The Electronic Wailing Wall

A reporter goes to Israel to do a piece on the Wailing Wall. She notices that the same man comes three times a day every day to pray. Finally, she goes up to him and says, 

“Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice your devotion in coming here so often to pray. How long have you been doing this?” 

“About 40 years,” the man replies. 

“40 years! That’s dedication, indeed! Tell me, what do you pray for?” 

“I pray that the Christians, Muslims and Jews will recognize that their God is one and the same, that all fighting and wars will stop, that we will treat our children with love and respect and they in turn will love and respect us, that kindness and compassion will win out over hatred and greed.” 

The reporter says, “That’s very commendable. 40 years of praying for these things! How does that feel?” “Like I’m talking to an f’in’ wall!!!!”

I love this joke. It expresses exactly how I feel after almost 40 years of speaking on behalf of music education. Today, a letter from an Orff colleague came my way with the same-old same-old news:

Just as it is in many states around the country, the state of New York is facing a critical financial situation that will impact the schools terribly. Last evening, I received a call from the teacher who took my place when I retired from public school education.  She informed me that, despite the wonderful work she has done to maintain the program I established, the principal is cutting ALL ART and ALL MUSIC in that school.  This type of situation is varied from school to school in this urban district.  Of course, I am livid beyond words. 

I sent her an excerpt from my recent talk in Hong Kong—“Why Music Matters.”

“Every time has its particular challenges and ours is the astronomical rate of change we are experiencing. When a tool (computer) three years old is considered archaic, when we are trying to train students for businesses that don’t exist yet (who would have predicted Google twenty years ago?), when yesterday’s solutions are woefully inadequate for tomorrow’s problems, we desperately need to re-think what is important for schools to teach. The only preparation for the future is training children to think, respond, imagine, work together in groups, problem- solve with flexible minds, cooperative spirit and soaring imaginations. They still need to learn their times-tables, practice scales and learn the history of civilizations, but always with an eye as to how to use that knowledge to meet the present and future.

When seen in this light, suddenly quality arts education takes on a whole new meaning. It becomes so much more than a frill that makes children feel warm and fuzzy inside. It becomes the most important subject in the curriculum, especially when taught in a way that emphasizes improvisation, composition and small group work. The only way to meet constant change and variation is to cultivate a flexible mind accustomed to improvising and responding with intelligence. That’s what great Orff programs do.

In the Variability Selection Theory proposed by Richard Potts, he states that humans have thrived because of our ability to change. He suggests that the cream of the crop of the gene pool were those who had the imagination, intelligence and flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances and that is why our ancestors “became increasingly allergic to inflexibility and stupidity.” 

And that well-describes all the politicians across the country who, when met with financial crisis, respond by taking money from schools and from arts program within schools. They could decrease the Pentagon budget, put ceilings on corporate CEO salaries, or look at a hundred other parts of the culture that do nothing to prepare us for our future. But to take the money from our children who ARE the future, from the schools that should be designed to cultivate their innovative skills, from the arts programs that are the highest level of integrated thought and improvisational disciplines, is the height of stupidity.

Let’s try something new and daring here. Let’s increase the money to schools and arts programs, increase opportunities for teachers to train themselves to nurture tomorrow’s innovators. Those already knowledgeable about how to do this—for example, Orff Schulwerk teachers with a half-century of tried-and-true practices and proven successes—are waiting patiently for the opportunity to help. Let’s do it!”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I had the great pleasure of working with the 17 students at my school who are preparing a performance for the International Orff Symposium in Salzburg this summer. They had already been working with my brilliant colleagues, Sofia Lopez-Ibor and James Harding, and in a few short weeks, were ready with pieces from Vivaldi to Argentinia tangos and malambos to the Rice Krispies’ acapella theme and beyond. In two short hours, they quickly mastered complex body percussion patterns, two xylophone pieces from Ghana and the beginning of a Latin jazz piece. For every “ping” I gave them, they responded with an equally powerful and interesting “pong.” People kept poking their heads in the door to find out who was making this dynamic music. My new motto for music teachers: “Create the kinds of musicians you want to play with.” And it seems this is exactly what James, Sofia and I had done. These middle schoolers felt absolutely like our peers, not only in terms of musical skills, ideas, hearing, techniques, but also in terms of their sense of humor and enjoyment.

