The movie ends and silence fills the room more thickly than Billie's last aching note. I am afraid to look at the class still,and busy myself with the television buttons. The teacher, Patrica Dominguez, asked me to bring in a 30 minute listening activity. Something fun and upbeat. I believe the word she used was “danceable,” but I just couldn't do it. When most of what Argentine's know about music from the U.S. Is Rhianna and Eminem, I felt I had to do something a little bit different.
I've always loved jazz music. On my Fulbright application I proposed to teach English through the lens of Jazz culture and history. From its ricky-tick rhythm birth in the streets of New Orleans to the smooth pluck of Charles Mingus' bass, jazz has tapped our feet and trilled our sorrows through an eventful American decade.
So, because it's important for me to share meaningful aspects of US culture, instead of “Umbrella” I brought in a Billie Holiday song called “Strange Fruit.”
The class was a group of third year translation students. Their pronunciation is not as good as the language students I have, but their skills at reading and analyzing text are well-developed. I opened the lesson with a brief history of Jazz's beginnings from the 1920s-1940s, then a more profound look at Billie Holidays life leading up to the first time she sang the song in the Culture Club. Then I passed the copies of the lyrics I had made, minus a few of the words that they were to fill in.
Do you know the song? It gives me chills every time I hear it. Imagining Billie singing it for the first time in volatile New York City in front of a mixed race audience, her fingers leaving sweat marks on her evening gown as they clenched and unclenched the fabric, sends my heart racing. I wanted to bring this aching lament to my students as a song that meant something- a representation of one of the many diverse American faces who stood up for what they believe in- a representation of the fighting reformist spirit that makes me proud to be a United States citizen.
I found a youtube video of Billie singing with only piano accompaniment at my friend, Mauro's, house, and he helped me to download it and put it on a DVD. I was excited to bring it n but anxious to see how the students would respond. And here I was, fiddling with the television set at the end of the video, feeling in a very small way like Billie did as she waited in silence after the last line fell, waited to see what would come next. I looked up and saw eyes wide open. I saw an older woman in my class with tears in her eyes. I saw dropped jaws and forgotten pens. I saw understanding reflected in the profundity of their breaths.
“What did you think?” I asked, and greeted the wave of responses as I imagine Billie greeted the roar of applause that eventually filled the saturated silence of the jazz club- grateful to have said something that mattered to me, and even more grateful that it mattered to someone else.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Clubbing in Buenos Aires
Last night my English roomates and I went to a bar called Museum. I envisioned a more stately affair, replete with butlers/curators showing off traveling disco mania exhibits and offering crustless sandwiches. I expected a coat check where they would call me madame and compliment my grandmothers silver broach that I wore tied up in my hair. I expected women in dainty white gloves and dapper gentlemen in shirt tails and shiny cuff links. I anticipated being fanned and lavished upon by rapturous argentines as I recounted, in my impeccable Spanish, my opinion of the current economic crisis and possible solutions. They would occasionally offer, of course, to bring me another drink which I would obviously decline since no lady should ever be caught drunk in a Museum.
Why would you call a club a "Museum" if not to insinuate such things? If you want to have a sweaty warehouse with half-naked women massaging their breasts and clean-shaven creepers sidling up to any moving target with only pick up lines and pungent cologne to warn of the incoming attack, why not call the place something (anything!) other than Museum?!
Museums are places of higher learning, of expanding ones grasp of the world and once I realized there would not be attractive men dropping grapes into my mouth while expounding on the history of the founding of Rio de la Plata (and telling me how beautiful and goddess like I was), I felt a little jilted.
Well, I guess the case could be argued that it was a species of experiential education, like one of those anxiety-filled "choose your own adventure" novels in which one must frantically choose between fording across a pack of recently awoken abominable snow men or delve head first into a lava pit with only an icy-hot pack to protect from the blistering heat. A lesson in survival, really.
We weren't wrestling yetti's nor crossing volcanos, but it felt every bit like an extreme sport. Maeve, Flora and I set ourselves up in a circle, dancing, at first, very subdued so as not to call attention to ourselves. I have often read how the female of a species, such as a duck, are physically nondescript and tend to blend like wallflowers into their natural habitat to avoid the onslaught of predators. Natural selection has encouraged this process- if the ducks were found out by the wily fox sniffing around below their nest, next years ducks or peacocks would dissapear in a whirl of stomach acid and saliva and then what?
