The Pleasures of Polygamy

Carl Orff was married four times. In his personal life, it’s possible that he wasn’t an ideal husband. But in his professional and visionary life, he made multiple marriages and each one seemed to be made in heaven.

 

First and foremost, music and movement. He himself wasn’t a dancer, but he felt the dance in the music and the music in the dance. (By contrast, his colleague Gunild Keetman was equally adept at both and made a significant impact officiating that wedding.)

 

Then there was music and drama. Carmina Burana, his major work as a composer, was not an abstract sonata or fugue but closer to a scenic cantata— a theatrical musical work that combines the dramatic storytelling and staging of an opera or ballet with the traditional choral and orchestral structure of a cantata.

 

Next was music and speech— lists, chants, rhymes, poems, songs, both as devices to teach the musical elements of rhythm and speech and springboards for elemental composition and improvisation. 

 

These expanded definitions of music and music education went on to include children’s games, body percussion, folk dance, Orff instrument ensemble, recorder and yet more. This large multi-colored circus with multiple rings all housed under the one tent of those four powerful letters—Orff.

 

But that was just the starting point. Orff went further to marry other possibilities and I’m proud to say that I often was the officiant at the weddings. 

Orff and Body Percussion deepened their relationship first introduced by Keetman when I integrated Keith Terry’s groundbreaking work in the work with children and went on to fold in some Steppin’, Gumboot dance and other body-based musics. Virtuoso body musicians like Keith Terry, Fernando Barba, Antwan Davis and others stepped into the Orff arena and found themselves both heartily welcomed and at home there.

 

Orff and Jazz is perhaps my favorite Orff couple and one I’ve gone the deepest into. Both are learned primarily through the body and voice, both invite movement and dance, both are built on simple elements that combine to great effect, both use ostinati, drones, color parts and pentatonic scales (called riffs, vamps, fills and blues scale in jazz parlay), both use arrangements that begin with a melody played twice and then invite soloists to improvise before closing again with the melody twice. Each has a different ancestry and rhythmic feel, but viva la diferance!

 

Orff and World Music is another marriage made in heaven. The Orff classroom is already filled with instruments from around the world—drums of all sorts, scrapers, shakers and metal-bell-makers, recorders related to whistles and flutes worldwide, xylophones inspired by West African models, Indonesian gamelan and European glockenspiels. Again, the aural/oral foundation of Orff pedagogy, the elemental structures and elemental qualities that live close to the earth, the fusion of music, movement and song, the invitation to improvise, adapt, re-compose, the deep connection with dance and so much more. 

 

Orff and Ghanaian Music is one example of the above and one we’ve explored in great-depth in our Orff-Afrique Course with Dr. Kofi Gbolonyo and other Ghanaian (and American) teachers. These marriages on my mind as Kofi and I just gave a workshop to teachers this Saturday combining Orff Schulwerk, traditional Ewe music from Ghana and American Jazz. We opened the workshop together with Kofi leading a dance warm-up and me teaching an African American children’s game that leads to jazz. Then we each had two sessions, one with each half of the group and ended the day coming together to play the 12/8 drumming rhythms Kofi taught as accompaniment to the Afro Blue song that I taught. It worked fabulously. 

 

The whole event felt like a poly-amorous love fest that included two more notable joinings— Orff and Progressive Pedagogy, as modeled in the how of what we taught and Orff and Humanitarianism, as we discussed how each of the things we did had a grander design behind it of helping to nurture more kind and connected and community-minded human beings. (The first copies of my new book The Humanitarian Musician arrived in time to sell after the workshop!)

 

So the jury is in. Polygamy in the Orff world is legal and all the multiple marriages are meant to be.