So Wailing Wall, indeed. The height of the joy of the above experiences makes the grief of its absence for kids around the country even deeper. But the difference with this electronic wailing wall is its potential transparency. Instead of my complaints rebounding off into stony, unresponsive silence, this has the capacity to reach further, especially if the readers see fit to pass it on. W.H. Auden famously said, “All I have is my voice to undo the folded lie” and in this case, the lie is that art is expendable, that financial troubles means punishing the children first, that we must passively accept inflexibility and stupidity (which is paramount to consent). So let’s join our voices together and see what might happen. 

Chocolate and Champagne

How many stories do we need to hear about art’s redemptive power before we as a culture sit up and take notice? How many times will we hear the statement, “They had to cut the arts program for next year” and casually accept it as if it were an act of God rather than an ignorant, short-sighted human decision that could be otherwise? When are we going to take the streets and scream, “Are you crazy?!! Taking arts away from our children?!! What are you thinking?!!!”

The other night, I went to a local high school to see an SF Alum student perform in an evening of Pacific Island music and dance. The theater was packed with kids screaming out the names of their friends on stage and adults running up during the dances and throwing dollar bills at the performers. My former student was in just about every one of some 15 pieces, beating his chest in the Maori piece, playing elaborate body percussion in the Samoan Sasa, playing drums in the Tonga piece and even twirling lit firesticks in a solo act. He had told me that if hadn’t joined the Polynesian Culture Club and been mentored by the teacher who headed this after-school activity, he most likely would have taken a wrong turn into shadowy teenage arenas. Speaking of that teacher, he summed it up succinctly: “He saved my life.” And given that for many teens, the need to belong will either be fulfilled by a music band or gang, he meant that literally.

Meanwhile, at the far side of life’s journey, I attended the Memorial Service for Deborah Friend, the woman at the Jewish Home for the Aged who used to come around the piano and request “Lullaby of Birdland.” Many people spoke with funny and poignant stories, most of which included eating chocolate and drinking champagne together and admiring her dedication to art. Her children told of her life journey from Israel to New York City to Carmel, California and finally having to accept a room in the Jewish Home when she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. When she entered, she felt it was the first step into the end. Just before she died, she told her children, “These last nine years in this home were the best years of my life.” Why? Mostly because every day she painted in the art room. She developed a sophisticated abstract style, started going to galleries to try to get shown, made cards of her paintings to send to friends. And still got to eat chocolate and drink champagne.

After the service in the synagogue, we all went off to the atrium which she had filled with her paintings for—well, strawberries, chocolate and champagne. They wheeled in the piano and I played both a slow and lively “Lullaby of Birdland” while people ate and drank, admired the paintings, tapped their feet to the music and told each other more stories. "Live fully. Leave a record. ” some poet somewhere once said and Deborah had done both.

When I gave a sip of champagne to my Mom, her eyes twinkled with delight as she exclaimed, “Ooh! It warms me all over!” Art is the chocolate and champagne of life, bringing sparkle, bubbles, flavor, energy and buzz. For some of us, it is also the bread and butter—we simply can’t imagine a day without it. How is it that we can tolerate the absence of art in the lives of children? In the workplace? In the neighborhood gatherings?

