Call to the Ancestors

“What is wrong in this world can only be wholly healed by those in the other world.

  What is wrong in the other world can only be wholly healed by those in this world.”

                                                            - Irish saying

I write this in the music room that has been my sacred temple for 38 marvelous years. So many miracles have happened in this place and yet again this morning, as 100 children charged the air with the powerful sounds, gestures and motions of our Intery Mintery Halloween ritual. By the end of this homespun ritual/ performance, the 3^rd graders are locked in heart-stirring grooves on the xylophones, the 2^nd graders are accenting downbeats with shaking bamboo rattles and resonant singing bells, the first graders are adding percussive effects, the 5^th graders are playing the chant-like open-5^th melodies on the whole family of recorders, the 4^th graders, dressed in costume, are circling the space with explosive scary shapes and then moving in ancient grapevine steps while I play the Bulgarian bagpipe, unbelievably barely heard amidst the the 80-piece orchestra.

Music has long been a shamanic healing force, each instrument type and melodic mode and rhythmic groove bringing its specific form of healing, either energizing or calming or both, finding the calm at the eye of the storm or the dynamic dance at the center of silence. Here they join together, the struck skins and strings, the blown wind instruments, the rung and shaken and scraped percussion, the singing voice and dance for 15 minutes of “you just had to be there” soulful ceremony. Made all the more extraordinary by the fact that these are children from 6 to 11 years old and every single one included and contributing and participating just because their teachers believe in their deep-down musicality and the school still values it all.

Playing the bagpipe in the center, I didn’t want to stop. I wonder what might have happened if I followed my impulse and continued for another 10 or 15 minutes or 2 or 3 hours. Perhaps the parents would have to board a space shuttle to pick up their kids at carpool, as we were slowly lifted off this earth and landed, all 100 of us, in some other land or dimension. Maybe I’ll try it next year.

Meanwhile, it’s Halloween. The ancient Celtic festival of Samhain renewed and revived and kept going—except in those fearful places where it’s banned for its Satanic influence on our children. The origins speak of the belief that a veil separates this world, the land of the living, from the other world, the land of the dead. At Halloween, the veil grows thin, the curtains part and the dead return for one night to visit (or haunt) the living. As in every culture from time immemorial, we the living need to propitiate those spirits, both to let them know we remember them and to protect us from any lingering resentment on their part. The reasons for many of the current customs are mostly lost to us modern folks, but we enact them anyway and mostly have a great time doing it.

Last night, I went to see political comedian Will Durst, who was excellent as always. But he drew me into the spooky, horrific world far beyond any goblin or ghoul, the unbelievable and simply unacceptable possibility that the American people might be duped yet again and consider a candidate who will move us back toward the Dark Ages. I woke up in the grip of fear, disheartened that this contest is even a question and terrified that I would relive the constant sorrow of the Bush years.

And so I call to the ancestors at this time of communication between the worlds. We have the voices and bodies to speak and act for you and are honor-bound to heal the hurts that you suffered and move us toward love and compassion. You work in the realm of spirit and have the power to enter people’s hearts. In the political arena, things come and things go and we confused mortals keep shouting across imaginary lines and forget the spirit that unites us. But still, these decisions have real impacts and are not to be ignored or shrugged off just because they’re temporal and the spirit lives on.

Attention ye ancestors! Today we played beautiful music for you, we’re working here to give the children what they deserve and training them to think and critique and analyze as well as feel and celebrate and express themselves in beauty. We’re making phone calls to Ohio and encouraging people to get out and vote. From your side, we’re hoping you’ll gather the invisible forces to at least keep the door of possibility open to necessary change and intelligent discourse. We know that Obama carries both hope and disappointment, but the difference between the little he offers and the alternative is huge and worth of a petition to you all. It’s time for trick or treat— you know which one we prefer! Thanks for the help. 

One Down, One to Go

I shouted in exultation with the rest of my fellow San Franciscos when Romo threw that last called strike and the deed was done. World Series Champions! A mere two years ago, I joined the collective throng in my neighborhood who whooped and hollered for over an hour, hundreds of us filling Irving Street while cars drove by honking. This year I just opened the doors and experience it all vicariously from a distance. Not quite the same, but hey, I was jet-lagged and the game had been a long one.

