Jazz and Justice

Lovely workshop yesterday with a jazz and justice theme and finally ready to tie it all together to Bryan Stevenson’s recent talk. I’ve been doing this Jazz History class with 8^th grade for some 20 years and feeling ready to take it more public— maybe a book or five-day course just on this theme? I like the framework Mr. Stevenson provided, four things that can actually move the needed change along. Both because of the jazz theme and because it’s such a huge presence in American culture, I’ll confine myself to the black-white dynamic. But this applies to all distinctions of “other”— class, gender, sexual orientation, Native Americans/Asians/ Latinos/ etc. etc and again etc. Here we go:

Proximity: People get weird ideas about each other when they don’t hang out together.

Things are invariably healthier when black and white folks work together, play basketball together, make music together, socialize together. How often do you hear people say of a black friend, “Well, he’s not black, he’s John.”? Because while no one is color-blind, once you break through to the human person-to-person connection, race drops way to the back.

Though alone not enough, one path to proximity is to hang-out with black folks in the imaginative world—in this case, listen to their music and get to know them through the beauty they’ve created. When I had the amazing fortune to stand in Art Tatum’s house in Toledo, invited in by his 85-year old sister, another man came in a bit later and she introduced me saying, “This is Doug. He’s a friend of Art’s.” And because I admired and loved and listened to his music, I think she got that right.

Narrative: The fact that slave-owners were in daily close proximity with black people is proof that proximity is not enough. Likewise, schools where black and white kids are in the same class can be places where both groups sit separately—by choice— in the cafeteria and proximity can breed more division, distrust and hatred. The narrative that needs to change is the one that the slave-owners concocted so they could sleep at night— Africans stolen for work are less than fully human and we are doing them a favor by giving them food, shelter, work to do and a proper God to worship. They got priests and ministers to support the story with far-fetched interpretations from the Bible, got the scientists to concoct the theory of racial inferiority, got the teachers to teach children how to hate and supported it all with propaganda about the “happy darky” portrayed in minstrel shows, in songs, in books.

The history of jazz parallels the mainstream culture’s privilege of defining the other, now perpetuated in movies and later television—blackface acceptable up through the 30’s, the servant and porter portrayal of the 40’s and 50’s, the angry blacks and gangsters of the 60’s and 70’s and so on and so on. The story that white people fed—and feed—white people about who they think black people are is still breeding ignorance, distrust, fear and hatred in the minds of innocent children and ignorant adults eager to have someone to look down on to boost their own sense of identity.

By introducing children to the extraordinary accomplishments of jazz musicians, telling their stories, soaking them in the music that they (the children) play so joyfully and grow to love so deeply, I’m hoping to do my part in helping to change that narrative. So we start with Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Art Tatum and get as far as we can in a mere one class per week over 6 months. And in other parts of the school, the narrative-changing study goes on. How could anyone with half a brain cell accept the purposeful distortion of racial inferiority in the face of Martin Luther King, Steph Curry, John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Will Smith, Stevie Wonder, the Nicholas Brothers and thousands of other extraordinary people whose skin happens to be darker than others?

Discomfort: This Herculean effort to turn around the narrative that still shapes race relations to this day is not comfortable. How easy it would be for me to just make children happy dancing to Count Basie’s joyful music, wrapping them in the loving arms of Sarah Vaughan, gifting them with the artful combination of notes from Thelonious Monk. It’s not comfortable showing them the video clip of Al Jolson in blackface singing “Mammy” and see their faces so confused and disturbed. It’s wearisome to keep asking “Why was Elvis on Ed Sullivan and not Big Mamma Thornton? Why was Benny Goodman called 'the King of Swing'” Why did Dave Brubeck get on Time magazine’s cover before Duke Ellington?“ and always the same tired answer: “White privilege. White privilege. White privilege.” I worry that I’m inducing too much shame and guilt for the white kids or too much embarrassment for the black kids. And who am I as a white teacher talking on behalf of black culture? It’s not comfortable. But I forge ahead thinking that it’s a necessary part of narrative-changing and hope that the whole effort is redeemed by Mr. Stevenson’s fourth pre-requisite for change.

Hope: None of this will work if not fueled by a boundless faith in the ultimate goodness of human beings. Altruism and compassion is our default system, gone haywire by too much interference from self-serving systems and institutions interested only in their own profits and privilege and dragging everyone else down in the muck of our lower natures. In the jazz study, that hope is trumpeted out in two ways: First, the extraordinary resilience and perseverance of artists struggling to express the depth of their feelings through music in spire of all the obstacles in their way. Sleeping in fields or trains when the hotels refused them admission, dealing with white managers making money off of them, seeing white folks copying their music and getting more fame and fortune. And yet in spite of it all, people around the world know about Louis, Billie, Bird, Miles, Monk. From physical rags to spiritual riches is the version of the American dream their story tells.

