Barbara Tischler: Music in the Civil Rights Movement

Tues., July 29

Barbara Tischler, who handles the curriculum development at Horace Mann and occasionally also teaches history there, followed up the lecture on the Harlem Renaissance with one on the Civil Rights Movement. Her presentation focused more on the music rather than on the history we got yesterday.

She went through the musicians who led up to the civil rights songs: the Fisk Jubilee Singers with their very European performance of “Down by the Riverside”, Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice”, and Paul Robeson’s “Didn’t my Lord Delivery Daniel?” (all mentioned yesterday as part of the Harlem Renaissance). Everyone got excited for the Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet’s performance of “Jezebel”. Ben was nodding to the beat, Ashley was shaking her shoulders, Deane was shaking his head with his eyes closed with Barbara Tischler herself mouthing the words.

Tischler began talking about the Civil Rights Movement with the Albany Movement in the spring of 1962. The Albany Movement was one of the places where music came to play an important role. It was where “We shall overcome”, first introduced by a white guy from California, became a rallying cry for the movement. And it was out of Albany that the Freedom Singers first emerged; the Freedom Singers was the male/female quartet that gained fame touring the college campuses across the country signing songs like “We Shall Overcome” and “This Little Light of Mine”.

She suggested a role-playing activity where students enact a lunch counter sit-in with various students playing waitresses, protesters, restaurant managers, police officers, etc. It sounded like a great activity but a potentially volatile one that would need to be managed and set up properly.

We spent a lot of time talking about Medgar Evers, the state secretary of the NAACP who was killed one night while out for a walk. There is a wealth of literature and song available on this important historical event: Bob Dylan’s “Only a Pawn in Their Game”, “Medgar Evers Lullaby” performed by Judy Collins, Phil Ochs’ “Here’s to the State of Mississippi” (related because Evers’ murder occurred in Mississippi), and even a short story by Eudora Welty entitled “Where is the Voice Coming From?”

She ended with a few songs that, while probably not within the historical period we think of as Civil Rights period, continues the legacy of the civil rights protest movement. Songs like James Browns’ “Say it loud, I’m black and proud” (1968), a song which had Joel shaking his whole torso and which the kids would love; songs like “The Revolution Will not be Televised”, a poem which I’ve always wanted to do in the classroom but which Tischler warned is a difficult one because it is filled with references that the kids don’t know.

One thing was certain as she closed her lecture. I need to get a copy of “Eyes on the Prize”, the recently-released PBS video on the civil rights protest movement.

John Howland: Harlem Renaissance

Mon., July 28

John Howland from Rutgers University was scheduled to talk to us about the Harlem Renaissance. Unfortunately, his flight got cancelled then delayed then something else and he was not able to make it to Pittsburgh. We got a version of his lecture which was amazingly still pretty informative.

Howland made a distinction between the Harlem Renaissance (or New Negro Movement) and the popular music like jazz during that period. Whereas the New Negro Movement tried to create music/art that was high art and “dignified”, the modern jazz culture was regarded as decadent, lower-class, corrupting, evil, and associated with the rural, uneducated. Artists that were part of the Harlem Renaissance included Paul Johnson, Bessie Smith with “Moan you Moaners”, Paul Robeson with “Ol’ Man River”, and James Weldon Johnson with “Lift Every Voice”, the song that came to be regarded as the Negro National Anthem. Duke Ellington with his 1930’s hit “Don’t Mean a Thing” was considered high art even though it was jazz.

On Christmas Eve 1905, there was an incident in Harlem—not yet an African-American community at that time—and it served as an impetus for landlords to throw out the lower-class white immigrants in favor of African-Americans who were willing to pay more. The Great Migration of Southern blacks into places like Harlem infused the existing music with a Southern African-American rural style. The charleston, in fact, was an example of a dance style that was first seen in South Carolina and introduced up North.

In 1935, three men were killed in Harlem in the Harlem Race Riots and for many scholars this was the end of the Harlem Renaissance. During the 1920’s the black population in Harlem had exploded 115 % to 327,000 by the end of the decade, and it was during this time that Harlem became a ghetto. There were more race riots in 1943, and Harlem hit rock bottom in the 1970’s and 80’s.

The Cotton Club kept coming up in our questions though it didn’t seem to be a major part of his lecture. Jan and Mark pointed out that blacks were allowed into clubs such as the Cotton Club only as performers. Even Josephine Baker, a very prominent and rich performer, was not allowed into the Cotton Club. This may have been part of the reason she moved to Paris.

Other artists of the Harlem Renaissance included Best Williams (“Nobody”), James Reese Europe and the Clef Club, Mamie Smith (“Crazy Blues”), Thomas “Fats” Waller (“Ain’t Misbehavin’”), and of course Louis Armstrong.

That afternoon, we did a close reading of "Strange Fruit". I had never really sat down and read through or listened to the lyrics before so did not realize that's what that song was about! The song would be a great one for the English classroom with its devastating metaphor and powerful message.