I’ve just announced my Jazz Course Level II to the teachers from the past ten years that had taken Jazz I with me. Here is a sampling of their responses:

My intention is to come, but I’ll have to wait until some important info. regarding some serious cut backs will be revealed in the next couple of months. (Oregon)

I am in a similar place to C. (above) in terms of anticipated cuts to my program. (Ohio)

The funds are currently not available for me but I’m trying to come up with a creative solution to this problem. (Toronto)

I need to set aside my budding music- teaching career and secure full-time employment in my old field to support my two girls. (California)

I'm aching to go to Jazz II this summer, but the financial situation in my district is dire and music teachers are dropping like flies. The cuts are deep in these parts. (Oregon)

The word “cuts” is revealing— like that teenage malady of self-cutting to express some unresolved anxieties and depressions, we as a culture are slashing our own arms and the blood is flowing. Go to Music 2011 on Youtube and see a little clip pleading for support in L.A., where 160 music teachers for 500 schools may be cut back to 39.

Now here’s the truth. You don’t need no stinkin’ school music program to sit down and start slapping the djembe, strumming the guitar or tickling the ivories as you fancy. Art will out! It will arise from our deep need to leave a trace, to connect with our neighbor, to express things forbidden in polite society. Deborah discovered art quite late in life and you can too.

But since I’ve spent the last 36 years trying to fold art into the culture of the school in both a bread and butter and chocolate and champagne way, it sure doesn’t hurt if a culture says out loud, “We value this. We will give time and money to it. We care about children so much that we’ll do whatever it takes to give them a way to be wholly themselves.” With or without official approval, art will live on. But I always think it better if a culture, be it in a home, school or whole country, aligns itself with human needs and delights.

Don’t you?

Be a Tourist in Your Town

There is great pleasure in being home. There are all the CD’s I’ve so meticulously collected, the books, the refrigerator filled with food of my choice, the piano awaiting my fingers. But I also can feel the pull of those endless lists— “Fix me! Replace the cartridge! Get cat food! We’re out of cumin! Choose a different font!”—the paraphernalia of busyness that calls louder at home than on the road.

Travel reduces life to simpler terms. In my earlier travels, writing and mailing an aerogram might be the event of the day. Now with wireless in the hotel rooms, Skype and I-Tunes on the computer, some of home travels with me. But still alone at the end of the day in the hotel, there is more permission to write in my journal, read a book or enjoy the Solitaire tournament. On days off from teaching abroad, I’m more likely to wander aimlessly through a neighborhood than do errands.

So being home, I can feel those old familiar pulls, the feeling of “what do I need to get done?” trumping “where should I wander today?” Once you’re in that mode, there’s no end to the little errands and busy work. The trick is to trick yourself into being a tourist in your own town. And so today’s entry is a little poem on the subject.

A Tourist in Your Town

When things are low and getting stale

You’re feeling rather down.

Walk out the door, hoist up your sail,

Be a tourist in your town!

Break out those splashy shirts,

Throw the camera ‘round your neck.

Go rent a car from Hertz

A Jaguar? What the heck!

The place you pass most every day,

Now looks like someplace new.

The cup you drink at your café

Tastes better and more true.

The things you’ve seen so oft before

Come laden with surprise.

As if you’ve opened a new door,

You see with tourists’ eyes.

The camera’s eye now frames,

What was too close to see.

Those shuttered windowpanes,

On the shop that serves herb tea.

The skateboarders careening,

Down Lombard’s curvy street.

All takes on a new meaning

When you walk with tourist feet.

The sounds of children playing,

The thunderous ocean roar.

Why, you might consider staying,

Perhaps a few days more?

So when your spirit’s flagging,

No remedies can be found.

Take my advice, put on new eyes,

Be a tourist in your town. 

Welcome Home

Now I know how Phileas Fogg felt. Though I was aware we were crossing the International Dateline, somehow I thought the hours added up such that I left on Thursday afternoon and arrived on Friday morning. That’s what I told the folks back home. Imagine my surprise when the pilot announced “Welcome to San Francisco, where the local time is 8:00 am Thursday morning.” So I was granted the rare gift of an extra day.

