THE GHANA CHRONICLES: Culture of Connection—6/20/23

  

Last visit to Ghana, after going to a traditional religious ceremony where women sang and danced side by side for some six hours, I asked Kofi whether people in Ghana went to therapists. He laughed heartily, understanding my meaning. Not that folks don’t have the same kind of doubts or relationship issues that a good therapist might help with, but our mutual understanding that so much of our need for therapy is our feelings of loneliness, isolation, alienation that our very way of living creates and reinforces. And then blames us for not having beautiful Pepsi moments like the people on the commercials, privatizes our pain and offers a solution by isolating us further with a single person in the therapist’s office charging lots of money with a clock running. 

Likewise, with kids in schools. We raise them with appliances, let them eat dinner alone in their rooms with the screens on, gift them with devices that addict them to “likes” on social media, that distant culture of flaming where they can say what they want without accountability or face-to-face relationship. We allow them to enter the stream of hyper-speed sensation and then diagnose them with ADD and prescribe drugs. An ungainly number of kids in schools leave classes to talk to learning specialists or counselors, more and more have personal coaches tailing them throughout the day to help them with their social dysfunction, all the while making them sit in classes that demand right answers to questions they’ve never asked and taken away arts programs that offer needed expression and connection.

 

Watching what the Nunya kids could do last night, 150% in their bodies dancing like they mean it, completely alert to the signals from the master drummer to flawlessly execute intricate choreographies, a real (not fake) joyful smile on each and every face, the contrast was both inspiring and depressing. And then before bedtime, I make the mistake of opening e-mail to some 60 e-mails, 55 of which are people trying to sell me something, scam me, get me to sign something to stop the next political catastrophe. Perhaps five at the most from a friend saying hi or trying to arrange something. Really, why do I even bother? Remember the promise that e-mail and Facebook would connect us? Have we finally figured out how it leaves us more lonely than ever? 

 

Historian Arnold Toynbee once said something to the effect that “Africa has contributed nothing of value to civilization,” citing the lack of Pyramids or Taj Mahals built by slaves by people with more than their fair share of wealth and power. Shame on him. Today we would fault the continent for not making leading advances in electronic technologies or nuclear weapons or excessive wealth and profit, all of which threaten the well-being of the planet and its people. We don’t know what we don’t know and all our ignorance about the beauty of so many cultures with music and dance and community at the center means we’re not prepared to understand what they have to teach us. Not open to the idea that living well in the first place might save us lots of time and money with our further isolating solutions to social and emotional problems that we create. That kids doing clapping plays in music class can learn to integrate their chaotic brains within the context of joyful community connection rather than doing artificial exercises alone with the counselor or learning specialist. 

 

So, Mr. Toynbee, while the world portrays this extraordinary continent as poor, I agree with Bob Marley when he says “Some people are so poor all they have is money.” Or machines, I might add. All these people writing junk mails have little inside that feels rich, little to each side that they connect with, just lonely, impoverished, miserable creatures preying on others to create some illusion of self-worth. So I raise my tiny voice to suggest that we take a look at this. That we build a culture of connection, inspired and guided by the wisdom of Africa.

I think tomorrow I’ll choose to not open e-mail and instead, get up and join the dance.

THE GHANA CHRONICLES: Music is Music—6/20/23

 

Today the formal classes began and my part is to co-teach with Aaron Bebe Sukura, a Dagara-Ghanaian who I took one lesson with in 1999! I re-connected with him in Orff Afrique in 2016, again in 2018 and such a pleasure to sit by his side again to pass on the treasures of the Northern Ghana xylophone repertoire. The xylophone from that region is called a gyil and there’s some evidence that this was the instrument (it might have been a Senegalese balaphone) that the Swedish sisters sent to Carl Orff in the 1920’s that birthed the idea of the Orff xylophone. So a beautiful full circle that Orff teachers sit down and learn some of the music from the grandparent of it all. 

 

In the past, we’ve held classes in a carport because of the shade, but it wasn’t the most aesthetically pleasing place to teach. So thanks to two students who suggested it, we moved the class to a large spreading mango tree, whose leaves provided sufficient shade. Indeed, that first time in Ghana when I traveled with my family, I asked musicians on three separate occasions if I could take a lesson with them and all three replied, “Meet me under the tree.” Both a necessity to get out of the hot sun and a lovely way to connect art and nature. 