For us, the solution was the same (or so we thought) though the problem was inverted. Our prerogative was not procreation (though the men seemed to ardently believe it so), but rather freedom to be disconnected from any life cycle or mating ritual. To be in stop-time and escape our own image, the compatibility of male and female anatomy, to be a formless amoeba undulating anonymously to ABBA on the dance floor. So we wriggled cautiously, attempting to blend into our natural habitat of strobe lights and lithe bodies. I think we must have done an unconvincing job of it because soon we were no longer dancing but fending for out lives as the foxes descended. Any and all evasive tactics were fair game- errant elbows, foot stomps, swinging fists that we pretended, in our dancing queen ecstasy, to lose control over and catapult accidentally into the fast approaching crotches of an annoyingly loafer-ed Fabio. We soon realized that blending in was not only ineffective, but inspired the exact response we had hoped to avoid. Puzzled, it took a few more Jack and cokes and a minor mid-boogie tumble for us to realize that if you really want to be left alone, dance like a complete idiot.
Soon we were busting out moves we wouldn't even try in the privacy of our own homes, sashaying and MC Hammering and air guitar-ing our way to freedom. I guess our night at the museum wasn't so devoid of useful knowledge after all.
Why would you call a club a "Museum" if not to insinuate such things? If you want to have a sweaty warehouse with half-naked women massaging their breasts and clean-shaven creepers sidling up to any moving target with only pick up lines and pungent cologne to warn of the incoming attack, why not call the place something (anything!) other than Museum?!
Museums are places of higher learning, of expanding ones grasp of the world and once I realized there would not be attractive men dropping grapes into my mouth while expounding on the history of the founding of Rio de la Plata (and telling me how beautiful and goddess like I was), I felt a little jilted.
Well, I guess the case could be argued that it was a species of experiential education, like one of those anxiety-filled "choose your own adventure" novels in which one must frantically choose between fording across a pack of recently awoken abominable snow men or delve head first into a lava pit with only an icy-hot pack to protect from the blistering heat. A lesson in survival, really.
We weren't wrestling yetti's nor crossing volcanos, but it felt every bit like an extreme sport. Maeve, Flora and I set ourselves up in a circle, dancing, at first, very subdued so as not to call attention to ourselves. I have often read how the female of a species, such as a duck, are physically nondescript and tend to blend like wallflowers into their natural habitat to avoid the onslaught of predators. Natural selection has encouraged this process- if the ducks were found out by the wily fox sniffing around below their nest, next years ducks or peacocks would dissapear in a whirl of stomach acid and saliva and then what?
For us, the solution was the same (or so we thought) though the problem was inverted. Our prerogative was not procreation (though the men seemed to ardently believe it so), but rather freedom to be disconnected from any life cycle or mating ritual. To be in stop-time and escape our own image, the compatibility of male and female anatomy, to be a formless amoeba undulating anonymously to ABBA on the dance floor. So we wriggled cautiously, attempting to blend into our natural habitat of strobe lights and lithe bodies. I think we must have done an unconvincing job of it because soon we were no longer dancing but fending for out lives as the foxes descended. Any and all evasive tactics were fair game- errant elbows, foot stomps, swinging fists that we pretended, in our dancing queen ecstasy, to lose control over and catapult accidentally into the fast approaching crotches of an annoyingly loafer-ed Fabio. We soon realized that blending in was not only ineffective, but inspired the exact response we had hoped to avoid. Puzzled, it took a few more Jack and cokes and a minor mid-boogie tumble for us to realize that if you really want to be left alone, dance like a complete idiot.
Soon we were busting out moves we wouldn't even try in the privacy of our own homes, sashaying and MC Hammering and air guitar-ing our way to freedom. I guess our night at the museum wasn't so devoid of useful knowledge after all.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Sweaty spandex and beef tummy aches
Hello, Yassou, Hola, Ola!
Well, here I am, a former vegetarian salivating in the beef and wine capital of South America. I only lasted about 10 hours after touching down in a rather turbulence-ridden flight before I succumbed to the temptations of cow and pig dangling before my eyes (thankfully, in their cooked form). I could see the twinkle in the eye of that conniving woman working at the carniceria. Just like a drug peddler, really. Or the evil stepmother in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. "Just one bite, my pretty." Now I'm hooked.
Oh well, for any of you who know my father, my being a vegetarian really wasn't in my genes.
