Coming Home

For anyone following and interested in the story line, the miraculous continued to be the norm in the 5^th day of the Jazz Course. I began by scolding teachers who begin an Orff/Jazz study by “jazzing up” English nursery rhymes. Meaning just adding a superficial gloss to something that has a different foundational coat of paint. Instead, we should begin with African American rhymes, clap plays and children’s games that already carry the seeds of future jazz styles and are still accessible to children. Everyone politely nodded their head in agreement. 

 

Then we began dancing to Dizzy Gillespie’s School Days, where singer Joe Carroll folds some five or six English nursery rhymes into a 12-bar blues. At the end, I reminded the class:

 

1)   Don’t always listen to the teacher. 

2)   You still shouldn’t use English nursery rhymes to teach jazz—unless you’re Dizzy Gillespie.

 

And that was the prelude to the next big “Orff-multi-media-event” that is part of my classic repertoire—Humpy Dump. Movement, singing, drama, Steppin’ body percussion, vocal ostinato, instrumental arrangement, solos all joined together to create one pretty hot performance piece! Fun for kids (around 5^th grade) and adults alike. 

Now that we were in the world of straight rhythm instead of swing, we went from a Jazz-Rock feel to Latin Jazz and put together a sizzling and spicy Soul Sauce (another Dizzy Gillespie composition), again with everyone learning all the parts—conga, guiro, cowbell, bass, melody, harmony, soloing scale— before choosing their instrument. 

 

That took us into the afternoon, where we welcomed three local young musicians from Cuba, Dominican Republic and Uruguay. They spoke to us about their background, played a bit for us and then I spontaneously suggested we play Besame Mucho and 10 or 12 of us popped up to join the instant band. We ended with them playing Soul Sauce with us and as often happens, they were mightily impressed by the welcoming energy, joy, vigor and solid musical skills of Orff music teachers. One of them seemed genuinely intrigued to take Level I with us!

 

Finally, I taught a medley of three simple but exquisite tunes that all shared the common scale of G pentatonic, but sounded so deliciously different from each other—Moonglow, Mo Betta Blues and Comin’ Home Baby. After the last, we all sat down and I asked “Who has cried today?” A couple of hands. “Well, that’s not enough. The day isn’t completely until at least a few tears roll, so let’s see if I can open the ducts here.” And then went on to read a beautiful testimony from a former student (from the 1980’s) who came to the San Diego Orff Conference in 2015. When she heard the SF School kids perform there, the memories of what that program meant to her flooded in and the day after, she wrote a letter that is simply stunning in its eloquence and beyond-heart-touching in the appreciation of the music program she experienced with me. Part of that letter referred to the tune Comin’ Home, Baby (hence, the context for reading it) and she ended with: 

 

“Listening to that concert was for me, an utterly poignant moment of reconnection to a past self, to a present and future self. It was a re/connection that transcended space, and place, and time in this exquisitely beautiful moment, where I felt like I was coming home. Where I felt—if only for a moment—that I was home.”

 

And so ended Day Five.