Johnstown

Sat., July 26

Once a thriving steel/iron mill center, Johnstown is now a sleepy little town with a Holiday Inn and museum where the library used to be.

Johnstown gained its fame after the great flood of 1889, the largest natural disaster in the U.S. up to that point. The dam had broken a decade before but that time the water had only risen some three inches. The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Society, an elite group of millionaires from Pittsburgh, purchased the land (and dam) for recreational purposes and didn’t maintain the dam properly. They filled the lake in with more water so that it would be navigable by steamboats. They lowered the center of the dam wall so their cars could pass through two at a time. And in order to keep in the fish that they imported into the lake, they set up a net system making it impossible for fish (or other debris) to pass through the dam. Heavy rains came and, just as residents had predicted for a long time, the dam went letting loose one of the largest man-made lakes at the time. Two-thousand two-hundred people were killed with another 900 “missing”. The event made headlines nationally and internationally. And although it looks like many were well aware of the irony that poor people had died for the recreation of the rich, no one at the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Society was ever held liable for any of the deaths of damage.

The Johnstown Museum had the best exhibit with surviving relics from the flood and a superior video. The area where the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Society used to be is now a National Park, the rinky dinkiest national park I have ever been to. Being able to see the surrounding area where lake used to be was interesting though.

Fort Pitt Museum

Wed., July 23

Good tour of the Fort Pitt Museum today. “The Point” (the physical heart of Pittsburgh where the Allegheny and Mon meet to form the Ohio River) and where the Fort Pitt Museum is located has historically been a site of great contention because of its strategic location. The Allegheny River had been the major trading highway for the French while the Mon River had been the major trading route for the English. Dominance of The Point dictated who would have control of trading further south, which included New Orleans.

It was in 1754 that a 21 year-old George Washington surprised the French when they woke up in the woods near The Point. He surrendered soon after that though recognizing that his troops were no match for the French. This was the showdown which eventually led to the French and Indian War, known to the rest of the world as the Seven Years War.

The French maintained their fort at the Point until the British led by General Pitt squeezed them out in 1762. As a result of the victory, the city was named “Pittsburgh” and even the colors of the city with its black and gold come from the Pitt family crest.

Jam Session at the Tree Lady Recording Studio

Tues., July 22

Kathy Miller Haines and her husband Garrett treated us to a jam session at the Tree Lady Recording Studio. It was a cool space, much bigger than I expected with walls painted a vibrant green and blue.

Tammy got the singing underway with “The Highwayman”, originally an 18th-century poem by Alfred Noyes. Adria went next with a song from a musical I hadn't heard of. Then Patty with ragtime tunes. Diane accompanied them on the piano. Tamara sang a wonderful Sephardic tune before Ben finally started up the “Gettbysburg Blues”—the reflection on our rushed Gettysburg tour that everyone was waiting for. The highlight of the gathering was probably Mark’s continuation of the “Gettysburg Blues” with his impassioned and heartfelt repetition of “that damned bus”. He had quite a few verses in him.

We recorded a couple of songs for Mike Fowler who was not able to make the jam session because he was back in the hospital with an infection from his appendectomy. We sang him “Shenandoah”, “You are my sunshine”, and “Which side is it on?”, a bastardized version of one of the strike songs “Which side are you on?” The “Which side is it on?” was a reference to the catheter tube they have coming out of him.

Homesickness

Hubbie and friends gone hiking to Kalalau this weekend. Kalalau is an 11-mile hike up and down I don’t know how many valleys to a secluded momma valley and a huge expanse of beach about a ¼ mile deep. The deep green of those sculpted valleys are amazing and a lot of people think the place has some kind of spiritual healing power. An enclave of hippies lives there illegally, living off the food that hikers leave behind. The last time I went to Kalalau I had the rare pleasure of meeting the “librarian” of Kalalau, a rolly polly Santa Claus of a man who I got to see nudie tudes in one of the rest pools. He discretely covered himself with his water bottle and turned the other way hoping we would not stop. There is always drama around Kalalau because you’re only supposed to be in the valley if you have a permit but it takes a year to get a permit so no one has a permit. So every now and again the DLNR (Department of Land and Natural Resources) will send in a helicopter and conduct a raid, instructing all campers without a permit to vacate the valley. This apparently has happened sometimes in the middle of the night, meaning hikers have to begin hiking 11 miles out in the middle of the night. I’m not quite sure exactly how that works.
The last time this weekend’s group attempted Kalalau, the trip resulted in disaster. Joy’s boyfriend accidently set her on fire when he tried to light a stove inside his tent. Then in a feeble attempt to put out the burn, he threw some dirt on her. Not realizing there was a rock in the dirt, he cut a gash into her leg. Despite the accident (and major downpours), the group continued hiking the next day, but apparently the shin-high waters made it difficult to move forward (you think?) and they were able to only get another mile in. Amazingly, Joy continued to date that boyfriend for another two years, but she has a new boy now and this time I think they’ll be fine. It’s summer (not rainy season). Brian’s got his new ultra-light backpack and tent. Virginia’s ready for anything having just climbed Kilamanjaro. Joy and Brad have been training by stuffing rocks in their backpacks on day hikes. Terence, the mountain man, will be fine. And Chad, well, he says hiking is easy... Anyway, I wish I could be there and my heart is with them these four days while they are out of any cell phone reception.