It was a four-movie 11-hour flight and though I barely slept, I got on the BART train out of the airport, got out at Glen Park Station and walked the half-mile with my two-winged rolling suitcases to my Mom’s residence at the Jewish Home for the Aged. I expected a shriek of delight when she saw me, but instead got a quiet smile. At 89 years old with a slowly advancing dementia, time takes on a new meaning—who knows what the five weeks apart felt like to her? But once we went to the piano and I started playing, the same smile of contentment spread across her face.

The scene that unfolded was worthy of a tearjerker movie, kind of a musical Field of Dreams—“Play it and they will come.” As I began playing, people started emerging from the various corners of the Home, some because they recognized my touch and some simply attracted by the music. First was Fran, my partner-in-crime who feeds me the songs she remembers and loves to sing—probably some 300 at least. 95 year old Ben, Holocaust-survivor and resident pianist, had fallen and broken his leg, but wheeled out to greet me. Patsy with her remarkable memory for words showed up, as did Laya, the ex-English teacher who analyzes Cole Porter lyrics from a Shakespearean point of view. Ed was reading the newspaper, but paused to drum along on the table (his mother thwarted his ambitions to be a drummer, but I gave him permission!). Before I knew it, some thirty people were gathered around singing, mouthing words, listening, frolicking through the fields of our collective dreams sung in Ellington, Gershwin, Jerome Kern songs.

During a pause between songs, Fran caught me up on the news and told me of Deborah’s passing, a visual artist who always requested the hippest tunes—Lullaby of Birdland was her favorite—and once gave me a little lullaby she had written to play. This the great sorrow of making friends with octogenarians and beyond. There will be a service on Sunday and I hope to be able to play her lullaby as a “rest in peace” gesture.

Meanwhile, Jeannie showed up on her 101’st birthday and we sang to her, as we had to Natalie five weeks earlier when she celebrated her 103^rd. And she was there as well with her infectious ear-to-ear smile as she swayed to the music. Two and a half hours later, jet lag overtook me and it was lunchtime anyway. I couldn’t think of a better way to return to my hometown.

Now I get to prepare my tax returns. Oh joy.

P.S. For those who are still wondering, Phileas Fogg is the character in Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in 80 Days who makes a bet he can circumnavigate the globe. He returns to London 81 days later, despondent that he had lost until he buys a newspaper and realizes he gained a day by crossing the International Dateline. David Niven played him in the movie.

The Black Swan of Hong Kong

My last night of my five-week travel and I boarded the ferry to Central Pier to meet a friend in “downtown Hong Kong.” Five minutes on the water, with my classes behind me and the beckoning city ahead, I already felt swept up in travel romance. The sea will do that, with its alluring invitation to adventure and possibility waiting on its distant horizon. And then there is the Hong Kong skyline, a city framed by high hills and water as are other cities of romance—Rio de Janeiro and San Francisco, for example. My childhood associations with Hong Kong, scene of exotic films and mysterious back alleys and bustling markets and Chinese boats in the harbor, added yet more color to my romantic notions.

And so I felt my heart lighten as we bounded over the waters (not that teaching these classes had made it feel heavy—but after all, work is work and travel is travel) and arrived at the pier. I followed the crowd looking for my friend, who had assured me she’d be easy to spot. And yet she wasn’t there. I walked down past some other piers and back again to mine and lingered, but no luck. So I crossed the bridge into the mall looking for a public phone and need I report that none were to be found?

With a lifetime habit of improvisation and responding to the moment, my first thought was to wander around the area and just enjoy the city. But as far as I could tell in this neighborhood, that meant going from one mall to the next. Not much romance in the same old stores selling things I couldn’t care less about, in ostentatious pristine high-rises, in the dressed-to-the-nines folks with clicking high heels beating out the tune of money, money, money. Well, it probably is consistent with the markets of old Hong Kong, but now instead of hanging ducks and chickens and mysterious herbs, it’s all high finance, clean and dry and polished.

