As Without, So Within

“Heaven is not a place we go to. It’s a place we recognize.” So said Martin Prechtel in a talk and I know exactly what he means. After a joyful day with enthusiastic, dynamic and smiling musicians accompanying me on their virgin voyage to Orfflandia, I went with my hosts to the Ipanema beach, where a group called Companhia Folclorica do Rio played drums and sang for a dancing circle at the water’s edge. Over two hours of the varied Afro-Brazilian songs and dances—Jongo, Sambe do Roda, Ciranda, Maracatú and more with people of all sizes, shapes, skin colors and ages singing along and dancing in circles and in the middle of circles. Everyone seemed to know the words and the steps and such joy in it all! The presence of the Ancestors from all the free Africans across the water and enslaved Africans was palpable, those remarkable folks who kept their spirit alive with dancing circles everywhere.

Some of the steps and quality of the games and rhythms were so parallel with all we had just done in my workshop and no wonder the participants were so enthusiastic. I had this same experience many years back in Recife in the north of Brazil— people still living in a vibrant musical culture from the street or town or neighborhood or home recognizing the same spirit in this Orff class in a school. Often there is a large disconnect— the natural, organic, soaking it all in through the whole body and brain manner of the living culture checked at the door of the school, where kids or university students go through the disconnected, dry, sequential paces of isolated, dull exercise and practice alone in cubicles of the European system. I’ve long felt that Orff Schulwerk properly practiced and understood is the marriage of the intuitive music as a home language approach with a scientific pedagogy designed to sequentially elevate musical skill and understanding. Orff training in Brazil, Bali, Bulgaria or Botswana has the potential of connecting the dots of a still living musical culture outside the school gates with a thought-out pedagogical music education within them.

One of the highlights of last night was the four little kids watching the adults and then going in the center themselves with such encouragement and smiles from everyone. My kind of music education! And there was more to help me recognize the Heaven of Rio. (Though with machine-gunned soldiers on the streets, there’s a Hell here as well). The playful flirting between men and women acted out in the steps of the dance, the strutting one’s stuff and circling hips and fully embracing one’s sexiness (all ages!) in a healthy sexuality so different from the sad pornographic pole dancers. The backdrop of the crashing waves and twinkling lights of the distant hills and cool night breeze and swaying palm trees. Honolulu, San Diego and Miami may have similar urban beachfronts, but hard to come by such postcard-perfect scenes with such beautiful community music and dance to complete it all.

That’s a heaven I recognize. No need to promise me anything else.

Where Am I?

All signs point to me being in Rio de Janeiro, a city I’ve dreamed of visiting ever since I first saw the movie Black Orpheus in college. I did actually visit several years back with my wife and younger daughter, but I only had two days before I had to teach in Sao Paolo and there was an uncharacteristic fog that obscured the telltale sights of Sugarloaf and Corcovado. I did get to eat in the “Girl from Ipanema” café and walk along Copacabana Beach back then, but it all felt like a practice visit.

Now I’m here again and yesterday I played tourist and did get up Sugarloaf to enjoy the spectacular view. One marquee marked the temperature at 42 Celsius, which translates to around 108 degrees Fahrenheit by my math. Which it probably was in the direct sunlight. A blessed afternoon nap and then out to a shopping mall to hear the sax player I jammed with yesterday play with a guitarist (alas! no piano available) in a wine bar at a shopping mall. Then back to the apartment to sit with my host’s nephew and watch the TV series “Breaking Bad”—filmed in Arizona, streamed on Netflix, with Portuguese subtitles. Then to my bed with my book that takes place in Washington DC and the Brazilian Amazon. Where exactly am I again?

This morning, knocked my e-mails down like obedient toy soldiers all the way to zero, wrote a bit more on my emerging book, went down to the subway to downtown to check out my room in the Conservatory where I’ll be teaching. Lunched at a vegetarian restaurant and hopped on a bus zooming along the coast with its green strips along the road with palm trees. Suddenly, I’m five years old again on my first vacation with beaches and palm trees in Miami, the first sense that there was more to the world than the few mile radius I had known in Roselle, New Jersey. Now there is thunder out the window as I sit and write and it could be summertime in Michigan.

How many worlds we carry with us! In any one moment, we can enter a multitude of universes through books, through recorded music, through day dreaming, through thinking or writing or singing or playing an instrument. Wi fi everywhere ups the ante, as does Skype and Netflix and Pandora. Be anywhere anytime in a quick click. That’s the world— or rather worlds— we inhabit and it’s at once glorious and maddening. By being everywhere, it makes it hard to be wholly anywhere.

But I’m about to re-enter my own portable temple that I carry in my hands, feet, voice and mind, the Orff workshop with a group of new folks in a circle. It’s the same wherever I am and yet also distinct. Three days of that and then a promise to myself to shut off the damn computer and get myself out to Copacabana Beach and up to Corcovado and maybe to a samba school or candomble service or choro concert. To be here. Now. To make Baba Ram Dass proud. Let’s hope.

Simple Gifts

Mostly I stay in hotels when I do this music teaching traveling. Places with forced air, windows that don’t open, big TV’s and small reading lights, excessive pillows, doormen who open doors and the like. It’s okay and certainly comfortable.

