 1^st as International Worker’s Day is as relevant as ever, if not more so. Organize!

 

Mayday

This the happier celebration, of Spring, new life and dancing around maypoles. As noted online: “One of the oldest and most famous is the festival of Beltane, which was enjoyed by the Celts of the British Isles. This festival honored the return of life and fertility to the world, and was thought to divide the year in half, between the dark (winter) and the light (summer, which for the Celts started on May 1). Beltane typically featured bonfires, other fire displays, and field frolicking.”

 

My personal association is from the village of Anif in Austria, just outside of Salzburg. Called Maibaum and celebrated throughout Bavaria, both in Austria and Germany, it involves raising an enormous, stripped pole in the village center, hoisted up inch-by-inch by the town firemen using nothing but ropes and other poles. 10 minutes of grunting and pulling and pushing, then take a break for some beer. Meanwhile, the brass band is playing and food is plentiful as the onlookers gather. Three hours—and lots of beer— later, the pole is upright, with its hanging rings where pretzels and sausages are dangled. Spring will not officially come until someone clambers up the smooth, slippery pole some 30 feet high to reach the food and throw it down. Many try and fail and invariably, it’s a teenage boy who claims the prize. I’ve witnessed many extraordinary cultural celebrations in Bali, Ghana, India, Japan and beyond, but this European celebration was both as exotic and life-celebrating as any I’ve witnessed. 

 

Mayday!

Mayday has another meaning as the highest-level international radio distress signal used by aircraft and maritime vessels to indicate grave and imminent danger, such as engine failure, fire, or immediate life-threatening situations. Turns out it has nothing to do with the actual first day of May, but is derived from the French phrase "m'aider" (help me). At any rate, “grave and imminent danger” is indeed the new normal and it is long past time to push the ejection button for the pilot in the White House. Preferably without the parachute. 

So there you have it. May 1^st is quite a day! Take your pick— Spring, workers, or emergency distress. As for songs, you can choose between the English folk song, One Morning in May, Hoagy Carmichael’s One Morning in May or Smokey Robinson’s My Girl. 

 

Happy May!

 

Walking the Imagination

 Between being fully immersed in the classes at my new 3-week school, commuting some two hours round-trip and in the evening, being a charming  guest for my friends Yana and Dave (who are so generously hosting me at their house), not much time for Blogpost reflection. But today, I have some time in-between classes, so following the last post, worth sharing another side of commuting. 

 

My new routine begins with a short walk to a bus stop, a 10-minute bus ride, transfer to the subway and a 15-minute ride and then a choice of walking 20 plus minutes to the school or taking another bus. Having enjoyed the opportunity to walk between 3 and 8 miles a day in my “retired” life, it’s a good opportunity to walk. But not just for the fresh air and exercise. 

 

By resisting my phone, resisting listening to my Audible book, resisting listening to music in earbuds (never have really done that), my mind is free to roam alongside the legs. Since I’m walking to a day of teaching, it naturally turns to my classes and powerfully so. I find the mind is more alert, focused and engaged in the act of walking than merely sitting. 

 

Years back, I wrote: “All things are created thrice. First, in the act of dreaming—living the class ahead of time in one’s imagination. Secondly, in the act of doing and all the adjusting and responding and following the energy of the class when deciding the next step. Finally, in the act of reflecting— what worked well, what needs further fine-tuning, what the logical next step is.”

 

And so, dreaming the class while walking has borne some fresh, ripe and delicious fruit. I have so much material to fall back on, but it’s still my responsibility and my pleasure to constantly re-imagine it to keep it alive and vibrant and forever now. Yesterday, I made up a new counter-melody to a Green Sally Up arrangement I made 43 years ago and it’s swingin’! Today I made up entirely new verses to another song/arrangement I did some 18 years ago. Walking gives me time to keep it circulating in both my mind and my voice (singing out loud—no one is around on the sidewalk!). By the time I arrive at school, I had three verses and in the five minutes at school before the kids came in, I already changed them. Including making up a whole new one in the middle of the class itself. That dreaming also included how to begin, how to teach it in an engaging way. 

 

Did the kids feel how fresh and live the class was because of those acts of dreaming? You bet your life! This was not “turn to page 25 and let’s read the same paragraph I’ve read with kids for 45 years and asked the same questions.” 

 

I think a quality that seems to have accompanied me my whole life is an intolerance for sameness, my incapacity to just mouth the words and go through mindless routine. Some part of me demands a vibrant presence fully mindful of the energy in the air around me and the energies circulating inside of me. Always asking, “How else can we do this? What else can we do? What’s needed now? What am I feeling that needs to be expressed?”

 

And that’s what made this extraordinary gifts of Orff Schulwerk and Jazz so perfect for the way I’m put together. What keeps it all so fresh 51 years after I first began teaching. And to bring it full-circle, it’s the act of physically walking the imagination and mentally imagining the walking that I’m finding so energizing and meaningful. 

 

And now the next class is at the door.