When I was a child I went to an elementary school known throughout Northern California for its excellent children's choir, and I couldn't wait till I got to fourth grade so I could audition for it. I had been steeped in music for my whole short life, listening to records my mom had brought home from the library, borrowed from friends or bought from the sleepy record stores in our then-quiet town, but also singing at the piano with my mom most evenings from the time I was two till I went to college. When I came home on visits during college and for all the years afterwards, one of the first things we did was go to the piano and sing together. When we got together she sang harmony, I sang the melody, and we sang everything from show tunes to lieder, folk songs to pop songs, hymns to novelty hits.
The Portola School Choir was primarily for fifth and sixth graders, but every year the choir director allowed fourth graders to audition too. There was an honor choir assembled from a subset of the main choir, but only one fourth grader had ever been admitted to its ranks. When I went in to try out, the tall, trim, imposingly grim-faced Mr. Kerr had me sing a few intervals and melodies while he sat at the piano. He showed no emotion at all, so I had no real expectation that anything would come of it. However, it turned out that, despite his taciturnity, he was quite pleased with me, and I was invited to be the only fourth grade girl in the honor choir; one boy was also invited. He and I joined the other excited 9- to 12-year-olds in showing up early for school two mornings each week for sectional practices and stayed late one afternoon each week for full choir rehearsals. Within minutes of our arrival at the first rehearsal, it was clear to us that we were in for more than we had bargained for.
Mr. Kerr ran the choir in his spare time; it was an unpaid position but it was also clearly the job he loved best in the world. He was primarily a fifth grade teacher famous for his friend Roscoe, a wooden paddle he kept hanging in his classroom which he was happy to use on the bottoms of children who displeased him. He notched the paddle each time he used it on a child. By the time of my time at Portola, he had to secure the permission of parents before he could smack their kids, but several of the "difficult" kids in my class (including a deaf boy with ADHD) were swatted during my time.
He was also known to put a metal "Constant Comment" tea tin with a long string tied to it around the necks of children who talked too much in class; he put two marbles inside so they would rattle around every time a child moved so he or she could be more effectively humiliated. Unlucky talkers wore the can all day, to lunch and recess and all.
When it was time for the Presidential Physical Fitness Test, he made sure to weigh every child in the class in front of every other and say the weight aloud as he wrote it down, so that those of us who were a bit pudgy and shy about it could be more completely embarrassed and our tormentors could have more specific ammunition with which to make fun of us on the playground during recess. He was a skinny fellow who apparently cared more for cigarettes than for food, and he didn't approve of fat.
When it came to running the choir, Mr. Kerr was no less harsh in his responses to any failure to follow his strict and unwavering laws. If a child showed up late to a rehearsal for any reason, he was not allowed in. The doors were locked and he could not enter. If someone missed more than two rehearsals, she was dismissed from the choir, end of story. When people talked back, they were yanked out of place by a red-faced, bug-eyed, looming Mr. Kerr, dressed down completely and were booted out of the choir.
Yet people were dying to get in.
Discipline was harsh and consistent and we lived in constant fear of his displeasure. But that man was the finest choir director I have ever sung for. He gave me better singing instruction in my three years with him than the two years of private lessons with a Juilliard-trained teacher years later or my six years of middle school, high school and college choirs. There was no excuse for being sharp or flat, for missing an entrance or ending a phrase sloppily. Every eye was on him at every moment. We all stopped at exactly the right moment, held our vowels and only cut them off with consonants at the very last second. Breath was properly supported and there was no whining nasality, there was no swooping up to notes, and there were no "blatty" broad vowels. Phrases were meant to be held no matter how hard it was to keep them going; there were no haphazard ragged breaths. If breaths needed to be staggered, he would tell us exactly how to stagger them through each section so there were never too many people breathing at the same time, and he knew when anyone, anywhere had made an error. Any child taking a breath in the middle of a word risked sudden death.
There were no fidgety hands or wandering eyes, no looking out at the audience, no breaking focus or slacking off on energy until the end of the song when he signaled to us that we could at last stand at ease. Every child wore a spotless uniform of cornflower blue skirts and white blouses for the girls and matching light blue blazers and black pants for the boys. The right hand grasped the left thumb and our hands were held in front of us in this folded position whenever we were on the risers. Knees were slightly bent so that we didn't lock them and faint for lack of enough oxygen flowing throughout our bodies and to our brains.
It all paid off. We were fantastic.
