Hambone Saves the World

How did we grow from a small group of dubious creatures amidst others stronger and mightier to 8 billion people? This was the question I posed to the fourth graders I taught yesterday at the beginning of class. Then we did a body percussion song called Hambone to answer that question. The qualities I suggested that were essential to our survival were as follows:

 

1)   A flexible, adaptable mind. Life is filled with unpredictable and shifting situations. Predators hiding to spring out, disease randomly taking root, always the unknowns of weather—droughts, earthquakes, hurricanes, typhoons and beyond. To survive means to imagine solutions and responses in the moment that speak to each new situation. Clinging to old solutions to new problems, behaviors that once worked but don’t now, behaviors that never worked and still don't, are a threat to our survival. To be resourceful and resilient is to be perpetually open to new responses that meet each situation as required. It is the flexible mind that can truly think, imagine and try out new ideas and behaviors that has been key to our survival and still is today. 

 

So after teaching Hambone and showing three different body percussion possibilities for the response, I had the kids make up their own. A simple little exercise, but wholly in line with cultivating that flexible mind that can improvise new ideas in the moment.

 

   2). Helping each other out. Hambone is a story of oppressed people helping 

         each other survive through generous sharing. If an enslaved human being 

         got a hold of a bone with some ham on it, they resourcefully made the 

       most of it by making a soup broth with it. When enough of the nutrients 

       and taste got into the water, they passed the bone to their neighbor, who 

       did the same and passed it on again. Hoarding, greedily taking more than 

        one’s share, standing guard over the bone with gun in hand, would have

        been a sure path to extinction— and still is. 

 

      So I encouraged kids struggling with the melody to “cheat” by looking over

      at their neighbor. And encouraged those who figured out the melody 

      quickly to then circulate around and help others who were struggling.

 

3). Understanding interdependence. Since we are all necessary to each 

       other, idea and practices that strength our togetherness not only helps us 

       thrive in healthy and happy ways, but indeed, is another key factor in our 

       survival. The way that singing together, playing together, dancing together

        instantly bonds us with each other and makes us feel a small part of 

        something yet larger, more beautiful, more powerful is one of the great 

        gifts of music and perhaps the reason we were endowed with this 

        faculty. (Nietzche said: “Without music, life would be an error.”)

 

       Rugged individualism, purposeful exclusion of fellow human beings, 

        isolation and loneliness not only creates miserable human beings, but is a 

        direct threat to our survival. As much now (if not more so) than during 

        the Neanderthal days. Giving kids an opportunity to experience the wonder 

        and beauty of feeling connected to fellow humans is a vote for the future.

 

Let me say this as clearly as I can. These simple experiences in the arts or an artful approach to learning and living are not optional frills. They are in fact wholly necessary to our survival. Wouldn’t it be a shame if our species weathered the challenges of millenium only to extinguish ourselves because we refused the flexible mind, the helpful heart, the connected soul and opted for rigid fundamentalist thinking and armored hearts and souls. 

 

Think about it.