Buenos Aires is BIG. I guess I forgot, or neglected to realize, what a large city it is! Over ten million people, if you also count the expanding 'burbs. It is a bustling place that does remind me a little of Europe (or, at least, the Europe I have seen in photos, since I have never been there), but I think that people who say Buenos Aires is the Europe of South America are missing the point. The city breaths Cumbia, dance music which originated in Colombia (I think), ricocheting off the winding side streets, woman with gold teeth and striped t-shirts stretched taut across their burgeoning bosoms selling piping hot empanadas, and buses labeled with bright bubble letters careening through red lights and ignoring the waves of would-be passengers on the streets as if the drivers were doing all of this for fun and customers were at the bottom of their list behind sending a spray of dirty water on the woman in white. Yup, I am definitely in South America.
The music, food preferences and driving habits are the same, but Buenos Aires does feel very different than the rest of South America on one very basic level; diversity. It is a city that is made up of about 90% whites, 7% mestizo (people of indigenous and spanish mixed descent that populate the majority of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and parts of Colombia), 2% black and 2% Asian. In Brazil, where everyone happily agrees that their background is a "confusao" (confusion), here the racial lines are more strictly drawn and adhered to.
That being said, I am still a blonde, burned anomaly. Today I went walking to the bus station to purchase a ticket to El Bolson, a city in Patagonia where I will be working on an organic farm for a couple of weeks until my job/research begins in mid-march. Perhaps I looked a little silly, sporting my favorite fanny pack (yes, I have more than one), my pale skin already the color of undercooked beef and wearing stretch pants. From up above I heard a mans voice, and though it was deep and resonating, the content of his declaration led me to believe it was probably not God.
"Oye amor, que culo que tienes!" (Hey love, what an ass you have!)
The window washer was enamored, it would seem. I gave him my best scowl and slowed my walk so my butt wouldn't jiggle as much, wishing very fervently that I had not chosen spandex.
Burnt skin, sweaty spandex and rumbling tummy (ooooh the meat is killing me) aside, I am very happy to be here. Thank you to everyone back home in Ann Arbor, across the States and the world who has helped me either in figuring this all out, supported me as I fretfully planned, and for all of those who listened. I am so thankful for this experience, but more than ever, grateful to my family and friends whom I hold close to my heart. You mean the world to me.
Besos, Beijos, Felakis, and Kisses.
Well, here I am, a former vegetarian salivating in the beef and wine capital of South America. I only lasted about 10 hours after touching down in a rather turbulence-ridden flight before I succumbed to the temptations of cow and pig dangling before my eyes (thankfully, in their cooked form). I could see the twinkle in the eye of that conniving woman working at the carniceria. Just like a drug peddler, really. Or the evil stepmother in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. "Just one bite, my pretty." Now I'm hooked.
Oh well, for any of you who know my father, my being a vegetarian really wasn't in my genes.
Buenos Aires is BIG. I guess I forgot, or neglected to realize, what a large city it is! Over ten million people, if you also count the expanding 'burbs. It is a bustling place that does remind me a little of Europe (or, at least, the Europe I have seen in photos, since I have never been there), but I think that people who say Buenos Aires is the Europe of South America are missing the point. The city breaths Cumbia, dance music which originated in Colombia (I think), ricocheting off the winding side streets, woman with gold teeth and striped t-shirts stretched taut across their burgeoning bosoms selling piping hot empanadas, and buses labeled with bright bubble letters careening through red lights and ignoring the waves of would-be passengers on the streets as if the drivers were doing all of this for fun and customers were at the bottom of their list behind sending a spray of dirty water on the woman in white. Yup, I am definitely in South America.
The music, food preferences and driving habits are the same, but Buenos Aires does feel very different than the rest of South America on one very basic level; diversity. It is a city that is made up of about 90% whites, 7% mestizo (people of indigenous and spanish mixed descent that populate the majority of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and parts of Colombia), 2% black and 2% Asian. In Brazil, where everyone happily agrees that their background is a "confusao" (confusion), here the racial lines are more strictly drawn and adhered to.
That being said, I am still a blonde, burned anomaly. Today I went walking to the bus station to purchase a ticket to El Bolson, a city in Patagonia where I will be working on an organic farm for a couple of weeks until my job/research begins in mid-march. Perhaps I looked a little silly, sporting my favorite fanny pack (yes, I have more than one), my pale skin already the color of undercooked beef and wearing stretch pants. From up above I heard a mans voice, and though it was deep and resonating, the content of his declaration led me to believe it was probably not God.