It is one of our peculiarly human thrills to be carried on the wave of mass euphoria, one of the ways we momentarily lose our complex identity and just give it up to the sound and the motion. We become a mere cell in a jubilant body and experience a sense of belonging that wipes away all the things that keep us apart and lonely and isolated. I suppose it’s one of the reasons being a sports fan is so attractive.

But then there were all the sullen and gloomy and dispirited Detroit fans, heading home slump-shouldered in the rain and the cold. One would hope that one group’s happiness wouldn’t necessarily entail another’s sadness, but that’s the way of the world when it comes to sports competitions. I suppose that’s why I prefer another mode of belonging, choosing the inspired concert where the jazz fans in the club can leave refreshed and the opera crowd next door walk out into the same streets with a common feeling of renewal. One is not at the expense of the other.

So now what we San Franciscans all hoped for collectively has come to pass and for a brief few days, the city will be buzzing with excitement and pride. The players will bask in the glow of a long season of work well-done, an earned sense of satisfaction affirmed by and made visible to the world. And then life will resume its normal pace, all our feet back on the earth, coming down slowly through the levels of leaping, dancing, walking and let’s face it, eventually plodding.

Now comes the next moment of collective hopes with winners and losers. Exactly one week from today, some newscaster will give me the results that will either have me shouting for joy or screaming in terror. But this outcome is so much more profound than a few moments of yee-haw—the stakes are exponentially higher than which city feels happy for a few days. This will determine people’s jobs, people’s health, people’s education, people’s rights. It literally will decide who may live or who may die, both here and far away. It will define the nation’s level of intelligence, of compassion, of care for each other and care for the world.

People, if your mind can see beyond a one-issue soundbyte, if your heart is to open both to those you look like you and those who don’t, if your brain can distinguish between someone trying to preserve privilige for an elite-uncaring few and someone inching us further down the road of human rights and an inclusive democracy, please get yourself out to vote next Tuesday. And in the meantime, talk to all those distant cousins and next-door neighbors who still may be undecided.

But if you’re for the guy whose agenda for the country includes "find the bad guys and kill them,” please stay home and watch reruns of the Giants game seven instead.

New Scotland

I was excited about coming to Nova Scotia. New territory and the promise of a colorful Autumn. All the advance reports I heard talked about the friendly people and the musical culture. I’m happy to report that I was not disappointed in either claim, though I need another trip to delve deeper into the latter.

I arrived in Halifax on Tuesday, got a quick tour of the waterfront and off to one of my host’s lovely house out in the country. The next day, eight classes at his school with local music teachers watching, kids from kindergarten to 6^th grade. Big classes (around 25) and too-short periods (30 minutes), but each one such a pleasure. As always, instant connection to the kids, who were at once polite and bold, focused and spirited. Many gave me a spontaneous thank you on the way out and six came in later as part of the 3^rd grade teacher’s training in appreciation, giving me a formal thanks that was also sincere.

(Hmm. Maybe we could train the kids at my school to follow this example?)

That night to nearby Truro at another teacher’s house. His wife was gone on a trip, but had left the most delicious squash soup, salad and homemade bread. Next day, seven more classes at his school with 15 more teachers watching. This combination of teacher’s observing me working with kids and then going to my workshop itself is stellar— thinking about how to organize all workshops like this. Again, kids had great fun, were appreciative and did well musically.

Direct from school to the hotel and here my first disappointment to discover that even in rural Nova Scotia, the parasite that eats away culture had arrived. I was dropped off at the Comfort Inn in the land of the Fast Food joints, back to my view of the parking lot and the Styrofoam cup breakfast. Aargh! But no time to whine, as I was soon picked up again by my two hosts and taken to a Thai restaurant for dinner. What a pleasure—and change of pace— to hang out with two male elementary school music teachers!

Then on we went to the site of the NSMEA Conference where I led an evening reading session. This is a strange concept for the Orff teacher. Usually such things are a way for choral or band teachers to quickly read through material to shop for the scores they’ll buy to use with their students. Since the kids playing Orff arrangements don’t read them, I had to present it a different way—ie, teach the material as I always do while also giving the teachers a taste of what I’ve collected in my books. If the purpose of these sessions is to sell the clinician’s material, I have to say it worked! My books were sold out quickly.