DMAC by Benjamin Hesse

The DMAC is a North Philadelphia based dance created in teh last two years by former Strawberry Mansion high school student Tez Burton. The dance is hugely popular with high school students in Philadelphia: they do the dance at clubs, on teh street for block parties and fashion shows, at home, and always at school. There is a rhythm that accompanies the dance that the kids beat out on desks and lockers--the beat goes along with music that has been created for the dance.

The music is a thumping, bass heavy club beat that repeats over and over. The only words are "DMAC--give me all that." When the music gets going, the dances start. The students "battle" each other to the music--seeing who has more moves and variations to the dance. It can be pretty amazing to witness.

There is a story behind the name--something to do with a man named DMAC who uses a simlar style of movement when he copulates. The dance echoes these movements--knees shaking and heels moving up and down, arms always akimbo. The dance is mainly in the arms and torso. The arm movements have a strong African dance theme--very warrior-like.

Go to youtube and search for DMAC to see various dances.

Benjamin Hesse

The Ukulele/Jake Shimabukuro

In my musical autobiography, I made a disparaging comment about Dennis Kamakahi’s son only playing the ukulele. It’s a little wimpy, I said, compared to slack key. Mike Seeger’s wife noted this and seemed to want to sell me on the ukulele. I had to defend my appreciating the unique qualities of the ukulele by mentioning Jake Shimabukuro. To my horrow, no one in the room including Mike Seeger had ever heard of Shimabukuro, who I would venture to say is probably the best ukulele player in the world today. The youtube clips of him show him as he looks today (in his 30s) and he stills looks good. But for me quintessential Shimabkuro was when he was younger with his glasses. I can't find any clips of him from when he was younger but here's a recent video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=O9mEKMz2Pvo

Mark Snell: Tour of Gettysburg

Fri., July 18

I once had a very low-achieving student who for the life of him couldn’t process anything he read. When we’d read together, he’d read very slowly but even what he would read, he couldn’t internalize. As a result of his difficulties, he rarely did his homework and just barely passed into high school. He was an okay kid and it appeared he was trying his best. Unbeknownst to me one day, he had picked out a book from the little library of books I had in my classroom. It was some book that I had gotten free from another teacher who was going to toss it out, but it was a book on military history, the Revolutionary War I think it was. I was floored when this same kid who always came in to class sulking, came in to me to let me know that he had picked up this book, finished it, and loved it. Could he have any more.

I am telling this story to illustrate the passion that some people (usually male) have for military history and my own apathy to it. Our tour guide, Mark Snell, resident of Gettysburg who has written on the subject, had this passion. Some of the other teachers in our tour had this passion. They were interested to learn the minutae of the military maneuvers of those three days at Gettysburg. Me, not so much. I understand that the Civil War was a more significant war in our history than many realize, that the U.S. lost more lives in that war than in any other war. I understand that it was and is the only war fought on American soil and as a result had an enormous impact on our country. I understand that Gettysburg was the pivotal battle which changed the tide of the war in favor of the Union army. I’m actually interested in the technology that abetted the Union victory—the Winchester rifle, the canned goods, the railroad. But the actual maneuvers of the soldiers. I don’t know. I wasn’t into it.

It was a speedy tour. We got to see the new Gettysburg Visitor Center which opened up to the public less than a year ago. We got a special concert given to us by the Federal City Brass Band (the highlight of the day, everyone agreed). We drove through the battlefields, which have been left as orchards and pastures in an effort to maintain the same landscape as it was in 1863. And we finished off the tour in the Gettysburg Cemetary, where the musically inclined among us played dirges for the dead soldiers.

No one was expecting much of the Federal City Brass band. I mean, a brass band. We were expecting tinny sounding chaos, but the men (and woman) in the band took those period instruments (each tuned differently and at a higher pitch that instruments today) and creating some solid melodies. I didn’t realize that each regiment had their own 24-person band which led the charge! (Contrary to what we would think, the bands did not have a high casualty rate. I forget why this was.) The regiment bands were responsible for giving the soldiers the signal to wake up in the morning (the familiar bugle blare we’re familiar with, followed by 10 minutes of utter drumming horror). The bands gave a signal to feed the horses, a signal the horses knew too evidently as the horses would whinny and stamp up a storm when this signal was played. There was a signal to begin marching, to stop marching, there was a signal to rest, a signal to rise, and even a prelude signal to indicate the regiment who the signal was for! This in addition to the regular marching songs and hymns. One of the founders of the group Jari Villanueva, considered the foremost authority on these bugle call Taps, did a great job introducing each of the songs.