But here in Rio, I came to my host’s mother’s apartment in a real neighborhood. Had a home-cooked meal with three generations of folks in a lively family atmosphere, played piano with a fine jazz saxophonist with the neighbor’s clapping at the end of each song— because the walls on two sides were not walls at all, but completely open to the air! Tumbled into bed in a simple room with another window open to the warm night air, a small fan on the desk and a great reading light.

How I love it! Maybe because it reminds me of hot summer nights of my childhood when there were less machines dominating the landscape and more appreciation of the soothing breeze, the moon out the window, the chatter and laughter of a house full of people. Or a needed touching base with my travel of former times to Guatemala, India, Bali, Ghana, that feeling of being thrown into a living culture with folks living close to the earth and spending their time doing something other than shopping in malls and going from one Starbucks to another. It helps me get out of my own skin, stop brooding so much and open myself to the world that awaits me. It reminds me of that childlike sense of waking in the arms of morning birds and swaying branches and dancing leaves and feeling like I belong to it all.

A whole day free before teaching and a chance to be a tourist in a city I’ve dreamed of ever since I saw the movie Black Orpheus, a city I visited for a strange two days years back when a mysterious fog enveloped everything, some roads were closed and I never got up to Corcovado (though ate in the café where “The Girl From Ipanema” was written). But today skies are blue, the day is warming up to its probable goal of 95 degrees and my hosts are ready to show me their beautiful city.

Simple gifts gratefully received. 

Enjoy to the Maximum

It has been another filled-to-the-brim two days at The Grange School in Santiago, Chile.

How I love it! Always wonderful to work with children, anytime, anywhere, with the added perk of teachers observing to consider new or forgotten ways of teaching. The number one comment that surfaces time and time again is how relaxed I am with the kids, how much I enjoy them and enjoy playing with them, how much space I give them to figure things out without jumping in so quickly. And as a result, how thoroughly engaged they are, how well-behaved without any threats of sticks nor promised rewards of carrots. And how much they can accomplish in a short time as we move step-by-step from one thing to another that grows to a final performance in a mere 45 minutes.

As always, my optimism about the world was not only affirmed by the reaction of the children, but by the insightful comments of the observing teachers. We had a stirring discussion about assessment and not a single teacher was advocating that we judge, sort, label and pit children against each other in the old tired competitive game of winners and losers. There were strategies about how to do minimal harm with the mandate of grading and head-shaking as to how weird it is to brainstorm how to do less harm to children in schools instead of gather our intelligences to consider how to do more good and give more help and aim for more healing.

After one of my model classes as to precisely how to do that— my Boom Chick a Boom shtick, one girl took my breath away with her comment. In this class, 10 kids are seated at instruments in a circle and 10 more placed in-between each instrument studying what to play. At a cue in the music, everyone moves over one slot and the song resumes, the observers now players and the players observers of the next part of the music. Not only does everyone get to be inside the music from a different vantage point, but the music itself is swingin’ and the kids are so thrilled to be playing in a jazz style. At the end of this 6^th grade class, I asked who received help and who gave help. For often when we switch, a child might note that the new person playing the part they just played is having trouble. And because we humans are made to help each other, the kids do just that. Unless we create a situation where that inherent motivation is short-circuited— like announcing that we will grade everyone and put them in competition with each other. As we so sadly do.

I asked one girl why she helped another girl and without missing a beat, she replied:

“So that she could enjoy to the maximum the feeling of achievement when you play something that sounds good.”

Nothing further need be said.

Traveling Tremors

When I was in Taipei, there was an earthquake strong enough to move me in my bed. Back in San Francisco, another earthquake, but I didn’t feel this one. And now here in Chile, where a 6.7 earthquake just hit in the north. What’s going on here? Am I so powerful that I’m shaking the earth with my radical ideas and dynamic music teaching? Ha ha!

Another glorious day teaching children, this time in The Grange School in Santiago. Big classes, 24 or so in a bunch, but all happy enough to be actively engaged every second of the 40 minutes. I did the little game Choco-la-te with 2^nd graders, the rhyme I learned here in Chile visiting my daughter some 9 years ago, and it felt fun to bring it full cycle. Most said they knew it, but of course, not the way that I do it. New ways to extend the game shook up their thought process as they transferred the rhythms to surdo drums, djembes and woodblocks.

An interesting short sharing with a talented 15-year old pianist who played an impressive Chopin and Mozart piece. I asked him to try Minuet in G by Bach. He couldn’t quite recall it, but was searching around for the right notes and knew it well enough to know when he missed them. When he more or less had it, I asked him to embellish the melody. To play it in minor. To transpose to another key. He was game, but none of it was easy. “I’m just used to reading notes,” he admitted and I said, “That’s all well and good, but open the windows a little and let your ear our for exercise.” He seemed intrigued. A minor tremor in the solid ground of his musical upbringing.

Then a talk to much of the faculty, about 60 teachers, the TED talk I wanted to give with some time for them to do some music so I could convince them they’re more musical than they think. Their confidence clearly rose, but then dipped again when I showed the video of our Middle School kids in Salzburg. Kind of like “I was feeling musical, but I’m not nearly at that level!!” Another re-arrangement of assumptions about what it means to be musical and what all kids might experience if they went through music training like the kids at the SF School.

So I guess traveling tremors is an appropriate metaphor for this work. Not so much to cause major damage or death, but just enough to keep us a bit more alert and open to questioning what we had taken for granted as a firm foundation.