The next morning was my Keynote Address to the Conference. This was the second time I’ve had the honor of being the Keynote Speaker in a music ed conference (the other also in Canada, in Ontario— hey, U.S.A., pay attention to your native son!) and both times, it was the first time an Orff teacher was chosen in a conference mixing general music with band and choir. The feedback was positive and encouraged me to do more. From the podium to the workshop, two two-hour sessions to make the ideas come alive.

Then out that night to Roadhouse Willies Restaurant to hear a Cuban singer and band expertly perform jazz standards, bossa nova and Cuban boleros and mambos. Great music, great food (fish and chips!), great company. Life was good and Nova Scotia seemed a happy place.

The next morning, time before my flight to walk alongside the cornfields toward the Bay. I past a friendly man walking his dog who spoke to me in Scottish accent. Made sense—after all, Nova Scotia simply means “New Scotland.” A beautiful, balmy day and the last leaves blazing in the morning sun, the spent brown cornstalks starting to be plowed under. Hard to imagine in such weather that a hurricane was heading this way, due to arrive tomorrow or the next day. For the sake of my new found friends, I hope it fails to keep its appointment.

There seems to be energy for a return engagement and if it comes to pass, I hope to leave some time to explore nearby Cape Breton Island, home to a thriving Celtic music culture, Prince Edward Island, Canada’s smallest province and perhaps Newfoundland and New Brunswick as well, all within shoutin’ distance.

So thanks to Nova Scotia (and Monteral and Quebec) for its steady commitment to the arts and to arts education, its friendly people and lovely land, for giving me three new experiences— my first Orff reading session,  a brief moment driving to the airport where I was on the 45^th parallel, exactly halfway between the Equator and the North Pole (at Stewiache) and my first time in a time zone east of Eastern standard time.

Oh, and one more marker— the place where I watched the Giants on TV win game 2 of the World Series. Go Giants!!!

"Find the Bad Guys and Kill Them"

Did I hear that right? Did Mitt Romney really say that in the second debate? I caught some of the post-commentary of the last debate and this was from a “lowlight” clip. I’m glad the media had the sense to note that this was not the highest level of Christian thinking from someone asking to lead the country, but was equally surprised that the comments on his comments danced right around that phrase. I believe Jesus said:

“But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;”

Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and a few others could teach Mitt something about what that quote means and of course, I don’t expect a privileged Republican to rise to the standard of such exalted company. But to say on national TV “find the bad guys and kill them” without a trace of shame while proclaiming himself a moral Christian worthy of the Presidency was quite an amazing moment in the campaign. I would say Mitt is about the same level as a second grader asked how to deal with evil in the world. I love 2^nd graders, but my job is to educate them to a higher level of compassion. And I certainly wouldn’t want one to run the country.

Not that I haven’t had the thought myself, starting as early as 2^nd grade and continuing on up through the Bush years in fits and starts. I try to step away from it, knowing that evil is never vanquished by killing someone, peace never wholly achieved through war, hate never erased by hate. I’m not running for President, but still I make an effort. Shouldn’t Mitt do the same? Shouldn’t we think twice about giving him the power to achieve his goal?

And speaking of bad guys, if I was George Bush and Dick Cheney, I’d be nervous if Mitt got elected.

Frankly Speaking

Poet Gary Snyder was once asked if he was tired of always going against the grain. He just smiled and said, “I’m in line with the larger flow.” Tonight I taught Masters Degree candidates in Education at McGill University in Montreal and felt Alfred North Whitehead smiling behind me as we played “choco-choco-la-la” to illuminate Whitehead’s brilliant articulation of the rhythmic cycle of learning. And so as I keep knocking my head against the wall of educational policies and discussion that talk about everything but the children, I often comfort myself that Pestalozzi, Froebel, Montessori, Whitehead, Dewey and their modern descendants have my back.