The drive between Pittsburgh and Gettysburg is Pennsylvania Dutch country, green pastoral landscapes with shifting hues of green, cottonwood blowing by and those strange haphazardly placed haystacks shining in the sun. Brian Latham, accompanied by Dan Hanczar and Ben Hesse, started singing some blues songs on the way back. Soon Lyn, our choir teacher from Texas, joined in. And after someone played “Wind Beneath My Wings”, Tammy, our technie turned librarian, came over to join in. Tammy took down her hair and sang “Wagon Wheel”, a song which she’d clearly sung before and which blew my socks off. They played “Good Morning, America”. Paul Sweeney broke in with a freshly written blues song entitled “Gettysburg Blues” with a couple of verses on our rushed day and the lack of whining despite.

Timothy Lynch: Strike Songs

Wed., July 16

Today, Timothy Lynch came in to speak to us about strike songs, eminently useful tools to teaching the effects of industrialization and the importance of unions. He focused his presentation on three important strikes during the depression, all of which occurred before any federal legislation supporting union organizing.

Although the workers failed to achieve their goals, the Gastonia strike waged by the National Textile Workers in 1929 was a significant one. In this strike, Ella Mae Wiggins, one of the songwriters to emerge out of the tumult, was killed. We spent much time today talking about her most popular protest song “The Mill Mother’s Lament”, a personal account of the indecent living conditions of the mill workers and a gentle plea to organize. Told from a woman’s point of view, the song has a monotonous melody which everyone, especially the choir teachers, complained about. And many of us thought the song lacked the charging crescendo to really inspire any union activity, but apparently the song was very inspiring because ultimately the bosses had Ella Mae offed. Deane Root closed our discussion on this song by saying that it was the personal account that made it powerful. Indeed.

The second strike of the Depression era that Lynch pointed out to us was the Harlan County coal miners strike of 1930-1931. In this strike, another female figure, Aunt Mollie Jackson, emerges and captures national interest. Her family even moves to New York where “Aunt Mollie” (why always with the first names for women??) rubs elbows with the likes of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, probably introducing some of her rural flair to the big city.

I was interested to learn that the popular Civil Rights song “We Shall Overcome” was first used as a union strike song in the 1940’s.

The third strike he covered was the Flint Sit-down Strike of 1936-1937. On Dec. 30, 1936, the GM workers decided to “sit down”. They went on to occupy the plant for 44 days, something the workers themselves never imagined would happen. Music was an important part of the strike partially because it killed time. The union organizers planted a decoy strike at one of the buildings while stealthily taking over one of the important work rooms in another area. The union won this battle and GM caved. Despite police and eventually National Guard involvement, no one on either side was killed.

Here were the songs he included in his presentation.
“Mill Mother’s Lament”
“Hungry Ragged Blues”
“Which Side Are You On”
“Sit Down”

Scott Sandage: American Industrialization

Tues., July 15

The next day Scott Sandage, a history professor at Carnegie Mellon who teaches a class on the History of Rock’n’Roll, came in to talk to us about American Industrialization (1812-1932). It was a lively scholarly presentation filled with interesting tidbits. I was interested to learn that Alexis de Tocqueville actually coined the term “individualism” in attempting to describe the American character. He stressed the importance of the “contract society” as the key to improving one’s status.

Everyone was interested to learn that it was the recording technology of the day, the Edison phonograph, which dictated the style of artist (and instrument) that became popular. The wax of these devices, he said, only picked up loud brassy sounds and so it was that those vocal artists and twangy instruments such as the banjo defined the musical zeitgeist.

He referred us to several sites which had music we might be able to use in the classroom:

http://www.archive.org/
http://www.honkingduck.com/
Cylinder Digitalization Project (basically Edison’s Columbia recordings online)

Bill Shustik: Sea Shanties

Mon., July 14

The next speaker of the day Bill Schustik was quite a character. Having worked on board the 100+ ft. top sail schooner the Shenandoah for 35 years, the man was something like Herman Melville (who famously said the “whaling ship was my Harvard”). Instead of a mammoth book (Moby Dick), his travels have resulted in his abundant knowledge of sea shanties (or work songs of the sea). The Shenandoah is an old style sailboat without any type of motor at all and looks like what a slaveship of the 1700s would have looked like. He started his presentation with the song “Shenandoah”, I song I had not heard before attending this Institute and which sounded clunky and irregular to me at first. I now see the song as the graceful and moving sea song that it is. Several of the people in the institute, including myself, had that clunky and irregular song stuck in their head for the rest of the afternoon. He gave a wonderful description of the journey a sailboat would have taken departing Pittsburgh and winding down the Missouri all the way to New Orleans. The journey is no longer possible today because of the dams along some of these riverways.