We got off to a good start in those first two classes and then it was Market Day, so everyone scurried into town to begin their shopping— mostly fabric. Having been here before and not needing more fabric, I walked instead of bussed in and just strolled aimlessly through the bustling market. Which could have been pleasant if it weren’t for the many, many stalls selling dried sardine-like fish with a strong smell that is sheer torture for me. So I wandered for a bit holding my breath and then enjoyed the stroll back to the hotel. Having begun a daily walking routine of 5 to 7 miles a day back home that began during the pandemic, I was looking for ways to keep the body toned and trimmed. So the walk was welcome.

 

Later that night, the Nunya kids performed and were as impressive as they always are. Today (remember I’m writing this retroactively, so it’s actually July 10), I taught a group of 8 to 11 year olds at a summer camp and while I did as I always do, meeting them at whatever level they’re at and enjoying moving a few feet down the musical road, I couldn’t help but feel the yawning gap between their skills and their Ghanaian counterparts. No secret why— from the womb on, the Ghanaian children— or more specifically, the Ewe children in Dzodze (though I suspect it’s throughout not only Ghana, but the entire sub-Saharan continent)— are immersed in an adult musical culture that literally spends the equivalent of 3 to 5 hours per day drumming, singing and dancing. How could it be otherwise that the kids are extraordinary musicians? 

 

Later that evening, one of the Bay Area teachers took out his banjo and guitar and five or six of us sat around singing a wide repertoire of American folk songs. While I’m still struggling to more fully understand the extraordinary complexity of the Ewe repertoire (making some progress!) and feeling my admiration for it all increase with each new inch of understanding how complex and intricate and nuanced it all actually is far beyond just shaking your booty to the groove, it was a pleasure to sink back into more familiar territory. And a rare pleasure to harmonize with four male singers. Paul, the jovial head director of the hotel, was smiling ear to ear listening to us and later told us how much he loved the music. 

 

So while I am impressed, as many of us are, with technical virtuosity, compositional sophistication, soulful heartfelt expression, at the end of the matter, good music is good music, no matter how simple and straightforward it may be. I plead guilty to possibly over-praising the Ghanaians and holding the Americans’ feet too much to the fire and though a welcome change from the usual put-down of exquisite culture and stellar human beings by ignorant “first-world” people, at the end of the matter, people are people and music is music and whenever and wherever you can find good versions of both, enjoy it! Which I certainly did throughout this most marvelous— minus the fish— day. 

THE GHANA CHRONICLES: Welcome Home— 6/19/23

If anybody knows about my work at The San Francisco School, either through my writings or the recent Secret Song film, it’s clear that I believe all of life should be arranged like music— an enticing beginning, a connected middle, a satisfying end. When a group of any sort gathers, it follows that there should be some kind of ceremonial welcoming that sets the occasion apart from business as usual. I worked hard with my colleagues to create an opening ceremony at school that does just that and worked equally hard in considering how to begin each workshop or several-day course with that kind of enticing and welcoming beginning.

 

But no need to convince the Ghanaians. They’ve got it down and go one step further. Not only does the village Chief gather with his deputies and ministers, with the local villagers ready to drum, sing and dance for us and with us, but he invokes the Ancestors and asks their permission before we can be officially welcomed. Libations are poured and read and if the signs are auspicious— and they always have been— we go on with the ceremony. Opening words and chants and prayers and then one by one, come up to greet the Chief and receive a special beaded bracelet. And again, yet one step further, as those of African descent come up again to receive a beaded necklace and are formally “welcome home to the ancestral land.” Not a dry eye in the house during that moment. 

Then comes the music and dance and the welcoming us into the dancing circle. I had the great honor of being invited by Kofi’s 96-year old mother and did my best to keep up with her! An hour later, they’re just warming up, but we have our schedule to keep and go on to Kofi’s family home, where they’ve prepared a lunch for all 40 of us. 

The quality of welcome of all people in this culture is so far beyond our experience in the United States that we have little idea about its implications. We sit silently while a sitting President talks about “shithole countries,”  sit silently and helpless while we murder our own children in schools, mindlessly carry on the illusion that we’re the best country while the real deal of welcoming, caring for children, caretaking culture and the beauty of the human soul goes on out of our sight in a small town in the Volta Region of Ghana. 

 

Tomorrow the formal classes begin, but the most profound lessons have already been taught.

THE GHANA CHRONICLES: Meeting the Occasion— 6-18-23

By Sunday, more of the students had arrived— though still not all. That morning, it’s on the bus again for another four hours or so to our destination of Dzodze in the Volta Region to the East. In fact, the town borders Togo and yet another strange legacy of colonialism that the Ewe in Ghana and the Ewe in Togo share the same culture, yet not entirely. The Togo Ewe learn French, their Ghanaian brothers and sisters, English and both salute different flags. But they will have much more in common with each other than an Ewe in Dzodze and an Ashanti in Kumasi.