But it is so tiresome. Today I walked the streets of Quebec, a beautiful historic and vibrant city. People were ice skating downtown in October, the parks were decked out for Halloween, a cruise ship ambled by the Chateau Frontenac. I wandered the streets with my host Francoise and began writing familiar French words down in my little notebook. And that’s when I decided to stop criticizing the educational establishment and join them by writing my own contributions to the SAT (Stupid Asinine Test). Below is my modest example of a vocabulary test question:

I entered the café  after shopping at the boutique for some lingerie for my wife. There was only one seat left on the upper terrace  and since the bistro across the street was closed, I quickly grabbed it. There was a coat draped across the back of the chair opposite and I was reading my book when suddenly, Voila! a beautiful petite femme fatale sort of woman sat down.

“Enchanted to meet you,” I said in the most debonair, suave manner I could muster. She ignored me and took out some cheap souvenir some clever entrepenuer had sold to her. She seemed fatigued, as if she had just danced in some Broadway revue or vaudeville show. The moustached waiter came to take my order and I got the soup du jour and some barbecued beef on a baguette with some biscuits on the side. She order a crepe. When the food arrived, she said “Bon apetit” and that was all the opening I needed.

“You seem like an artistic type,”I noted.

“Touché!” she retorted. “ I’m an artisan who works in a nearby atelier. I dabble in all sorts of art forms—collage, paper maché, plen air painting, decoupage, even crocheting.”

“Since you seem so sophisticated, I wonder if I could interest you in the premier of a film noir festival at the local cinema.”

She agreed. We had a lovely time and arranged an encore rendevous tomorrow.

There are 38 words/phrases commonly used in English in this story that come from French. Find them. After you’re done, treat yourself to a croissant. (If you score 90% or above, you can apply to McGill and attend my next guest class.)

P.S. Extra credit if you can explain the title of this blog.

21st Century Teacher

“Are you a 21^st Century Teacher?” Before I open the e-mail with the come-on subject, I know what it’s going to say. “Are you using the right cool tools to motivate today’s students? Are you on the techno bandwagon or still in the old-curmudgeon-dinosaur-world of yesteryear?” 21^st century teaching is the new buzzword and everyone can’t run fast enough to make sure each student is armed with an i-Pad to keep up with today’s world and be prepared for the future.

Meanwhile, here I am in Montreal, having just spent three hours with a room of 60 teachers chanting, singing, slapping their bodies, clapping their hands, moving, dancing and charging the room with an energy powerful enough to light Las Vegas. And then another two hours drawing forth beautiful and evocative sounds from boxes with slabs of wood and metal on them. Followed by a reflection time examining the thinking behind each moment of the day, giving language to and thus, shedding new light on each bodily and heart-felt experience. Not a single machine was plugged into an outlet for the six hours of deep learning— and thus, the day was disqualified by the new 21^st century standards.

Amongst my succinct proverb-like summaries of the pedagogical processes at work was this one: “Teach from the body to the body.” As it often is, the first hour of my workshop was taught in complete silence, always an engaging strategy to get people involved at a higher level of attention and interest. The language was gesture, facial cues, movement and body percussion activities, each of which invited a bodily response from the participants. Without words, all patterns needed to be decoded at the synaptic level by each participant, the only way that learning really takes place in the brain. And because the brain is housed in the body, teaching to the body necessarily means teaching to the brain. “21^st century techniques” would often have us teach from the machine to the mind, bypassing the body altogether and thus, losing the opportunity to learn at the muscular level, at the synaptic-pattern-perceiving level, at the level of breath and bone and blood and bonding with our fellow learners.

Of course some learning can take place without doing the fox-trot or patting one’s knees rhythmically. These words on a screen can evoke ideas, images, a series of connected thoughts that have the possibility of shaping the way you think. The Youtube clips or menu of Powerpoints on the i-Pad can likewise seep into the synapses and yes, the manipulative powers of the Smart-Board might help create a more flowing, active, dynamic process in the playground of numbers and equations.

But let’s consider the possibility that our fascination with the glitz and gloss of the seductive machine is not a 21^st century epiphany, but an outdated 1950’s notion— technological innovation will cure all human ills and deliver us to peace, prosperity and knowledge. And that we have unthinkingly inherited the peculiarly American custom of looking to material things for salvation, putting more faith and investing more money in a new computer than sending a teacher to an Orff workshop.

