One of my favorite jazz stories goes something like
this: Fats Waller, a highly accomplished piano player, was playing at a club
when he spotted Art Tatum. He stopped played and announced to the crowd:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I play piano. But
tonight God is in the house.”
Art Tatum had that effect on people. Aspiring
pianists would go to hear this virtuoso jazz pianist who could play more ideas
(and at lightning speed) in 4 measures than most can do in 32. They’d leave
throwing up their hands, saying, “Why bother? What’s the use?” and take up
French horn or accounting.
And that’s how I felt tonight, watching my second
evening in a row of performances in the Ghanaian village of Ghana. The
virtuosity of these local musicians and dancers brought me to the brink of
human belief and made me wonder, “What’s the point of learning a few supporting
drum patterns and shaking my bootie a bit?” The energy, stamina, elasticity and
just pure joy of this group was 8.5 on the Richter scale. Made me feel that
it’s weird that I get to travel around the world as a music teacher with my 1.5
capability. Something is off here.
How narrow our exposure is to genuine artistry,
talent or genius. Few know more beyond pop radio, American Idol and So
You Think You Can Dance and can’t even conceive of the idea of folks in a
relatively remote village achieving such a high level without a single second
of fame or name recognition or even aspiration to be a star. Trust me— if
Michael Jackson jumped into the dancing ring tonight, I believe the folks would
smile and think, “Not bad” and go on to stretch his talent a bit further.
This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about this.
From astounding gamelan ensembles in Bali to mind-boggling Wagogo singers and
dancers from Tanzania to extraordinary South and North Indian drummers, the
world is bursting with astonishing music that most people will never get to
hear and amazing dance that they will never get to see—and I’ve been privileged
to see and hear them. It’s true that some of the astonishment is my own
unfamiliarity with the musical style and language and technique. I know enough
to know that something extremely difficult and complex is going on and because
I don’t understand it fully and am not practiced in the musical techniques, the
performers are elevated to a high level in my mind. But perhaps at the end of
the day, I’ve worked just as hard to craft a passable piano solo on a jazz
standard and they might (or might not!) feel the same if they heard me play or
tried to do it themselves.
But there is another level working here. Some of
the groups I’ve named above— and I could have gone on with Bulgarian bagpipe
players or Irish fiddlers or Venezuelan cuatro players and beyond—represent
cultures where music is so deeply embedded in daily life that from baby to
toddler to child to teenager and beyond, people absorb it with the ease of a
home language. I’ve long known that my field of music education is just plain
weird to folks in these cultures who live and breath and speak and sing and
dance music just about every day of their life— and so never have to go to a
formal music class or spend time locked in a practice room. Within their
culture’s styles, they achieve high levels almost effortlessly. “Practice” is
simply playing in community and though groups may rehearse pieces and create
choreographies, it’s a whole different animal than the middle school band
practice.
I’ve know this for a long time and my ideal in
pursing the Orff approach has been to attempt to build a musical community with
some of those qualities of simply being immersed in music. To some extent, I
and my colleagues have succeeded. But to reach higher levels, the kids would
need to be around adults who are all playing, singing and dancing at basic to
high levels of competence, not just specially selected music teachers. And do it every day. Not just in school, but at
home. But because we can’t control that, we just do what we can.
So tonight God was in the house and in more ways
than one. One of the dances was specifically a traditional religious dance
involving trance— this is one of the way that the Spirits are called into the
Community and tonight one came. And the dances that were not labeled as
religious were profound in their role of passing on the lore and lessons and
wisdom of the culture through dance steps, song lyrics and drum patterns.
Music and dance are not candy in these
cultures—they’re the main course. They feed the body, the mind, the heart, the
Soul and the Spirit and unite communities in ways that cultures without it
can’t even imagine. And everyone participates. From babies bouncing on
the back to grandmothers, from teenagers to music teacher tourists. The
profound integration in these cultures achieved in no small part through
millennium of unbroken music and dance is something National Geographic
magazine never quite captured. We ignorant children growing up in 1950’s New
Jersey used to laugh at the pictures of shirtless Africans. My apologies! How
could we have known what heights of human culture exist here!
So much of chauvinism or racism/ sexismt/ etc.ism
is simply ignorance. And so I once again elevate teachers to their proper
status— as the people with the opportunity to bring light into darkness, tell
the stories that need to be told and invite the children into the dancing ring
of belonging, respect, understanding and compassion. Africa is not “the dark
continent” because of skin color, but because of the Western world’s deep
ignorance of its complexity, wisdom and beauty. Once we shift the standard of
achievement from enduring monuments, tall buildings and big money to human community
backed by a profound spirituality, a rich world awaits us that has much to
teach.
Off to my next lesson.