 

When we finally arrived at the White Dove Hotel, some 60 students of Nunya Academy were waiting for us, each with a  piece of paper with our name. When we found our host Nunya student, he or she helped carry our bags to our room and personally welcomed us. My host was a 14-year old boy named Elijah who played euphonium, recorder, drums (of course) and was interested in piano.

 

Once all were settled, we gathered in a large circle and the students began playing some games with us. One of them took on a significance for me far beyond a fun little game, both with its reference to “side by side,” my life’s work theme song and a new way to see goodbye in its last line. Since many of these games are learned and/or played at school, the text is often in English:

 

Choose your best friend that you say you like. (2x) (One player circles around the inside of the ring and stops at the end of the repeated line.)

Chipo, chipo.  (Both players jump twice.)

Side to side.  (Both bump hips).

Hand to hand. (Both give high 5 with right hand.)

I will see you later! (First player waves goodbye, second starts to circle around the ring.)

 

There must have been over a hundred people in that circle and it quickly became clear that the kids were playing with just one student at a time circling. At that rate, it would take over an hour for everyone to have a turn! So being a seasoned Orff-teacher-game-player, I set off around the circle to make it two people circling. Then encouraged others to jump in in the same way. Soon there were ten or more circulating around and the game was much more fun, inclusive and viable.

 

This is precisely the kind of flexible thinking I believe we all need to learn. What is needed to meet this occasion and make it more fun, more inclusive, more active, more involved? In today’s confused world, someone might think, “Hm. If I change the game, I’m assuming my white privilege. Better not to do anything.” But I can assure you that not a single kid, Ghanaian adult, course participant (hopefully) thought that way. They all could see how the game was improved for that particular occasion. 

 

Here is the first time I’ve mentioned Nunya Academy, which is both separate from and intimately connected with Orff Afrique. Rather than describe it (I will a bit later), go to the Website for more info. www.nunyaacademy.com

 

  

 

 

THE GHANA CHRONICLES: Imagining the Unimaginable: 6-17-23

From the lovely Canopy Walk to the horrific slave castles of Elmira and Cape Coast. The place where Ghanaians collaborated with Europeans to sell those captured in inter-tribal wars into bondage. These castles are where they were held until a ship was ready to take them across the Atlantic for some 400 years of bondage. So much beauty and love and connection and hope awaited us in the two weeks to follow, but first we needed to pay our dues by facing the history of what made our presence possible here and what precisely needs healing. 

 

And a heavy price it was. Compassion requires some level of imagination, an ability to step inside others shoes that you will never actually walk in, but can imagine what it might be— or might have been—like. As we entered the dungeons where the captives were held, we were asked to imagine the unimaginable. Truly, any and all aspects of the slave trade are so horrific that focusing on any single aspect—the conditions of the Middle Passage, the being sold as property on the auction block, the endless back-breaking hand-bleeding labor from sunrise to sundown, the tearing apart of families, the rape of the women, the beating of the men— it’s a long list. (Go to the Whitney Plantation outside New Orleans to get the real story of the life of an enslaved human being and feel it down to your bones). It’s easy to read about slavery in the history books and think that it was unfortunate or unfair, but to actually open your heart and try to imagine the sheer horror is something that few of us are prepared to do or certainly would choose to do. But here we were at Cape Coast Castle.

 

Our guide was pleasant and called us “Beautiful People!” while he talked of the conditions in the dungeon. Doing it every day, I imagine he has learned to distance himself from re-imagining the dread and disgust, but simply telling us the story was enough—for me, at least— to go yet deeper into one of the most vile stories of people’s capacity for inflicting suffering. And still sleep at night with some fantasy that God or gold justified it all, some extraordinary capacity to shut down their feeling so that they’re blind to their own brutality. 

 

The most striking part of this story was the fact that these men and women crammed in these dark, dank dungeons without light or much air, not for a day or two, but for months at a time, without exercise, without seeing the sun, with minimal food, is horrific enough. But here’s something no one would think about that the guide made clear. There were no toilets. They sat and slept where they shat and pissed. Take a moment to imagine that.

 

And then for those that survived, when they were finally taken through the Door of No Return and had a brief taste of fresh air and sunlight, they then were crammed into the hold of a ship for another few months passage in another torture chamber. And when they finally arrived in the New World, what awaited them? A lifetime of backbreaking labor, beatings, more brutality. We complain if we don’t get enough exercise for a day or it’s  foggy for two days straight and we don’t see the sun or if we go into a smelly public toilet. Can we picture what these fellow human beings endured? 