He spoke in depth about the songs sung while pulling the anchor in, an arduous task requiring about nine men and at least twenty minutes under good conditions. The work songs sung during this process were important because they kept the men moving in the same tempo and, Shustik said, they increased productivity by (I think it was) about 30%! That is, sailors actually worked harder while singing the songs. For this reason, sailors would routinely get kicked by the foreman if they weren’t singing.

The song “Lowland” would be a good song to look at for classes during Sir Walter Raleigh, the cruel English captain. It is said that more sailors were lost to his cruelty than as a result of the war he fought.

Here is the list of the sea shanties he sang for us. As you can see, he sang a lot of songs for us.

“Johnny Come down to Hilo”
“Shenandoah”
“Santy Ana” (or “The Plains of Mexico”)
“Banks of Sacramento”
“Haul in the Bowline”
“What should we do with a drunken sailor”
“Donkey Riding”
“Down among the dead men”
“The Black Ball Line”
“Blow the man down”
“The Dreadnought”
“Blow ye Winds in the morning”
“Can’t you Dance the Polka?”
“The Keeper of the Eddystone Light”
“Lowlands Away”
“The Rio Grande”
“Haul Away Joe”“Paddy Doyle’s Boots”
“Paddy Lay Back”
“The Golden Vanity”
“One More Day”
“Rolling Home”
“Roll Alabama Home”
“The Pirate Song”“Hobo’s Lullaby”

Norm Cohen: Work songs and the railroad

Mon., July 14

This week we’ve been focusing on “work songs” which our first speaker of the week, Norm Cohen (author of “Long Steel Rail”), broke up into two categories: work songs (that is, songs sung during work) and occupational songs (songs about work). A lot of the early American work songs were sung while building railroads, first widely used in the 1830’s and reaching their peak use in the 1920’s; railroads changed the landscape and pace of American life. Railroads are an awfully efficient mode of transportation and despite the Truman administration’s efforts to do away with the railroad, the railroad endures. The railroad was an important part of the Union’s victory during the Civil War because they were able to ship supplies to the soldiers and bring home dead bodies; and Northerners were able to lay the railroad tracks about as quickly as the Southerners tore them down.

The early work songs were sung primarily by African-Americans who were sometimes incarcerated and put to work in a form of legalized slavery. These early railroad songs are documented in Alan Lomax’s video on this tradition. The new immigrants during the 19th-century, the Irish, sang occupational songs which expressed hostility toward another immigrant group—the Chinese---who also worked to lay down tracks. The Chinese were known to have a good work ethic and as a result were highly despised and resented by the Irish.

Because it represented big business, the railroad companies and the conductor who represented the authority of the railroads were vilified in popular media of the day. For example, in the song “The Lightning Express”, the rider of the railroad begs, “Please, Mr. Conductor, don’t put me off this train.”) There was actually public sympathy for the train robber Jesse James. Because of their antagonism for the railroad, the public didn’t mind Jesse James stealing from the railroad which transported money and other goods. Cohen made the distinction between hobos, tramps, and bums which I thought was kind of interesting. “Hobos” he said were migratory workers. “Tramps” were migratory non-workers. And “bums” he said were stationary non-workers.

The song “Casey Jones” tells the story of a famous train wreck in the 1920’s where a couple of the cars on a train came loose and another train, going way past the speed limit, did not see it in time.

Another great song is “John Henry” which goes “Johnny going to be a steel driving man”. This song speaks of the dignity of labor and of the replacement of man with technology. There is a wealth of educational material on the figure of John Henry with a Caldecott award winning book entitled “John Henry”, a video narrated by Denzel Washington, a book entitled “Ain’t Nothing but a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry”, and “Tall Tales”, an animated movies with Patrick Swayze.

