Bridges – stories about music and communication

Roger Cohen, currently the Paris Bureau Chief of The New York Times, posted a thought-provoking column about an unusual use of music created to help build understanding between Palestinians and Israelis. In the rap video “Let’s talk straight,” Uriya Rosenman, a Jewish citizen of Israel, and Sameh Zakout, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, sit across from each other at a small table in a garage, hurling invective that reveals the typical arguments and prejudices that often displace engagement and understanding of the other within each group. Cohen explains, “By shouting each side’s prejudices at each other, at times seemingly on the verge of violence, Mr. Rosenman and Mr. Zakout have produced a work that dares listeners to move past stereotypes and discover their shared humanity.” Here are links to Cohen’s article and to the YouTube performance it describes:

A Rap Song Lays Bare Israel’s Jewish-Arab Fracture — and Goes Viral (Roger Cohen, New York Times, July 21, 2021)

Let’s talk straight | בוא נדבר דוגרי | تعال نحكي دغري – Uriya & SAZ

During this period when physical distancing is required, a number of groups have used web technology to transcend their isolation and create satisfying virtual performances.

Here, the Chromatic Expansion vocal ensemble at Millersville University of Pennsylvania presents “Bridge Over Troubled Water”:

One of the high points of the online Easter service at Washington National Cathedral was a hymn, “The Strife is O’re, The Battle Won,” presented virtually by the cathedral choir and orchestra:

Members of the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra remind us of music’s centrality in our lives with their virtual rendition of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” concluding with the composer’s message to a friend: “I wish you music to help with the burdens of life, and to help you release your happiness to others.”

Music continues to bring us together, even when we are apart.

Eric Taylor has found a unique way to instill his joyful love of music in children from widely diverse backgrounds.  As the Artistic Director of the Detroit Children’s Choir, he introduces his young singers to musical excellence, with a repertory that ranges from traditional choral music to Motown standards.  “The way I describe it to the kids,” he says, “is ‘Here’s all different kinds of ice cream flavors.  You’re not going to like just one; you’re going to try them all! Like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.’”

The Detroit Children’s Choir includes students in grades 3 through 12 from communities in southeastern Michigan, including children from affluent suburbs and the inner city.  This brings together parents of choir members from a broad range of backgrounds, who volunteer to help in concert preparation and ensure that every child succeeds.

Eric also teaches music in seven Detroit schools, some of them in extremely financially stressed neighborhoods that otherwise would have no vocal music program.  Each year, he organizes a concert bringing together students from all the participating schools.

Eric sees the Detroit Children’s Choir as playing a role in breaking the cycle of poverty in the inner-city.  “Our primary focus,” he says, “is making sure each child has the creativity, the confidence, and the drive to be able to see beyond their normal day-to-day and to be able to go on to do amazing things.”

As an example, Eric cites a student who came to the choir as a shy eight-year old.  Now a junior in high school, he’s confidently singing solos in a voice that some parents compare to Frank Sinatra’s.  This summer, he’s been awarded a full scholarship to attend the summer music camp of the prestigious Interlochen music academy.

No child has to audition to become part of the Detroit Children’s Choir.  Eric has found that young people who are initially challenged by the technical aspects of singing always respond and grow when given personal attention and training. “We don’t exclude anybody,” he says. “I believe every child should have the opportunity to sing.”

Picture credit: Marie-Jeanne Smets 

Lea Gilmore created Baltimore Community Sings when the city was grappling with the aftermath of the death of Freddy Gray in police custody.  It  was inspired by her belief that “Music is something that brings folks together.  When we have a heart experience with someone else, that’s when our minds start to think differently about differences. We learn to respect and love each other experientially, more so than intellectually.”

The foundation of Baltimore Community Sings is African-American music, but it also draws on other musical traditions.  It’s only one venture in Lea’s long career of bringing diverse people together through the power of music.

