Dough Ray Me

After a fabulous day in the classroom, it was a fabulous night on Frenchmen St., reminding me why Bob Dylan said, “I like a lot of places, but I like New Orleans better.” The city truly is a national treasure, with its unique architectural aesthetic, friendly people and the music, music, music. We ate dinner serenaded by a sweet gypsy jazz band, then ambled down the street and had a beer outdoors listening to the Trumpet Mafia, three talented young men and women blowing their horns with a solid rhythm section and dishing up some Herbie Hancock and Miles. Then followed our ears to the street corner where a brass band was serving up the Trad Jazz of New Orleans with such energy and gusto. All of it for the price of donations in a bucket. 

 

When the band dispersed, I ducked into a nearby bookstore looking for that quirky classic “A Confederacy of Dunces,” which strangely they didn’t have. I browsed through Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” a classic dystopian novel which oddly I had never read. As described in Wikipedia:

 

Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury.  It presents a future American society where books have been outlawed and "firemen" burn any that are found. The novel follows in the viewpoint of a fireman who soon becomes disillusioned with his role of censoring literature and destroying knowledge, eventually quitting his job and committing himself to the preservation of literary and cultural writings.  

Fahrenheit 451 was written by Bradbury during the McCarthy era inspired by the book burnings in Nazi Germany and by ideological repression in the Soviet Union. Bradbury’s claimed motivation for writing the novel has changed multiple times. In a 1956 radio interview, Bradbury said that he wrote the book because of his concerns about the threat of burning books in the United States.  In later years, he described the book as a commentary on how mass media reduces interest in reading literature. In a 1994 interview, Bradbury cited political correctness as an allegory for the censorship in the book, calling it "the real enemy these days" and labelling it as “though control and freedom of speech control.”

I wonder what he would think now in these days where books are not burned, but banned. Where people afraid of independent and critical thought, of hard truths being told, of nuanced perspectives being considered, are getting their hands into libraries and schools. Much of it coming from the right from people terrified of losing their unearned privilege, but also from the left as a small handful decide that Jingle Bells is on the bad list because it once was sung in a minstrel show and all art and literature that has the taint of its times in regards to sexism or racism is to be dismissed. 

I heard of a Southern university inviting guest teachers to give a music education course, but with the caveat that they can’t talk about anything but the “do, re, mi.” No cultural background, examination of lyrics, context of pieces learned and played, discussions of how schools are failing children in the context of considering what the music teacher can give them. 

 If I ever accepted such an invitation, I would agree and then find the appropriate times in the class to look into the “Dough, Ray, Me.” How “follow the money” is 9 times out of 10 the reason for culturally approved atrocities and how unchecked corporate greed is a toxic poison that leaks down to us all. Why children raised to lust after that green dough grow up to adults who cut arts programs.

Then we would look into the life of Ray Charles and reveal all that he suffered as a black man in a racist society while simultaneously offering such joyous music. And then while listening to and singing the songs and playing the pieces of fabulous women artists from Clara Schumann to Bessie Smith, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Marian Anderson, Mavis Staples, Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Mary Lou Williams, Eliane Elias, Yuja Wang, etc. etc. etc., we would need to look into the Me (Too) movement. 

If the thought police stepped into the classroom and tried to fire me, I can tell them I did exactly what they asked and stuck strictly to their Dough Ray Me stipulation. 

Meanwhile, I speak freely in this Jazz Course and the depth of our serious reflection of what brought this extraordinary music to us all makes the height of our jubilation soar yet higher, as we stand on a corner on Frenchmen Street with a horse-drawn carriage ambling by and a brass band blowing us up to the heavens. Do-re-mi has never sounded so good.