And finally, the music itself. We can’t step around discomfort, shame, guilt, pity, sorrow, grief, sadness, but neither should we end the story there. Like little Sally Walker in the children’s game who sits down in her saucer of grief “cryin’ and a’weepin’ for all she has done,” we need to “rise, Sally, rise, wipe your cryin’ eyes, turn to the East, turn to the West, turn to the very one that you like best.” And whether it’s Esperanza Spalding or Wynton Marsalis or Ornette Coleman or Fats Waller, the one you like best is waiting for you with such joyful, powerful, tender and exuberant music. It will lift you up and fortify and give you the strength and courage to keep on, not only with your own personal struggles, trials and tribulations, but with our shared collective mandate to create a culture worthy of our humanity. Do I hear an Amen?!

Haunted

Last night I took part in a spirited and honest discussion with nine white men about white privilege. We had the luxury to quibble semantically about whether “privilege” was too accusing a word and wonder what we were expected to do about it. Well, in a nutshell, that’s white privilege. The luxury to choose whether to think about it or talk about it or act on it. Groups of people that are marginalized in mainstream culture— blacks, Native Americans, women, gay people and more— don’t have that luxury. We could agree about that philosophically, but were left with “What to do?”

I wrote earlier about Truth and Reconciliation, about public apology and will write soon about Bryan Stevenson’s four suggestions for changing what so desperately needs to be changed and has needed to be changed for so long. But I I left last night thinking about grief and ghosts. I think it’s an important piece of the puzzle.

There is so much undigested grief in this culture. Funerals are fast, quick and efficient, with a couple of cute stories about the deceased person’s favorite cocktail. When people tear up at a wedding or funeral, they often find themselves apologizing for emotion. The day after 9-11, Bush urged people to go shopping.

The prevailing wisdom amongst mature cultures is that grief is a serious business—and that’s why funerals in some places can take up to three days or Jews sit Shiva for seven or West Africans hire professional mourners in case there aren’t enough tears for the occasion. As Martin Prechtel points out, the tears of the people left after death are the oars that row the deceased across the ocean of death to the beach of stars and the ancestors eagerly awaiting. Without sufficient grief, we create ghosts who linger and haunt us because they can’t get across and complete their journey.

When I visited my one and only slave plantation in Louisiana, the tour was all about the ghost story of a slave murdered by her master (who also slept with her) and came back to haunt him. My friend who was with me afterwards commented on that story as a screen to hide the real ghosts of every single slave who ever worked that plantation. It had been turned into a titillating bit of tourist fluff to avoid looking at the real horror.

The lack of Truth and Reconciliation continues to screen that horror we’ve inherited. The missing government apology is the political side and important. But equally important, and perhaps more so, is the spiritual side of going down deeply into that grief and feeling the full pain, not only of the slaves from hundreds of years ago, but for the family of Michael Brown last year.

In my jazz course each year, there comes a moment where the grief enters the room and we all feel it and sit with it a bit. It’s heavy and uncomfortable and real tears flow and we don’t apologize for breaking down. But blame, shame, guilt are not the end of the matter— a little of all is necessary, I believe, but does not bring the healing we need. At the other end is hope and redemption. And so this is the moment when we sing this song and dance it out and lift ourselves up having paid our dues to go down into grief.

Little Sally Walker, sitting in a saucer.

Crying and a-weeping over all she has done.

Rise, Sally, rise. Wipe those cryin’ eyes.

Turn to the East, Sally. Turn to the West, Sally.

Turn to the very one that you love the best.

It was good that we had a difficult discussion yesterday. But for me personally, amidst the defensiveness and sense that we couldn’t solve it and acknowledgment of complexity, I felt something important missing and I think this was it —grief. A sense of shared grief over what’s gone down and what’s going down and the courage to feel it and sit with it and not try to solve it. Of course, feelings can never be mandated, it perhaps wasn’t the right moment in this particular discussion for such sorrow to arise.

But I missed it. I felt the ghosts hovering in that room, waiting for us to help them. I felt the presence of the ancestors saying to us all: “There is more work for you to do here.” And I think they’re right.

Peanut Table Discussion

Yesterday, my wife Karen, daughter Talia and I were video interviewed as part of our school’s 50^th Anniversary. With 42 and 41 years between my wife and I, my daughter’s 11 years as a student and 5 years as a teacher at the school, we have lots of stories to tell! In talking about the “good ole days,” Karen talked about how we made our own furniture and fixed broken things and went to second-hand and scrap stores to scrounge material.

Our weekly elementary school meeting used to take place around a peanut-shaped low table that someone made, us all sitting on the floor with cushions and discussing whatever needed attention with the kids, our classes, the school as a whole. With just eight to ten of us, conversation was informal, fun, spirited, inefficient, maddening, sometimes difficult and all of the above. But what felt wonderful was that we were the beginning, middle and end of decision-making, with input from parents and constant feedback (not always verbal) from the kids. We were making it all up as we went along, learned to trust our instincts, picked ourselves up when we fell down and moved on to the next thing when we got it right.

There are two models of institutions: one is built on relationships and the other on systems.

