The Best Job

 

For this, I get paid. 

Pokemon Blessing

I just had the supreme pleasure of going out to dinner with Orff colleagues Kalms and Manchi. Besides the great pleasure of again seeing these two lovely, lovely people who took Level III with me in 2014 and 2015 respectively (and who I’ve crossed paths with also in Hong Kong in the pre-pandemic years to follow), we discovered an absolutely charming neighborhood with beautiful architecture, alluring winding streets, attractive churches and temples and enticing restaurants ranging from Portuguese to Thai to Korean to Chinese. 

 

We chose the Thai and in the midst of the effortless flow of conversation punctuated with genuine belly laughter, I told the story of the boy who gave me the Pokemon card. They asked to see it and were concerned that he had sloughed off a low-level card to me. But a quick text to their children revealed that he actually gave me a rare, expensive and powerful card having to do with a special energy blend. Of course, I know nothing about Pokemon, but they were duly impressed and it made me yet more grateful to him. If Harvard offered an Honorary Doctorate in exchange for the card, I believe I would refuse them. 

 

 

Harvard's Great Failure

It’s not looking like I’ll ever get that Honorary Doctorate from Harvard (or any college), but I have something much more meaningful— a Pokeman card a 3^rd grader in Macau gave to me. It  was his way of telling me— “I loved the 30 minutes I spent in your class. So much so that I’m gifting you with the most precious possession I happen to have with me at the moment.”

 

I recently wrote a Facebook post praising the joy of teaching in Taiwan and ended with “On to Macau where more glories await!” I was not wrong. 12 classes with kids from 3-years-old to Grade 7 and each one worthy of wrapping up and preserving as the best I have to offer. So many direct and subtle nods and smiles from kids telling me in their way, “You nailed it!” The delightful comments— like the girl who asked me how old I was and when I told her the truth, said, “Wow! How do you have so much energy?!” The 5-year-olds in hog-heaven in my paper-plates class, havingas much fun as hogs rolling in mud. The girl who held back much of one class and then volunteered to try to play the melody on the xylophone in front of the whole class—and she did! Another little girl who ran up to me and gleefully exclaimed, “I love you because I love ducks! (dougs).” The young boy whose Secret Song was a John Cage glissando polyphony. And of course, the boy who gave me the Pokemon card. 

 

As if this wasn’t enough, another delicious two hours with 40 kindergarten teachers who sang well and played children’s games with gusto. One more workshop tomorrow with Hong Kong/ Macau music teachers and then back to retirement. Luckily, not for long before the next round begins. 

 

Meanwhile, I believe I will frame this Pokemon card and too bad, Harvard, you missed your opportunity!

 

Cultural Exchange

In my recent two-day workshop with Taiwan Orff teachers, I went down a few edgy paths. Because I worked with a translator and actual discussion would have been difficult and time-consuming, it was mostly me putting these thoughts out there. But when giving a brief history of Dalcroze, Orff and Kodaly, the three most known alternative music education approaches, I noted that all three came from a European culture (Switzerland, Germany, Hungary). Why should they be considered in Taiwan? Or China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, the Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Macau? All places in Asia where I’ve given workshops. Three points:

 

1)    All three educators above borrowed either consciously or sub-consciously from musical practices of other cultures. Both Dalcroze and Orff understood that music and dance are often inseparable in most places and that musicians should be able to dance and dancers should be able to play or at least sing the music. Kodaly’s use of solfege to teach singing has been in existence in a different form for millennia in India, as has Orff’s idea of teaching rhythm through speech. Orff’s use of xylophones and metallophones was directly inspired by the West African balaphone and the Indonesian gamelan and the percussion instruments used in typical Orff classes come from all over the world, including from various Asian musical cultures. 

 

2)    Virtually all of the teachers who have come to Taiwan are from Europe (mostly the Orff Institut) or the U.S.. Because of the history of European colonialism, there is a danger of imposing European/ American ideas and material. In my own case, I always share materials that have a certain cultural neutrality—body percussion or improvising with the first sound of your name or composing your own “secret song” on the xylophones. I share games from diverse cultures—Chile, Japan, Ghana, Turkey, the U.S. and beyond— and then ask them to find similar games from their own culture. Likewise, the pieces for Orff Ensemble might come for Finland, the Philippines, Bali, Thailand, the U.S. In all cases above, the accent is on the pedagogy of ways to teach them that are intriguing and musical and ways to extend them and try something new with them. 