"Oye amor, que culo que tienes!" (Hey love, what an ass you have!)
The window washer was enamored, it would seem. I gave him my best scowl and slowed my walk so my butt wouldn't jiggle as much, wishing very fervently that I had not chosen spandex.
Burnt skin, sweaty spandex and rumbling tummy (ooooh the meat is killing me) aside, I am very happy to be here. Thank you to everyone back home in Ann Arbor, across the States and the world who has helped me either in figuring this all out, supported me as I fretfully planned, and for all of those who listened. I am so thankful for this experience, but more than ever, grateful to my family and friends whom I hold close to my heart. You mean the world to me.
Besos, Beijos, Felakis, and Kisses.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
What Broken Trumpets and Missing Arms Taught me about Myself
Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet was sat upon in 1953. A drunken fan or an awkward land-mover stumbled upon it as it sat placidly and very much alone on the band stand. Dizzy picked it up, played it, and he loved it. Can you imagine? Someone sits on that part of you that is metal and pipe and button and has become your best tool of self-expression and instead of hurling the broken thing at the wall, or perhaps more appropriately at the oaf who rubbed his butt cheeks upon it, you play the damned thing. You play it and you like it.
I don't know exactly what this means. I don't own a trumpet. I am not a musician. But I do know that sometimes I feel sat upon, and often my instrument of self expression feels destroyed.
Once, when I was traveling in Brazil, I left my journal in a bus. No one stole it from me, no lardy oaf purloined it from my purse. But the loss of this journal, filled with the “me” that I thought could exist solely through its dog-eared pages, filled me with rage and loss. I didn't write for months, staunchly preferring silence over self-reflection.
I still can't remember what I thought or how I felt during those months of silence and I still hate that bus for speeding away even as I waved my hands wildly and jumped up and down like a very bouncy gringa, the realization of my stupidity hitting me a second too late.
There was a man at the airport who was missing half of his arm. He had tiny fingers connected to his elbow; wriggling little things that reminded me of the drowning heads of worms poking through rain-soaked soil.
How did he lose it? Was he born without the feel of a forearm, the knowledge of what it's like to clap hands after a play, the heat of a woman pulsing through her sweater against both his hands, through one, and out the other? Or did he lose it in an accident, the luckless victim of chance as a metaphorical fat man misplaced his center of gravity and sat? And how does he deal with it? How did he respond? How does he survive without the all-important hand, used literally and symbolically, an instrument that connects us so deeply with ourselves and others?
I am twenty three years old and I have never known true disappointment. My life's most crushing defeats were being wait-listed at snobby east coast colleges and not winning the swing dance Halloween contest this past fall. Who can teach me to synthesize defeat with hope?
I don't know exactly what this means. I don't own a trumpet. I am not a musician. But I do know that sometimes I feel sat upon, and often my instrument of self expression feels destroyed.
Once, when I was traveling in Brazil, I left my journal in a bus. No one stole it from me, no lardy oaf purloined it from my purse. But the loss of this journal, filled with the “me” that I thought could exist solely through its dog-eared pages, filled me with rage and loss. I didn't write for months, staunchly preferring silence over self-reflection.
I still can't remember what I thought or how I felt during those months of silence and I still hate that bus for speeding away even as I waved my hands wildly and jumped up and down like a very bouncy gringa, the realization of my stupidity hitting me a second too late.
There was a man at the airport who was missing half of his arm. He had tiny fingers connected to his elbow; wriggling little things that reminded me of the drowning heads of worms poking through rain-soaked soil.
How did he lose it? Was he born without the feel of a forearm, the knowledge of what it's like to clap hands after a play, the heat of a woman pulsing through her sweater against both his hands, through one, and out the other? Or did he lose it in an accident, the luckless victim of chance as a metaphorical fat man misplaced his center of gravity and sat? And how does he deal with it? How did he respond? How does he survive without the all-important hand, used literally and symbolically, an instrument that connects us so deeply with ourselves and others?
I am twenty three years old and I have never known true disappointment. My life's most crushing defeats were being wait-listed at snobby east coast colleges and not winning the swing dance Halloween contest this past fall. Who can teach me to synthesize defeat with hope?
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)