More importantly, do we understand the stories of white supremacy and a vengeful, narrow-minded God and a unquenchable lust for gold and riches that lay at the bottom of it all? That fed the worst parts of our flawed humanity and continue to do so today? Do we ever stop to consider that the unspeakable suffering of tens of millions of human beings mostly happened so we can drink coffee, put sugar in it and have a smoke afterwards?

 

The guide was clear that while the Europeans created these conditions, his Ghanaian ancestors were complicit. That from King Leopold to Genghis Khan to Idi Amin to Saddam Hussein and beyond, that this is a universal human problem. And each culture needs to face its shadow and shut down the stories that allow atrocity to continue. 

 

The tour ended with a story of creating the Door of Return as part of a healing movement welcoming displaced Africans and indeed, all people coming with an open heart, back to their homeland. A good reminder to us all. 

THE GHANA CHRONICLES: The Swinging Bridges— 6-17-23

As mentioned last post, I hope to write about the last three weeks retroactively. I considered writing it all as one long piece in the correct chronological order, but it’s simply too much. So instead I’ll post the first days first, maybe three or four days posted each day, in the order they occurred. I’ll include dates to clarify. Hope that makes sense!

 

From San Francisco to Istanbul to Accra is a long distance. “Miawoezo” the Ewe song running through my head, a welcome song that says, “Thank you for the trouble you’ve taken to come here.” All the planning, the money, the paperwork to get a Ghana Visa, the shots, arranging the flights, flying the flights— why go through all that trouble? Having done it for the Orff Afrique courses in 2014/16/18, I knew exactly why all that trouble is more than worth the effort.  

 

So arriving on the evening of Friday, June 16^th, the grand pleasure of hugging Dr. Kofi Gbolonyo, Course Director and one of the most remarkable human beings I know, after a five-year absence, was already enough. Equally nice to reunite with the course participants, over half of whom I’ve worked with before, as well as meeting new people. After dinner, Kofi announced the bus to Cape Coast, a pre-course excursion, would leave at 5am in the morning. Not an appealing invitation for this sleep-deprived body! But when my jet-lagged self awoke naturally at 4:15am, I figured I might was well go. 

 

So after those 18 plus hours of flying, I got on the bus for another 5 hour trip. We arrived at Kakum National Park late morning and set off for the Canopy Walk, a stroll over 7 swinging bridges above the rainforest. Alongside the excitement of braving the walk suspended high above the forest floor was the metaphor of crossing a delicate, but sturdy swinging bridge from the known to the unknown, from one culture to another. A mild kind of initiation ceremony as we made the effort to take the risk of leaving behind what we think and how we are and who we are to consider what new thoughts we might think and what new ways we might be and what new people we might become when we cross with an open mind and heart, alert attention, small sense of daring in company with others willing and able to cross over with us. It made for a fun and promising beginning. 

Home Again, Home Again

                        

The unexamined life is not worth living.— Socrates

 

Home again, home again, jiggety jig.— Mother Goose

 

I’m home. Back to waking up to the dancing fog-swirled mayten leaves out the front window. My father’s violin hung on the wall, the open piano beckoning me after three weeks away. My old computer with the external keyboard waiting for my writer self to name the day, to return to the discipline of private reflection made public. Three weeks without a single blog and my heart kept beating and the world’s pulse didn’t skip a beat. But I did miss it. This indelible part of me that is just one part of me, but a needed one. 

 

Amidst the long list of things awaiting my return, from the small— get a haircut, buy new toothpaste— to the medium— plan the kids’ classes I’ll begin teaching tomorrow, the Jazz Course the week after— to the large— buy a computer, write the next book—is the thought of writing this Blog in reverse to try to capture the two weeks in Ghana and the week-long Family Reunion in the Rocky Mountains. Not the same when things aren’t fresh, but I think worth the effort. 

 

So dear Reader, just a short entry here to welcome myself back home and to greet you again and to renew a celebration of this life far beyond the @#$%@#$!!!!!of my last entry that tainted the tone of my hope in these writings with my battle with a culture that has the power to throw me to the ground. In the cab from the airport, I could already feel my muscles tightening as almost every billboard was about AI and I dreaded seeing the first driverless car— which miraculously, I didn’t. I have to figure out how to survive that assault, but I don’t want that to dominate these pages. 

 

Now my zazen cushion awaits, my oatmeal breakfast, my happily-anticipated Trader Joe’s shopping, back to the small and big things in the life I’ve created, that sense of control after releasing myself to the world of travel. I’m happy for it all.