We sang most songs in three-part harmony; our pieces were arranged for high school or college choirs. We sang intricate scat-phrased versions of Bach bourrées arranged for the Swingle Singers, learned many Latin hymns and movements from various major composers' Masses, a score of spirituals, some international folk songs and holiday songs, and the occasional pop song. Each song we sang was explained to us carefully; we had to think about what we were singing and why, what each inflection meant, what each phrase called for in order to get the point across. When we sang "Sinner, please don't let this harvest pass" our plaintive cry nearly made us weep; sometimes we even made Mr. Kerr cry. When we sang "my God is a mighty, mighty man of war," the audience believed it. When we sang in Latin or Hebrew, he made sure we knew what every word meant. When we sang folk songs or spirituals, Mr. Kerr put them in context and explained what place they had in the lives of those who had written and sung them.
We were the top children's choir in our division and we won gold medals and blue ribbons. We sang on the radio and on local television. I sang the only solo given to anyone during the entire three years I was in the choir; I sat around with my family on Christmas morning and we listened to me singing on my aunt's hi-fi set. It was exciting and shocking to hear myself on the radio; I sounded nothing like I sounded inside myself. It was terribly exciting, but Mr. Kerr wasn't about to let it go to my head.
When I was in Mr. Kerr's fifth grade class as well as in the choir, he was determined not to let any favoritism show; I may have been given a solo and special dispensation in fourth grade, but it was clear that I was not to be given any praise or encouragement beyond that. When out of fear I once responded to his telling me that he wanted me to sing another solo with a demurral, he said fine, no more solos ever. He never offered me another. He saw what I thought was a one-time refusal to sing due to nerves as a challenge to him and as an example of my going against his directive: he was my captain and I had refused a direct order, and now I was a bad example for the troops.
I worked so hard for him, but it was never enough. He told my mother that I didn't seem to care about school, though I was his best student and his choir was at the center of my life. I was deathly afraid of letting down my teachers or my mother, herself a teacher in the same school district, so I made sure my grades were better than anyone else's in the class. Yet he dismissed my efforts and brought up how much happier he was with my closest academic rival, Ricky, when he spoke to my mother during a parent-teacher conference. He spoke admiringly of what a boy's boy Ricky was, how he wasn't a "pantywaist" like most other boys in the class. My mother came home, disgusted, told me what he'd said, and offered to move me out of his class. I begged her not to; I wanted to be in his choir no matter what, and I'd live through the humiliation and anxiety I felt every day in his class rather than have him look down on me for pulling out from under his iron thumb.
Mr. Kerr was an angry martinet, but he knew how to get the sound he wanted from his choir. He knew how to make us pay attention, how to make us understand what we were doing and why, how to keep our energy up and finally how to lead us to give captivating performances.
I still resent him for reducing children to tears, screaming at us and calling us names, for hitting us and humiliating us. It was wrong and it was damaging. But when I consider the lessons I learned from him about how to put a song across, how to follow direction, how to support a tone and project it, and how to work with a large group as if we were one entity—he was able to teach these skills like nobody else I have ever seen. Partly we worked as hard as we did out of fear, it's true, but mostly it was because of the intensity of his focus, his dedication, and his teary-eyed ecstatic face when we performed as he knew we could. I hated his methods and don't know whether on the whole he did enough good with his amazing choirs to balance out the harm he did to so many fifth graders cringing under his tutelage. But all the kids I knew who studied music under him knew what it was to be real musicians.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Barack Black Eagle
Today Senator Barack Obama became the first American presidential candidate to visit the reservation of the Crow Nation. That in itself was shocking to me; I have trouble understanding how so many presidential candidates have gone all over the country for so long and not bothered to visit such an important reservation along the way. The most touching part of this story is that as a result of his show of respect and inclusion, he was adopted into the nation under the Crow name "One Who Helps People Throughout the Land."
He was adopted into the nation by his "new parents," Hartford and Mary Black Eagle, making his new name among those assembled Barack Black Eagle. He said he liked it and stated, "That is a good name!"
According to an engaging story in the Washington Post, Obama told the gathering that he intended to acknowledge the "tragic history" of Native Americans over the past three centuries. He said they "never asked for much, only what was promised by the treaty obligations of their forebears," and he promised to honor those treaties and to bring "quality affordable health care and a world class education to reservations all across America. That will be a priority when I'm president."
The visit also brings Obama political benefits. The members of the Crow Nation vote as "a close knit bloc," according to Darrin Old Coyote. "Now that Senator Obama is part of the family, that is where we will go."
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