Nothing New

The Orff Echo is the quarterly journal of the American Orff Schulwek Association and in my closet is just about every copy since 1985. I was curious about an article I remembered writing and pulled them out from the closet to look for it. Four hours later, I had found every magazine I had written something for and had-re-read most of what I wrote, somewhat surprised and astonished that they held up. In fact, I could have written just about any of them yesterday. So much for forward-moving growth!

 

When you are tuned in to the guiding inner images that direct your thought and life— and these articles and my journals and my 13 years of blogs are testimony to this truth— you basically are saying the same things over and over and over again. There will be new little twists and more contemporary references and new ways to say them, but the essence stays the same. 

 

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but again, I was, to read that first article published in 1985 and see a heading The Class As Music, an idea that blossomed into my book Teach Like It’s Music 34 years later. There in 1989 were my views on teaching multicultural music, which are exactly the same as recently expressed in my Blogpost Cultural Appropriation or Appreciation? As early as 1996, I was warning people about the danger of too much screen time for kids. There in 1998 was my first of many articles to come about Jazz and Orff Schulwerk. In 2004, The Zen of Orff Schulwerk pointed the way forward to my new first-draft book titled Zen, Jazz & Orff: A Life in Three Worlds. In 2007, my articled Confessions of an Itinerant Music Teacher predicted this Blog started in 2011. Forty years of basically saying the same thing over and over again.

 

And how has my little voice helped shift the cultural landscape?Have the things that I cared about and warned about and offered more tonic and less toxic alternatives to finally come to blossom?

 

Dream on. Everything—and I mean everything— is much worse than before. Inspired musical teaching of music has been reduced to the Powerpoint presentations and list-checking of someone else’s standards. The beautiful promise of multicultural sharing has been shamed down to cultural appropriation. The screen time has… well, no need to tell you. What was a tiny firecracker explosion in 1996 is now of nuclear bomb proportions. Jazz has been reduced (by sales) from last on the list of all musical styles at 2% listening audience to 1.5 %. 

 

Oh well, I tried. And knowing it will have no big effect, will keep on trying. I have to remember the starfish story, repeated here yet again:

 

A woman was walking a beach filled with stranded starfish who had been washed ashore. Without water, they soon would die, so the woman began picking them up one by one and throwing them into the sea. A man came walking the other way and asked what she was doing and when she told him, replied: “Why bother? There are thousands of starfish here. What you’re doing won’t make any difference whatsoever.” She picked up a starfish, threw it into the sea and said: “It made a difference to that one.”

After all my efforts, the beach is still filled with dying starfish. But I do remember, helped by their written or spoken testimonies, particular starfish who were grateful that my work or words helped return them to the water. Perhaps that's all one can expect. 

 

ORFF ECHO ARTICLES—1984-2023  (35 articles)

 

1. 1985/Winter—V. 17/n.2—A Question of Discipline
2. 1988/Winter—V. 20/N.2—Summer in Bali
3. 1989/ Summer- V. 21, n. 4—Teaching the Music of Many Cultures
4. 1991/ Winter—V. 23/ N. 2—A View-and Thoughts—from Salzburg
5. 1993/Spring—V. 25/ N. 3—What Is Real Music?
6. 1994/Fall—V. 27—Multicultural Music: President’s Panel Talk
7. 1995/Summer—V. 27/N. 4—The Myth of Creativity
8. 1996/ Spring—V. 28/ N. 3—Early Childhood Education and the Electronic World
9. 1997/ Fall—V. 30/ N. 1—An Open Letter to the Orff Community
10. 1998/ Spring—V. 30/ N. 1—Jazz Goes to School
11. 1998/Summer—V. 30/N. 4—Milt Jackson Meets Orff Schulwerk
12. 1999/Spring—V. 31/ N. 3—Musica Poetica: The Word in Orff Schulwerk
13. 2000/Spring—V. 32/N. 3—Orff Schulwerk and Contemporary Music
14. 2000/Fall—V. 33—Crossing the Boundaries (Liz Keefe/ Xephyr)
15. 2001/Spring—V. 33/ N. 3—An African Odyssey
16. 2001/ Summer—V. 33/ N. 4—The Musical Community
17. 2002/ Fall—V. 35/ —The Drummer in Golden Gate Park
18. 2003/Fall—V. 36—What Is Aesthetic Education?
19. 2004/ Winter—V. 36/ N. 2—CD Review of Bessie Jones
20. 2004/ Spring—V. 36/ N. 3—Book Review: Music Education
21. 2004/ Fall—V. 37—The Zen of Orff Schulwerk
22. 2005/ Winter—V. 37/ N. 2—Sing Around the Dishpan: Jean Ritchie Interview
23. 2005/ Fall—V. 38—Portrait of Avon Gillespie
24. 2006/ Spring—V. 38/ N. 3—Book Review: Music, Education and Society
25. 2007/ Winter—V. 39/ N. 2—Confessions of an Itinerant Orff Teacher
26. 2009/ Spring—V. 41/ N. 3—Carrying the Torch: The Legacy of Carl Orff
27. 2009/Fall—V. 42—Pause and Consider: Electronic Technology and O.S.
28. 2010/ Spring—V. 42, n. 3—Book Review: Music, the Brain and Ecstacy
29. 2011/ Spring—V. 43, n 3—Jazz History in the Classroom: An American Story
30. 2013/ Fall—V. 46, n. 1—You Just Have to Be There
31. 2018/ Winter—V. 50, n. 2— International Orff Teaching. What. How. Why. 
32. 2020/ Winter—V. 52, n. 2—The Wisdom of Uncertainty: The Next 50 Years of AOSA
33. 2021/Spring- V. 53, n. 3—It’s a Ping Pong! Talk About Process (w. Wolfgang Harmann)
34. 2022/ Summer—V. 54, n. 4—Jazz, Joy & Justice: New Directions in Orff Schulwerk 
35. 2023/ Fall—V. 56, n. 1—Improvisation: The Pleasure of Survival