It’s difficult to write convincingly of this to people who have never seen this kind of body to body, heart to heart, mind to mind work in its full glory. It is a wonder to behold and if we ever found out what real learning and education is, we might fall on our knees like parched desert travelers arriving at the water-hole when encountering this way of teaching. Without you yourself having the experience of the communion of moving bodies, the aesthetic wonder of beautiful sounds made by your own hands in company with others, the extraordinary surprise of simple elements joined artfully together to make complex effects, you simply can’t know the whole of what learning is or might be.

What does the future really require from us? 21^st century teachers who have committed themselves to re-learn what 20^th century teachers forgot—that the body is an instrument of knowledge, that the heart rules the mind, closing or clogging or opening the neural pathways in direct proportion to the amount of fun and good fellow-feeling in the room, that the mind is not only a pattern–perceiver, but a pattern-maker, most gloriously in the form of art. 21^st century children have the same bodies as their Neolithic ancestors, roughly the same brains and one can guess, the same hearts vulnerable to loss, isolation, disconnection as well as the thrill of belonging, genuine joy and deep happiness.

Until education wakes up to all of this at the core of the whole venture, ain’t no machine gonna improve schools one inch. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with some 21^st century trees, a flowing river and birds singing in a crisp Fall morning in Montreal.

Still Incredible

It is a crisp Fall day in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Long-haired shirtless guys are playing frisbee on the lawn, women in long homespun dresses sit under the oak tree. I am 18 years old, just stepping through the door into an emerging adulthood. It’s a time to try out different identities and each one is accompanied by a soundtrack. And such a rich musical tapestry in that year 1969 to walk down the aisle with me— The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Crosby Stills and Nash, Simon and Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, James Brown, Smokey Robinson, Beach Boys, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane. Rolling Stones, not to mention Beethoven and Brubeck. Each a world unto themselves— some for joyful dancing, some for quiet romance, some for political inspiration, some for poetic flight. A remarkable time filled with change, hope, visions of a better world and a growing and glowing determination to turn the world upside down, give it a good shake and settle down to the peaceful co-existence we deserve.

Just as a smell transports me instantly to Grandma’s kitchen or the house at the seashore, so does the music of the time lift me out of my screen-glowing Walmarted Romney-infested world into that time of innocence and bright eyes and a world sung into being with poetry riding on song. All that music has that time-machine power to bring me back, but none so deeply and so meaningful as the music of The Incredible String Band. I listened to them this morning, remembering each note and word and the feeling in the air when I first heard them weaving an entire mythology that gave meaning and magic to my day.

Do they hold up? Well, musically speaking—and here with some 43 more years of musical experience, I can claim a sophisticated palette— they were…well, incredible. Sometimes the singing seems out of tune or the melodies too hippy-meandering, but in terms of instrumentation, form, structure, tempo, meters, rhythms, harmonies, subject matter, poetic imagery, they reveal a prodigious imagination. They used instruments like the sitar, the gimbri, the tinwhistle and assorted percussion from Morocco, India, Ireland and beyond long before any were popular, borrowed influences from folk music of the British Isles, rock, blues, spirituals, parlor music, the Near East and beyond. The pieces ranged from 16 seconds to 16 minutes, the forms consistently original and unpredictable, the lyrics profound, metaphorical and filled with inspired imagery. They wove an elaborate mythical universe, peopled with spiritual inspiration without religious dogma, a celebration of the natural world and forces, the power of fellow journeyers, a childlike playfulness and humor, and of course, love.

They recorded five extraordinary albums, each one a separate universe—The Incredible String Band, The 5,000 Spirits, Wee Tam, The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, The Big Huge. Then came the prophetic Changing Horses, where (from my point of view) they lost the thread of inspiration and took off in another direction and never quite came back to the home territory they populated so beautifully. (Some attribute this to their encounter with Scientology.) So is the life of the artist, responding to particular times and places and social energies and spiritual energies and then the outside forces change or they change from the inside and the moment is gone. Happens all the time.

I wonder if I played them for you now whether you would be intrigued. Would they seem too weird, too hippy-dippy, too hard to place in any familiar musical style? Would the words seem poetic or just obscure and obtuse? Was this a “you just had to be there” musical taste belonging to a particular era? I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. I was there and I am there again listening to them now and it was/is beautiful, remarkable, and yes, incredible. Thank you, Robin Williams and Mike Heron, Licorice and Rose for your company, then and now. You gave me a world and I cherish it.