The relationship model is more family style, leans to informal conversations around the peanut table, invites full investment in all aspects of the community, from the color of the soon-to-be-painted bathroom walls to purchasing the new copy machine to organizing the all-school clean-up. The systems model leans towards elaborate charts of the decision-making process, committees, clearly-defined hierarchy of power and authority, papers to be filled out requesting a special class in the multi-purpose room. The first aims for depth of discussion, the second often values efficiency (which it rarely achieves).

You can feel me leaning in to the relationships model, but both have their up and down sides. Systems become more and more necessary when a community reaches a certain critical size and when done well, can help create an equity that is sometimes murky when relationships rule. And also free a teacher (for example) to focus more on a brilliantly conceived and executed lesson than the color of the bathroom walls. Or allow staff meetings to talk more about kids than go over budgets. A simple system, with room for flexible thinking and relationship models within it, can be a good thing. So in talking about the “good old days,” I have to be careful about false nostalgia.

But the central quality of those early times, when all was dreaming, creation, construction, was the sense that we (the teachers and two administrators) were the architects of our own vision. We were not merely inheriting someone else’s script and programmed dream, but actively shaping our own. And not only the architects, but also the carpenters, the electricians, the plumbers. We pounded one nail at a time to build the furniture of our dream school, connected the wires of our brightly-lit ideas, flushed out the things that didn’t work and plunged away when we got stuck. We were also the gardeners, digging into the moist soil, sowing seeds in faith of future blooming, watering, weeding. And the cooks, sitting down together with the kids partaking of the marvelous fruits of our efforts.

We were a family, both in terms of the warmth of intimacy and time hanging out and also the squabbles, upsets, constantly shifting dynamics. Systems aim for dry, clean and efficient, but relationships are perpetually messy and murky, go further to the edges of the spectrum of emotion, more life, more color. And that’s what kept so many of us teachers coming back year after year— a long list of 20/ 30 and even 40 year veterans.

None of this is wholly in the past tense. The San Francisco School is still a place of great warmth, vitality and color. But like all similar schools in today’s climates, the systematic thinking has come in and tried to take root and not always happily so. Everything is up for negotiation and re-negotiation. My only hope?

That the process take place sitting around the peanut table.

Think and Poop

Today I unleashed some spectacularly expressive movement from the 2^nd graders simply by having them make each letter of their name with their whole bodies. They spelled it on three different planes (flat on the floor, sitting, standing), moved the shape around the room (jumping, galloping, swinging), created a legato dance in slow motion moving smoothly from one letter to the next while I played Bach on the piano. Lovely!

I then grouped them in three’s and had them spell a word in a group shape and move the quality of the word. Things like “hop,” “cat,” “car.” Each group performed with the others guessing. Great fun and interesting way to evoke new shapes and movements.

Finally, they made groups of 4 or 5 kids and predictably, divided up into boys and girls. They had to think of their own word (keeping it a secret from me and the other group), practice and then perform. Their word choices?

The girls chose “T H I N K” and did a cute gesture of pointing to their head and changing their expression when it came time to move. The boys lined up and did a fabulous up and down motion, each at a different time. It looked great. And the word? P O O P

Well, there you have it. The boys and girls literally at opposite ends of the spectrum. But hey, we need to do both and aesthetically, the results were about equal.

Have I mentioned that I love my job?

The Lambs and Lions of March

March 1^st in the old Roman calendar used to be the beginning of the year. When Julius Caesar reformed the calendar and gave that honor to the god Janus and January, finally gave a name to the previously nameless February, when all lay fallow and nothing much was happening, March moved to 3^rd place, but retained its character as Mars, the god of War. After the winter, March was the time to resume military campaigns.

But that was a few thousand years ago, when war still wreaked havoc and caused needless death and suffering, but the scale was so small and the stakes so low compared to today. I wouldn’t mind renaming March as Paz, but since that ain’t gonna happen, a little ju-jitsu flip can turn the energy of war toward fighting for justice and vanquishing the enemies within us—Ignorance, Greed, Hate and so on.

“March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb” was the saying from my childhood. Or was it “comes in like a lamb and out like a lion?” Hmm. I think it was both. If it came in one way, it would go out the other. And note—the lion did not lie down with the lamb. That version of The Peacable Kingdom makes for a sweet children’s story, but lions and lambs both need to eat. The vegetarian lamb seems peaceful and the ferocious carnivore lion seems warlike, but both are simply acting according to their need and nature. The warmongers amongst us are not lions, because lions don’t kill their own. And I speak from personal experience, as a pacifist July 28^th Leo.

And so March. St. Patrick’s Day awaits and sometimes Easter, Passover or Spring Break. The cherry trees in Golden Gate Park are preparing their bloom, the tulips and daffodils already poking their heads up. I have two more weeks before I’m off and traveling again, this time an Asian Orff tour to Tokyo, Singapore, Bangkok and Manila. But first, classes with the kids, a few local workshops, singing at the Jewish Home, long bike rides, cooking in my own kitchen, playing my own piano and other pleasures of the home life.

Happy March, everyone!