Musical Autobiography

Music has never really been a big part of my life. We would sing “To market to market to buy a fat pig. Home again, home again, jiggidy jig” on the way home from shopping excursions and my mother liked to play tapes of Pavaroti and John Denver in the car but really that was it. There is no grandmother or aunt who played a musical instrument especially well and I myself have very little aptitude for music, which is one of the reasons I came to this institute. In high school choir, I was the one singing loud and proud but off key. And it wasn’t until years later that I figured out this was why the good singers were giving me dirty looks. My mother forced me to take piano lessons for seven years and I was still counting out my notes “Every good boy does fine” into my seventh year.
When I received the assignment to do the musical autobiography, I thought it might be interesting to do a greatest hits in the life of so here they are. There are some important artists missing such as the John Denver and Pavaroti I’ve already mentioned. What follows is basically a short list of albums and artists I’ve really identified with and loved.
Madonna’s first album I believe was the second album I purchased sometime in grade school. Though I wasn’t a big fan, it’s fair to say I was a fan. And I dutifully purchased her new releases well into my high school years.
As I entered my teen angst years, I connected with the emotional pathos captured in Robert Smith’s band The Cure. My favorite was “Close to Me” a snappy upbeat song, but I also loved songs which included nothing but four minutes of instruments with the only words being, “For how much longer can I howl into this wind. For how much longer can I cry like this. A thousand wasted hours a day just to feel my heart for a second. A thousand hours just thrown away just to feel my heart for a second.” I also loved “Lovecats”, another snappy upbeat song but with an insidious undercurrent.
I’m not sure when I was introduced to Tori Amos. A friend gave me her album to listen to in college. I love her fierceness, her voice (that is, the message and personality captured in her lyrics). I love her read hair. I love her strong arms playing the piano, the humor that’s there while she speaks of the occasional plight of women. I have not been a very dutiful fan unfortunately.
I have never been a big fan of Janet Jackson. She seems like a great girl with a good enough head on her shoulders but I loved her cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Got til it’s gone.” I feel like my love of this song captures the woman of color in me.
Tomas Rodriguez is a little known Spanish guitar play who I met in Brooklyn while I was living there. I had to interview him for an article for the Park Slope Co-op, a community grocery store there. He gave me one of his albums that I went home and listened to and thought was just amazing. I loved the delicacy and strength of the instrumentals. It was the pefect music for putzing around the house on a lazy Sunday morning.
I suspect that the Spanish guitar is related to Hawaiian slack key though I’m not sure about the technicalities of either instrument. And while I’ve been living back in Hawaii over the past eight years, I’ve come to appreciate Hawaiian music, particularly the slack key guitar, something I loathed and could not appreciated while growing up there.
Dennis Kamakahi is one of the big names in Hawaiian slack key. I appreciate the peace and serenity captured in Kamakahi’s songs. His son, also a musician, does not play the slack key unfortunately and prefers the ukulele because it is smaller and lighter and therefore easier to hold.
The last artist in my musical autobiography is Kealii Reichel. He gained his fame during the 1990s while I was in college and I remember buying his albums to try to stay in touch with my roots. It wasn’t until I got to see him play at the Neal Blaisdell Concert (in row 13 seats) that I got to really appreciate his talent. He was funny, telling his life story growing up in Lahainaluna highschool, a school started up by the early missionaries to Hawaii and one of the oldest schools in the United States. I combed through his albums to try to find a song for my wedding and I found it in “Akaka Falls”, a song which refers to one of the two big waterfalls in rainy Hilo on the Big Island. I love the absolute delicacy of this song. It is fraught with tension. It was a great moment for me when my father who is 94 and walks very very slowly was able to walk me down a sandy slope to Kealii Reichel’s “Akaka Falls” last summer at my wedding.

End of week thoughts

One of the most exciting parts of this whole Institute has been meeting with and exchanging notes with other teachers from across the country. The teachers here are tools (that is, hard-working). From what I’ve seen, they care about their students and want to see them engaged in learning and achieving. Some of us teach in schools that enjoy 100% enrollment and others face the daunting task of trying to teach our students a subject when the administration and the community in which we teach (including, let’s not forget, the students) do not seem so interested in these same objectives. One first-year teacher said resignedly, "There's not much learning that goes on in my school."

I have pretty much teared up in class every day so far, once when Ben played with Mike Seeger, another time when Anne Ford presented her musical autobiography and talked about her love for her husband, and today when my own roomie played The Battle Hymn of the Republic. The Battle Hymn of the Republic! (It was tied in with her grandfather returning home from war.) How great is it to be with a group of individuals who readily break out into song (extraordinarily well) when a few bars of a familiar melody is played for them! As one of the younger teachers here, I am continually floored by the wealth of musical knowledge and experience surrounding me.

Mike Seeger

Renowned folk musician Mike Seeger came in to talk to us today about “Southern old time music” and the various instruments used to create it. He was a small fellow with square shoulders and a head of disheveled hair ala Beethoven and a nose that matched the curve of his fiddle. His wife Alexia sat serenely by smiling the whole time with her long hair cascading over her diminutive figure. What follows are basically my notes from his presentation which an intimate concert with a legend in folk music. There are a couple of instruments that he presented (such as the fiddle) which are missing.

Introduced in the U.S. with the first European immigrants during the 1700s, the juice harp was an instrumental mouthpiece with a reed that vibrated and gave off one note. Seeger somehow breathed life into it creating seven notes. If you want to buy a juice harp, he warned, buy one from Austria. The ones made in the United States are discouraging for those trying to learn the instrument.

The first banjo he showed us was a gourd banjo which consisted of a skin stretched across the opening in the gourd, a single piece of wood as the handle, several strings with one string which stopped in the middle and gave off a higher sound. The string was made of lamb gut or the skin of an “unborn calf skin” if I heard correctly. The instrument is a vestige of the 1800s minstrel tradition when it took off as a fad and entered the theatre tradition. That little gourd created an awfully solid sound.

The newer factory-made banjo differed from the old-fashioned banjos in that they had frets (grooves on the arm). His newer style banjo also created an awfully strong.