 

Especially with children in schools. Schools as they exist throughout the world are mostly a European invention, spread to every other continent through colonialism. Likewise, alternative ideas of how to make schools happier and more effective for children also have come, both in music and other subjects, from Europeans like Pestalozzi, Froebel, Montessori, Steiner, Dalcroze, Orff, Kodaly and a few North and South Americans like John Dewey and Paolo Freire. All of the above share humanistic qualities opposing the imperialist mentality and thus, are worthy of consideration in schools worldwide. 

 

3)    We all have something to learn from each other. The next chapter in the spread of Orff Schulwerk is to have Taiwanese, Korean, Ghanaian, South African, Iranian Orff teachers travel to countries worldwide to share both the universal qualities of this work and their particular cultural interpretations. That begins with years and years of trying these ideas out with children and digging deep into the folk repertoire—rhymes, poems, children’s games, folk songs, dances, folk tales—and discovering what comes up. With their authentic voices sharing the material from their own culture while also including material and ideas from other cultures. 

 

These are just starting thoughts here at 6:30 in the morning, before going off to teach kids in Macau and considering the same questions as to what I’ll actually do with them. Just food for thought. 

The Connected Middle

The above title is in-between the “enticing beginning” and “satisfying ending” that describes a piece of music, a well-wrought novel, a class well-taught and/or a life well lived. It’s the part of the music or the story or a life where the themes are bubbling merrily along, intertwining, singing back and forth to each other, occasionally dancing together. It’s that state of “flow,” of being “in the zone.”

 

On paper, the idea of teaching kids for five days in a row, adults on the 5^th night and then the 6^th day, one day of rest, then five more days with the kids culminating in a big performance, drive across town that night and wake up the next morning to a new group of 41 teachers to teach all day Saturday and Sunday— well, it seemed like I was pushing the limits of being carried by my love and passion for this work. Especially when preceded by five full days of teaching in Australia.

 

And not done yet! Now in the airport en-route to Macau, with three more days of kids and adults ahead.  In short, come Thursday when I board a flight home, I will have taught 19 out of 22 days to some 35 different groups of kids and four different groups of adults. Does it sound like I’m bragging a bit here? Probably. And I’m sure there’s an element of a bit too much pride mixed with astonishment that I can actually do this. And as these posts testify, there was more than one moment when I sincerely doubted I could, lamed by ill-health. 

 

But miraculously, all dizzy/ear problems are gone at the moment and some chronic lower back pain also disappeared and I’m so thankfully feeling in the peak of health. And so these last two days with a whole new group of Taiwan teachers has simply been wonderful. Rather than craving rest, I’m feeling fully in that zone and no problem just jumping in. And though the details are too boring for anyone who is not an Orff teacher, the way I organically connected some fresh material in these past couple of days felt like I’m reaching new levels of weaving all the strands together in a multi-colored dreamcoat worthy of Joseph. 

 

I know it won’t always be so and though at the moment it’s hard to imagine a moment coming in the middle of a workshop when I think, “I’m tired. This isn’t fun anymore. I think I’ve had enough,” perhaps it will come. Or not. I’ve probably had fantasies of my own “satisfying end” being in my home bed surrounded my loved ones, but it could just as well be gleefully chanting the ending of Boom Chick a Boom: “Uh-huh! All right! Oh yeah! That’s all!” to a group of people at a workshop or a class of kids and then falling to the floor with a great smile on my face.

 

But meanwhile, I’m sticking with the present happiness of the connected middle and see if it keeps flowing with 6 classes with kids in Macau tomorrow. The plane is boarding. Off I go!

The Art of Play

It turned out to be prophetic that Peter Pan was one of my favorite childhood stories. Watching my father pay bills at the dining table, I found myself humming “I won’t grow up…” Like any healthy red-blooded child, I loved to play and didn’t understand why adults had to be so boring. Some part of me was determined never to become one.

