Beyond Tribe

I’ve spent so much of my life of investigating other cultures—their religion, their literature, their myths and folk tales, their music and dance and art and celebrations, their food and more. Much has been through books, films, recordings, much through first-hand travel to some 60 different countries, much through direct study of music and much through the friendships I’ve formed traveling the world giving Orff workshops. The walls of my home are filled with artwork collected from travels, the CD shelves overflowing with music from just about everywhere, the refrigerator and kitchen shelves rich with diverse foods that I’ve somewhat learned how to cook, the bookshelves brimming with poetry, fiction, travel books and more from here, there and everywhere. All of it has become an indelible part of my identity that I claim through my interest, efforts and experiences. 

 

In light of all that, I’ve been disturbed by the trends of well-meaning people to dismiss all such cultural investigation and celebrations under the label of “cultural appropriation.” The young people in particular who have drunk the Kool-Aid that my generation has offered them (before the full development of their frontal lobes and the rich experience that puts it into perspective) feel particularly vulnerable to the idea that if you’re not Indian, you shouldn’t teach (or even practice) yoga, if you’re not born in Bali, you shouldn’t play their gamelan, etc. Not that cultural appropriation isn’t a real thing that can be damaging— it certainly is. But that this surface definition sends everyone “back to tribe” and ignores the reality of “the collective unconscious” we all share. It discourages people from moving out of their self-proclaimed identity and affinity group to partake in the universal feast of diverse people brought together. 

 

In my long career as a music teacher, I’ve developed, created, arranged and composed a wide variety of music for kids that I consider worthy of their musical promise. Equally, I’ve developed a pedagogical approach based on Orff Schulwerk and stamped it with my own particular way of making music classes more musical. The ten books I’ve written all have been a look back at these ideas and material and gathering them into that most marvelous technology, a book with a spine. Some of my books have to do with my classic Orff arrangements of nursery rhymes and poetry, some with jazz, some with pedagogy, all attempts to capture a bit of a much larger repertoire developed over 45 years. The one missing element has been something that summarizes my World Music curriculum. It has been on the back burner for some ten to fifteen years. 

 

Truth be told, I felt disinclined to pursue it in the face of this new atmosphere where a white guy sharing pieces he collected all over the world, mostly from people he either formally studied with or was friends with, was going to be seen as another case of cultural appropriation. But by refusing to share what I’ve discovered, I’m giving that definition more power than I believe it deserves. 

 

So yesterday I dove back into the work I had already done on this project years back and decided to go forward with it and not from a defensive place. I still believe in its power to enlarge both our own soul and connect us to each other in ways we desperately need. Below is the beginning of a possible introduction. People don’t have to agree with it and I’m happy to discuss it with anyone. But I believe it’s worth considering. Wish me luck!

 

“Children who sing the songs of their far-away brothers and sisters are thinking and feeling and acting out the inner lives of supposedly ‘foreign’ ethnic groups. And when they find that their notes and patterns coincide, they automatically discover, unconsciously and perhaps the best way, that their spirits and mind-patterns do likewise. If that can happen to children, there is no reason why it cannot continue to happen, more and more meaningfully, as they move into adulthood. There is a promise here of ultimate planetary oneness, of a true universality, and of the peace for which we are all desperately searching.”        - Leonard Bernstein: Introduction  Sing, Children Sing: Songs, Dances and Singing Games of Many Lands and Peoples). 

 

Written over 50 years ago in 1972, Bernstein’s hope for the promise of peace and true universality echoes down to us today. Though it may seem further away than ever in our times of deep division, it may also be closer than we think, as many have awoken to the both the need and the pleasure to reach across all geographical, cultural, ethnic and chosen identity divides.  Aided by the increased ease of travel, decades of recordings, Youtube and Zoom, the presence of diverse neighbors in previously homogenous populations and the courageous work of refusing ongoing prejudice and bias, we are beginning to know the grand pleasure of feeling all of humanity’s expressive promise beating in our own breasts. We are tasting the possibility of music as the messenger of hope, connection and mutual understanding.

 

Consider our modern musical landscape. Americans studying taiko drums while Japanese play bluegrass, playing in gamelans while Indonesians play in jazz bands, performing in bands that include djembes and digeridoos. Such crossing of music and dance boundaries is almost common practice. For anyone with a sincere interest in enlarging our definition of music, the world is at our fingertips. The possibility of becoming larger, both musically and humanistically, can be realized, is being realized, through the way that diverse timbres, patterns, styles, movements open up new parts of ourselves. 

 

One starting place for this journey in and through music and dance can be in school music programs. This book comes at the far end of some 50 years of experimentation as to how that might be done. What began as an airy vision now is rooted deeply in the ground of work done with kids from 3-years-old through 8^th grade, a grand tree branching into some 60 countries with the fruit of hundreds of pieces, songs, dances, poems, games, activities hanging from its limbs. The book is the gathering of some of the harvest in hopes that others may find it both nutritious and delicious.