The six-string guitar became standardized in the 1890s when factory guitars first began to be made cheaply. You could get a guitar for as little as $3 made with steel strings (as opposed to the expensive strings which were previously brought in from Europe) and native woods. It was the democratization of the guitar. And it was the African-American community that first started playing the guitar and incorporating it into their song tradition. The guitar he played for us today was a Martin guitar which went for $40 in the 1930’s and which he purchased in the 1970s for a steal at $300. Today, the guitar would go for a couple thousand dollars.

Seeger spoke at length about Elizabeth Cotten, a mentor of his who taught him how to play. When he was a youth, he once asked her if she could teach him how to play. She responded that she couldn’t teach him but she could show him and show him he did.

The last instrument he showed us was a dulcimer something similar to a zither comprised of several strings and meant to be played flat on a floor or tabletop.

Originally from Germany, the harmonica was used in blues. One style was created by slurring the tongue. The preferred blue style was created by breathing in.

Bluegrass which came out of the “old time Southern music” was designed to be performance music. The bands were comprised at least four pieces with a fiddle player, a banjo player, someone playing a big guitar (with a pick), a mandolin for melody and string bass. Everybody sang.

He and his wife Alexia spoke at length about the Carter family (the family Johnny Cash’s wife June Carter came from) who has clearly been a big influence in folk music. The family had a unique style that became popular, was copied, and today sounds common though it wasn’t at the time. The Carters greatly influenced Bob Dylan and even the Grateful Dead. He played us “By and By”, “Cumberland Gap”, and was joined in by the Institute’s own Ben Hesse for “Old Joe Clark”. Dan Hanczar one of the Pittsburgh locals joined in on “Going down the road feeling bad (glad)”.

Here were the songs he played for us:

A capella: "Wild Boar Song" (also known as "Old Bangum")
On the fiddle: "Old Joe Clark", "Bachelor's Hall".
On the gourd banjo: "The Cuckoo"
Demonstrating single string picking with harmonics: "Lost Gander"
On the guitar: "Wildwood Flower" by Maybelle Carter, "Freight Train" by Elizabeth "Libba" Cotton.
On the ukulele: "Skip to my lou"
On the autoharp: "I am Going to the West" by Connie Dover
On the harmonica: "Sally Goodin", "Sittin' On Top of the World".
Also: "Bye and Bye I'm going to see the king" (aka "I wouldn't mind dying"), "Oh, Take Me Back" by the Carter Family, "Liza Jane", "Going Down the Road Feeling Bad (Glad)".

You can find more information on Mike Seeger at:
http://mikeseeger.info/

John Koegel

John Koegel, a professor at the University of California Fullerton, spoke to us today on music and its role in the immigrant experience. He started with the Germans who had the most active musical community and formed cultural preservation groups once they immigrated to the U.S. between the 1840s and 1940s. The most active German musical enclaves were in the Bowery District in New York. Though the German theatres were rowdy halls characterized by beer-drinking, smoking, and music, everyone attended, included babies and their grandmothers. We heard several songs by German-Americans, sung in German and telling of the German immigrant experience. They were humorous pieces which often involved a waltz refrain. Next we heard the Yiddish-American songs, which our group found a bit more schmaltzy with a lot of "glissando". Themes in the Yiddish song tradition included songs of the homeland, letters home, the green horn (or newbie) experience, the profligate son who returns home, and the wandering Jew. We rushed through the section on the polka which was most popular in the upper Midwest west of the Great Lakes and also burgeoned in Texas.

Tour of Pittsburgh: Rivers of Steel Tour with Jan Dofner

We were treated to a tour of Pittsburgh today by Jan Dofner who is probably the best tour guide I've ever had. Her enthusiasm, her insider knowledge of the cultural heritage of Pittsburgh, her technical knowledge of how the mills worked, and the fun strategies she employed to bring the technical details to life made this an outstanding one. It sounded like Jan was an active member of the Rivers of Steel Heritage Area, an preservation organization you can find out more information about at http://www.riversofsteel.com/home.aspx?h=219&sn=310

First recognized by General George Washington as a great spot for a fort during the Revolutionary War because of the convergence of the three rivers here, Pittsburgh gained its lasting fame when industrialists saw Pittsburgh’s potential for manufacturing steel.

The Bessemer furnace invented in the mid 19th-century made it possible for the first time to mix together large amounts of iron, coke (a form of coal), and limestone, the three ingredients needed to make steel. Nineteenth-century steel workers in Pittsburgh had to endure 2800 degree heat and were required to somehow manually dump 100 lbs. of iron into the blazing furnaces. These steel workers were paid 16 cents an hour and according to Jan had to work 12-hour shifts from 3 a.m.-3 p.m. with one 24-hour shift at the end of a two-week cycle followed by just one day off. It was necessary for the workers to work these ridiculous hours because the furnace ran 24-hours a day. Not surprisingly many of the accidents occurred during those 24-hour shift.