I spotted a sign for a cinema and within the half-hour, Black Swan was on. So my last night I spent at the movies! Well, why not? Not the most fun film and I'm ready for a discussion group about what actually happened and what was imagined (any thoughts out there?). And I just can't keep pace with Hollywood's penchant for graphic violence. Did we really need to see that scene with Winona Ryder and the knife? (Especially since rumor has it that Winona Ryder went to The San Francisco School as a pre-schooler and there is a chance—still unsubstantiated—that I actually taught her for a year!). Well, as I say so often after movies that churn my stomach and leave me dispirited—"It was well-done."

So today it’s home to San Francisco. What a marvelous time it has been! Gratitude to all my course organizers, all the students, both young and old, to the pilots, bus drivers, tuk-tuk drivers, to subways, trains and boats, to my travel agent, to the books that kept me company (The Girl Who……Series, Cutting for Stone, Zeitoun, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Life Without Lawyers, A Mathematician’s Lament), to Bi Bim Bop, Okonomayaki, Dhosa, curries and of course, pizza, to the Setsubon, Pooram and Perehara Festivals, to Carl Orff, Gunild Keetman and my teacher, Avon Gillespie. Apologies for jet fuel and too many plastic water bottles, despite my best efforts to keep them to a minimum.

Will this blog continue? Yes it will, probably slowed down during my ten days in San Francisco, picking up a bit when I fly out again to Salzburg for two weeks of teaching. In her book Long Life, the poet Mary Oliver says, “That’s the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. “Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?’”

Yes, indeed, I would. I must. Because it’s not music circling around in my head, not the latest arrangement of tones and rhythms. It’s words and ideas and observations and reflections. I have loved every moment of this travel, but have equally loved the opportunity to make a comment on it and know that there might be at least one reader out there who is happy (for the moment) that I made it. Hooray for the technology that made this possible and the opportunity to keep this public journal. And now, homeward bound.

My Birthday Present

Another glorious day playing, singing and dancing with children. I know, it’s getting boring reading the same old thing, but it’s just the way it is. One 2^nd grade class learned a folk dance, broke into groups and created a new version, shared their creation, discussed what they liked and what worked and what could be better (with eloquence and clarity), learned one of the groups’ version and suddenly, it was time to go. The next class began with the story of my breakfast and ended with 15 kids with drums and bells, 15 more on Orff instruments, performing a rollicking version of “Jelly on a Plate.” (These classes are large! Generally around 30.) In another, we sang non-stop, moving from feeding cows and chickens to the intriguing adventures of Johnny and ending with his aunt who came back from various countries bearing gifts. 

Then 4^th grade came in to clap their way with a partner through chocolate and mochi before mounting four white horses for a rollicking finish to the “children’s games around the world” theme. A brief pause of lunch and back to “Mama lama kuma lama kumala bee-stay,” moving step-by-step to a thrilling jazz arrangement, half the kids playing, the other half singing and dancing with joy and abandon. For the final class of my five-weeks teaching abroad, I treated the kids and myself to “Stations,” a movement-drama game where kids in groups think up a series of words based on the letter at their station and create a moving mime picture using their bodies together (as in Tina Turner Teaching Tai Chi to Turtles). One group is the judges, circulating around and watching and then selecting their favorite at the end, at which time each group shares (verbally) their idea.  I select the music, from James Brown to Swan Lake, and half the fun is watching them respond to the music. The last selection was Tony Bennett singing “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” with the S group masterfully showing Sensuous Singers Skillfully Singing a Sad Song about San Francisco. A perfect ending! (For those interested, a more detailed description of Stations is in my book Intery Mintery: Nursery Rhymes for Body, Voice and Orff Ensemble).

