Where I'm Needed

  

Writing these posts is mostly a daily discipline, my ritual fishing expedition into the reflective and linguistic layers of the brain to see what will bite today. So it has been a bit odd to be writing these Ghana Chronicle posts a couple of weeks after they happened and neglecting what I’m actually doing at the moment. And oddly, I haven’t missed it much.

 

But today was a day worthy of report, back to that sense of being wholly of use. May I confess something here? As any reader can tell, I LOVED being in Ghana, but truth be told, I’m not a very important person there. My whole shtick about effective music education, the importance of ritual and celebration, building a culture of belonging and welcome, has no resonance with the Ghanaians beyond, “Well, duh!!!” As a musician—particularly in Ewe music— I’m barely at the kindergarten level. I do feel I contributed something useful to the Ghana xylophone classes, but again, the group would have been fine with just Aaron teaching. And don’t get me wrong— all of this is good, an important reminder to humble down and just enjoy being whoever I am in company with my fellow humans without any need to feel important or admired. 

 

But let’s face it. I like being in charge and I particularly like feeling needed and useful. This entire week, I’ve taught two groups of 8 to 10 year old kids at the Oberlin Dance Collective Summer Camp. A new gig for me and intriguing to just see who shows up and what I can do with them in four short hours over four days. I had some vague plans of what amidst the hundreds of activities in my repertoire I might do with them, but knew that the first step was just to see where they were— musically, dance-wise, attention-wise etc. And to resist the urge to compare them to the Ghanaian kids I had just left!

 

First off, except for a few little edgy moments of testing the behavioral waters, the kids were mostly with the program, willing to try things and work through a few challenging moments. After five days, they amply fulfilled my number one teaching goal— to start where they are and move forward to where they hadn’t yet been, combining my knowledge of how to help them with their effort to improve. Where they were at the beginning wasn’t, of course, their fault, but it is worth noticing that some had never done clapping plays with partners, didn’t know simple nursery rhymes like “Pease Porridge Hot,” a few had severe inabilities to keep the beat and most had trouble crafting a coherent pentatonic scale solo. All of which is the fault of both schools and culture that has failed to give them the basic tools of musical expression. 

 

So that was my job and that’s why I felt useful. In the morning of the last day, I rehearsed the two groups together, stitching together the separate pieces— Table Rhythms, arrangements of two nursery rhymes with improvisation and my multi-media arrangement of Step Back Baby— with little dramatic connecting parts. After a lovely lunch with my sister, who was there at the same time teaching a class to mature dancers who simply wanted to keep in touch with a passion from their earlier life, I went back to the Jewish Home to play with my friends Javier and Cathy, our lovely piano-clarinet-violin trio. I had been five weeks away and they were so happy to welcome us back and we were even happier to see them all again. Over an hour of sweet, sweet music bringing comfort, beauty, energy and respite from life’s chaos to us all. From that time with 88 and 98 year olds, back to the dance studio for the afternoon performance with 8 year-olds, which was delightful.  As you might imagine, it was a day in which I felt useful.

 

As much as I love going to Ghana, they don’t need me there. But here, where we’ve lost so much of what is truly important in this life, my voice and work and presence feels needed. And I am happy to offer it all. On to the Jazz Course!