Our first stop was to Station Square, a major tourist destination populated by waterfront restaurants, a Sheraton, and bike path. An old-style Bessemer furnace stands in front of the Hard Rock Café. And it was here we learned of the ridiculous physical stress and danger the steel workers had to endure to work the furnaces. The highlight of this stop came at 9 a.m. when the water show started up, surprising us all. The water spouts swayed back and forth to the score of Flashdance--"in a world made of steel, made of stone". I couldn't stop laughing. I kind of wanted to dance.

The best view of the point (the triangle of land formed where the Allegheny, Ohio and Monongahela Rivers converge) is at a lookout point on the South Side of the city. The view includes the point, the ballpark just across the river, and Pittsburgh’s numerous bridges. It was from this vantage point that you could visually see all the elements that made Pittsburgh the perfect site to manufacturing and transport steel from. The rivers provide the means of transportation to ship out goods to the rest of the country, the flat banks of the river provided the perfect place to lay the train tracks which transported even more steel out. Finally, Pittsburgh happened to be the site of a major coal reserve. Jan emphasized throughout her tour that the story of the steel industry is the story of an amazing supply chain, with industrialists orchestrating the constant movement of huge quantities of goods in a timely manner.

Bost Buidling, one of the few buildings that remains of the several acre large Homestead steel town, was the site of the first organized activity against Big steel as early as the 1930s. The first real unions did not come until the 1950s which is when you see the first protective equipment being worn by steel workers!

Standing just on the other side of the river from Carrie, one of the last remaining old style mills and recently named a National Historic Site, the Pump House was where they pumped tons of water out of and back into the river to cool the furnaces. The river bank just outside the Pump House was the site of the Battle of Homestead in 1892, one of the bloodiest battles waged by the steel workers.

We made our last stop of the day at the Bulgarian-Macedonian Club, a cultural preservation center for Bulgarian culture in Pittsburgh. Family owned and operated, they served up a soup lunch and teach Bulgarian dance. The center also houses some great artwork. The apple streudel I had there was the best I’ve had anywhere. Really flaky, dusted with the perfect amount of powdered sugar and filled with real apples and walnuts. The moistness of the filling contrasted the flakiness of the shell nicely.

Between stops, we sang songs including Woody Guthrie’s “Pittsburgh Town” and steelworker Andrew Kovaly’s “Aja Lejber Man” (I’m a working man). I loved the honesty and forthrightness of the lines “I’m a working man / I work every day. / Always I am dreaming, / Always I am counting, / ‘How many dollars am I savings?’” The play on words in the line “What did Jones & Laughlin steal” in the song “Pittsburgh Town” would be a great question to pose to high school students studying the Industrial Revolution.

Introduction

Voices Across Time is a five-week summer institute for teachers held at the University of Pittsburgh and made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Over the five weeks, 25 teachers have the chance to study American music in some depth with the hope of bringing some of that music back with them to their respective classrooms.

Why music?
Often marginalized in high school curriculums, music provides a great teaching tool to reach adolescents. It provides a primary text which has the potential to bring periods of history alive. It reaches out to students who might be more musically inclined; finally, incorporating music in non-music classes is a great way to bridge disciplines. Voices Across Time aims to promote use of music in classroom curriculum.

Here is a list of this year's participants:
Jacquelyn Chappel, the keeper of this blog who hails from Honolulu, HI
Tamara Escribano from Puerto Rico
Anne Ford who drives over to Pittsburgh from West Virginia
Michael Fowler from Tampa, FL
Lynn Gallagher-Vallejo from Victoria, TX (two hours south of Houston)
Patricia Gallagher from West Hempstead (Long Island), NY
Jose Galvan from Colchester, IL (western Illinois)
Cindy Grubbs, Miss Jacksonville
Daniel Hanczar from Oakdale, PA (just outside Pittsburgh)
Benjamin Hesse from Philadelphia, PA
Jim Holmes from Pittsburgh, PA
Adria Howell from Arvada, CO
Wilma Killian from Port Orchard, WA
John Brian Latham from Willard, MO (the Ozarks)
Joel Latman from Norwich, CT (and teaching at the finest school in the country)
Tamara Metz from Chinle, AZ (on an Indian reservation and 1-1/2 hours from anything)
Paulinda Nnamdi from Thunderbolt, GA (near Savannah)
Janys O'Connor from Tulsa, OK
Judy Perez from Long Beach, CA
Micah Richardson from Seattle, WA
Paul Sweeney currently teaching in N. Miami Beach, FL (but originally from Pittsburgh)
Ashley Symons from Turnersville, NJ
Polly Whiteside from Lakewood, CO and representing the same school as Adria Howell
Diane Whitney from Tallahassee, FL

The organizers for this year's Voices Across Time are:
Deane Root
Mariana Whitmer
Kathy Miller Haines