Lea showed unusual musical talent at an early age.  She studied piano on a scholarship at Peabody when she was 12 and was awarded a scholarship to Lincoln University.  After taking a break to start a family, she went to Morgan State University to study political science & economics.  In school, her passion for social justice was so strong that Gilmore thought she didn’t need to perform anymore.  But she soon realized, “I would die if I didn’t do music” and joined the choir.  While at Morgan State two prominent musicologists, Dominic de Lerma and Eileen Southern, taught her how to combine her love of music with the pursuit of social justice.

After graduation, Lea centered her career in Europe.  For more than 15 years, she led concerts throughout Belgium to benefit the Father Damien Foundation, a Catholic foundation supporting research and treatment for people with leprosy and tuberculosis. 

Different cultural groups in Belgium have traditionally segregated themselves:  French-speaking residents of Wallonia, Dutch-speaking residents of Flanders, French-speaking residents of Brussels.   But they all loved the African-American music that Lea performed.  Her fans began crossing boundaries to attend her concerts, mingling with people they had traditionally avoided.  It was, she explains, “kind of a two-fer—you’re raising money to help combat TB and leprosy, but at the same time you’re bringing people together.”

Lea also performed in many countries outside of Belgium, including a stint as an artist in residence for the U.S. State Department in Paris.  In Scotland, Lea and a long-time friend from Baltimore started Umoja Musica, a project drawing on African-American and Scottish cultures.

In an old European church, Lea once found herself performing for an audience, surrounded by beautiful wooden statues created with proceeds from the slave trade.  She says, “It was a full circle moment. Humbling.  But, singing to and with them was more powerful than anything I ever could’ve said. 

“These are common experiences and humanity clicks in.  When they experience the joy of a song, our hearts and our souls don’t have color.  Music notes are a map to freedom.”

In late 1920, composer and scholar Charles Seeger, father of the late folk singer Pete Seeger, and his first wife Constance, a violinist, set out with their three sons, including young Peter, on a trip to bring good music to the people, towing a trailer equipped with a pump organ behind a Model T Ford. Together they gave recitals and small concerts, sometimes for money and sometimes for free. While in North Carolina the roads became impassable and they parked their trailer for the winter in woods owned by a family named MacDonald. During that season the Seegers played classical music for their hosts and in turn were treated by the MacDonalds and their neighbors to music on banjos and fiddles.

Prior to this Mr. Seeger thought folk music “didn’t exist…except in the minds of a few very old people, who would die shortly and then there wouldn’t be any.”

This encounter seems to have had a profound effect on Seeger. These people had their own music, and it was precious to them. They didn’t need his. Seeger’s many accomplishments include helping to start the Society for Ethnomusicology, which studies the widest possible range of music and seeks to understand why it is important to those who hold it in trust.

This experience and other encounters with folk music seem to have had a profound effect on little Pete Seeger, who went on to be a major force in American music. Through his friendship with Woody Guthrie and his involvement in groups such as the Almanac Singers and the Weavers, he was at the center of the folk music revival.

Achord^SM: a new Musical Alliance is the namesake of The Musical Alliance, created in 1918 by the founder and first editor of Musical America, John C. Freund. Freund called for an alliance to organize “all workers in the field [of music], from the man at the bench in a piano factory to the conductor of the great symphony.”

His efforts were part of a long tradition stretching back to the 1830s that sought to increase the role of music in American life. It inspired social activism by individuals and by local and national groups, who sought to introduce the broadest possible range of citizens to the joy found in making music. Achord will share with these pioneers their belief in music’s ability to facilitate transformational growth in individuals and to build community.

However, unlike that earlier alliance, Achord’s conception of music is as broad and as diverse as America itself. The musical activists of the last century hoped to enlist the broadest possible range of citizens in their campaign for a “musical America,” but limited their vision to promoting “good music”—what we call “classical music” today—and they worked to diminish and even suppress other types of music.