My 60^th birthday is approaching way too soon for my taste, but if anyone wants to give me the gift of a lifetime, it would be to have the chance to lead a workshop for members of Congress before they convene to vote, to play Stations at the United Nations, to teach the Swedish conflict-resolution dance (Oxdansen) at a Peace Treaty Talk. Or better yet, do this work at the onset of a conflict before it heads into violence. 

And why not? Goodness knows we’ve done everything else and the same-old same-old has been an ongoing disaster. I’m not naïve enough to expect that simply singing songs together, dancing with partners, creating a piece of music in a group, is enough by itself to solve very really territorial squabbles or the accumulated hatreds and distrusts of centuries of human folly. But it sure as hell is a good start to a different kind of conversation. It’s almost impossible not to see at least a glimmer of shared humanity in someone you’re working with to create something of beauty. At the very least, it makes it more difficult to objectify them as the other, the enemy, the infidel. And it is precisely that objectification that gives and has given permission for the atrocities we heap on each other. On one level, racism, sexism, religious persecution and all the rest of those sad stories are nothing but strategies for people who hurt people to sleep peacefully at night. As long as the victim is less than fully human, one can carry on without guilt.

I asked one of the second grade groups “Why do I like children so much?” Without missing a beat, the girl next to me replied, “Because we’re playful!” Thank you, my dear. But also because you’re closer to God’s creation and thus, innocent, flexible and open to figuring out how to be on this planet together with your neighbors. Maria Montessori famously said that adults are hopeless, already set and fixed in their ways and willing to go against their best interests in the name of God, country or badly-formed philosophies or life-habits. The only worthy reform is to start with the young.

And that’s why I’m a teacher.

P.S. But I still would like to do those workshops for the Congress or U.N. Any contacts?

All of Me

Why do we work so hard at what we love, sacrifice what’s needed to follow our passion? One answer: to prepare ourselves for how we will be needed in this world. After a weekend workshop with both local teachers and ex-pats working at International Schools, I’m back with kids again and happy to be so. I’m working hard—four 90 minutes classes a day—and today in particular used just about everything I’ve worked so hard to try to master and understand. The day began with a radio interview, then folk dancing and folk songs with the younger ones, an elementary class that began with Guido di Arrezo and the origin of solfege and ended with kids playing Charlie Parker’s My Little Suede Shoes, songs, games and dances from Ghana, Zimbabwe and South Africa with middle school, the history of jazz lecture with live piano examples and select You-tube clips for high school and then an two-hour evening lecture for parents and teachers titled “Why Music Matters” that blended brain research, anthropology, videos of my SF School students playing music and talking about it, the current state of affairs in American education and key sociological trends and ended with a solo piano version of Embraceable You. To paraphrase the old jazz standard: “All of me, why not use all of me?” and these last two days did.

Meanwhile, all of this is on Discovery Bay on Lantau Island, a place that could be described as “Disneyland without the death penalty (see Singapore entry).” No cars on this part of the island, just buses that cost 50 cents, golf carts and bicycles. It is pristine clean, safe, kid-friendly, beaches looking out to the other Hong Kong islands (including a real Disneyland with nightly fireworks visible from here), hills behind the uniform high-rise apartments inviting walks on the ridges that I haven’t had time to take. Mostly an ex-pat community combined with some locals. A little like that movie Pleasantville. There are no hotels (yet) on this part of the island, so I’m staying in a room at the school itself. Tonight I’ll take the ferry into “downtown Hong Kong.”

Today is the last day of teaching on this marvelous five-week tour and some mixed feelings about returning to San Francisco with 40-degree temperatures, working on my taxes and facing the backlog of busy-work I’ve managed to avoid traveling. But of course, it will be a pleasure to re-connect with friends and family, eat some fresh vegetables, cook my own meals, get on my bike again (the difficulty of exercise a major drawback in this travel) and maybe even go to a movie. Eight days at home and then off I go again to Salzburg. Never a dull moment. Meanwhile, off to teach seven more classes with the kids.