 

And some part of me succeeded! I ended up with a life’s work that paid me for playing clapping games with children! Of course, I need that money to pay the bills, discovered that if all work and no play made Jack a dull boy, there also was a great delight to be found in work well done. And that there were other great perks to being a grown-up— the freedom to set my own bedtime and eat ice cream whenever I wanted and the pleasure of being a responsible father, grandfather, teacher, citizen. But none of that meant having to send my playful self down to some locked closet in my inner landscape. So I never did.

 

My playful two weeks with children from 5 to 17-years-old at the Taiwan American School culminated yesterday in a most delightful performance with the 5^th graders— some 150 of them!— and the high school jazz band. I was nervous about the children’s association with a concert as a serious affair, with every note and gesture expected to be perfect and the corresponding stress, anxiety and stiffness that comes with that. My hope was to encourage them to be 100% children and bring their infectious playful spirit to the stage, combined with their maturing music and dance skills so that the play was not random, but focused and artful. And they did! 

 

Each of the four groups had their moment of sheer joy publicly shared. The Step Back Baby people having so much fun enacting the “Home Alone” story with the whole jazz band and Orff Ensemble behind them. The Humpty Dumpty group acting out three nursery rhymes and then launching into dynamic body percussion. The Cookie Jar kids running onto stage excited about cookies, visibly upset when they discovered the cookie jar was empty, hilariously running around the stage looking for them in the bell of the French Horn or inside a xylophone or under a piano while the two bands played a swingin’ blues. And then the final group invoking the 1930’s Savoy Ballroom as they Lindy Hopped so joyfully to a swingin’ Jumpin’ at the Woodside.  A parent later wrote to the 5th grade music teachers:

 

“This afternoon was bloody brilliant! Those grade 5 students had the biggest smiles on their faces. The energy was amazing!”

 

So it seems my loyalty to Peter Pan has paid off. As an adult teacher I’m hopefully helping kids grow into a responsible maturity that will both serve their own growth and a world in sore need of actual adults (see the news). But perhaps the greatest gift is to give them permission to be wholly their playful selves—at each step of the way. And in my adult workshops, to give adults permission to unlock the closet and reclaim their own playful self. All with a sense of artistry that is playfully serious and serious fun.

 

So on a Saturday morning on the other side of Taipei with a new group of some 40 Taiwanese Orff teachers, off I go again to speak those two words so seldom heard in adult life: “Let’s play!”

The Wild Woman of the Drums

It was in 2002, twenty-two years ago, that I taught a Jazz Course in Taipei to some 80 teachers. At the beginning, I asked the group how many had some jazz background. Not a single hand was raised. “How many listen to jazz?” A few hands. “”Have you heard of Louis Armstrong? Ella Fitzgerald? Miles Davis?” Nobody. “Then why are you here?” One person answered, “We’re curious. “

 

Good enough for me—and off we went. By the second day, I noticed one woman who seemed to love the drumset and before long, she was playing with such enthusiasm and gusto I dubbed her “the wild woman of the drums!” With great appreciation.

 

Yesterday, the Taipei American School aired my movie and since tomorrow, I’m teaching another two-day course to the members of the Taiwan Orff Association, I invited them to the film. Five of them came and after the film, one of them came up to me and said “I’m Sherry.  Do you remember me?” At first, I had to fake it a little. “Well, you look familiar” and then the light bulb switched on, “Wait! Are you the woman who played the drums in that Jazz Course I taught?!” And indeed it was. 

 

A four-day course twenty-two years ago with hundreds of other courses I’ve taught since to thousands of other people. And yet I remembered her. How could this be?!!!

 

Welcome to the Orff approach to teaching. Though it’s not a sure-fire guarantee to such memory and I do have some innate talent for such remembrance, the way we teach using so many different media, the way we invite all to show their character and spirit through the creative act, helps make each person memorable. I felt the same thing when I took the risk of going around the circle in my recent Australian class and on the third day, naming each of the 36 participants because I associated each with a memorable moment when they played a solo or made up a fun dance motion or sang with great gusto.

 

Likewise, watching my film for the 10^th time, I could name just about every one of the 100 plus children shown in the film, some from as far back as 1975. We all share the feeling that we are worthy of remembrance and it is music and dance taught in this way that helps make that possible. I imagine it meant as much to Sherry to be remembered as it did to me to remember her. 

 

And I most certainly will let her play the drums this weekend!