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A shout out to Pink Martini

In the spirit of the O's ex-movie critic, Ted Mahar, who used to say, "And now for something completely different," here's Barry Johnson on the multiple virtues of Portland's own Pink Martini:

"I've always admired this band -- for its rhythm, classical music virtuosity, party spirit and deep knowledge of seldom-walked paths of pop music history. But for me, they were one more pleasant diversion in an Age of Excess, with its billionaires, luxury goods, gigantic corporate expense accounts, casual greed, corruption and conspicuous consumption. ...
"But in the wash of sound and beat Tuesday, I realized that Pink Martini meant something new to me now. It offered a ticket for a couple of hours to an imaginary place where everyone looked great, knew how to dance, understood several languages and worked together harmoniously."

That's right, Barry. 

It doesn't hurt that Thomas Lauderdale and China Forbes write some really good songs, too.  Like this one:

Pete Seeger for Nobel Peace Prize?

So suggests Peter Dreier, calling Seeger a "troubadour for social justice in the U.S. and human rights around the world."

Peter Rothberg, over at the Nation, echoes Dreier's praise:

"Seeger has been an inimitable ambassador for peace, social justice and the best kind of patriotism over the course of a remarkable lifetime."

Here's a video of Pete Seeger remembering the 1949 Peekskill race riot.

Inaugural high point --"This Land Is Your Land" with original lyrics restored

Everyone knows Woody Guthrie's  "This Land Is Your Land".  But few know that some of the original lyrics may have been censored to make the song less "political". 

Enter Pete Seeger, who performed the song with Bruce Springsteen at Obama's inaugural festivities, original lyrics restored.  The earliest known recording at the Smithsonian includes this verse:

"There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;

Sign was painted, it said private property;

But on the back side it didn't say nothing;

That side was made for you and me."

And this one:

"Nobody living can ever stop me,

As I go walking that freedom highway;

Nobody living can ever make me turn back

This land was made for you and me."

So who does this land belong to?  The poor and the disenfranchised, not just the rich and powerful.

Let it snow!

For those of you getting down about the 'frightful' weather, well, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.  Nothing you can do about it anyway.



Then raise you holiday spirits with the the one, the only, the incomparable Brenda Lee



Happy Holidays!

The missing music in Portland's schools

My last post started me thinking about the importance of music in people's lives.  It also raised once again this question:

What's happened to the music in Portland's public schools?

I've asked the question before, but after watching The Trail Band perform Friday night at the Aladdin, it seemed time to ask it again.  The founder of The Trail Band, you see, is Marv Ross, of Quarterflash and Seafood Mama fame, and most recently the composer of the original musical, The Ghosts of Celilo. 

Marv also happens to be a graduate of Portland's Madison High School.  Back in those days, Madison, like all Portland high schools, had comprehensive choral and instrumental music programs.

Today it's a far different story.  Here's a rundown on what's offered musically in the poorest of Portland's high schools:

• Roosevelt --no music [see correction below] is offered in any of its three small academies.

• Same for Jefferson --no music, except choir --and piano-- as an after school program.  (Just a few short years ago, Jefferson's gospel choir was good enough to perform on Pink Martini's third CD.)

• Marshall --offers one beginning choral course in its Arts Academy (enrollment 294.)

• Benson --music offered only as a before or after school program.

And at Marv Ross' alma mater --Madison?  One teacher covers both instrumental and choral music. 

Now I don' know that Marv Ross was involved in the school's band or its choir.  But I do know from my own experience that exposure to music in school greatly enhanced my appreciation of music in its myriad forms.  I expect that's true for any student who either performed  or merely listened to others perform at the many school assemblies dedicated to vocal and instrumental music.  

How could it be otherwise?

The district's five larger high schools, the ones for Portland's more affluent families, all have a full array of choral and instrumental offerings.  All, that is, except for the city's wealthiest and most academically prestigious high school, Lincoln.

Lincoln, for some odd reason, has no school choir and no listed courses exposing students to vocal music.

CORRECTION:  One of Roosevelt's three small academies --ACT (enrollment 225)-- offers a beginning band course and a course in jazz and another in music production.  I don't know if students not enrolled in ACT are eligible to participate. 

Stand by Me

Proof positive that music --not math-- is the universal language:

I first came across Playing for Change on --where else-- the incomparable Bill Moyers Journal.

Beatlenews

As one who came of age during the height of Beatlemania (I'm still a huge fan), I feel obliged to pass along these two news  items --with musical accompaniment.

First, from yesterday's Oregonian Living section, an article about "Eleanor Rigby".   Was she a real person?  Or did she spring from the imagination of Paul McCartney?  Either way, it turns out there's a statue of Eleanor Rigby in Liverpool, where people leave flowers to mourn her death.

That's nice to know.  Here's the song:



The second is the announcement that the Vatican has finally decided to "forgive" John Lennon for boasting the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus".

The greater sacrilege was actually John comparing himself to Jesus in his really great song "The Ballad of John and Yoko", the one that goes "Christ you know it ain't easy ...the way things are going, they're going to crucify me."

Here's the song. Listen for Paul's brilliant harmonies in the second half of the song:

Taxes and Iris DeMent

I came of age in the 60's, so it's been difficult for me to muster much enthusiasm for popular music written after the golden age of rock and roll ended abruptly in 1970 with the break-up of the Beatles.

I mean, who compares with Lennon and McCartney, Dylan, Brian Wilson, the Everly Brothers?  Or the King? 

There have been exceptions.  I love Thomas Lauderdale and his incomparable "little orchestra", Pink Martini, based right here in Portland.  And just a few years ago, while listening to A Prairie Home Companion,  I stumbled across another marvel of singing and songwriting --Iris DeMent.

The song I heard, sung as only Iris DeMent would sing it, was a Tom T. Hall tune about injustice and the "rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer" and "bathing my soul in the sun" before moving on.  I was instantly hooked  --by the voice, by the performance, by the message.  Shortly after, I downloaded a bunch of Iris DeMent songs, most her own creations, and I've been a fan --a real fan-- ever since.

Friday night I saw Iris perform live at the Aladdin Theater.  It's difficult to come up with the words to describe the experience.  Suffice it to say that I sat enthralled for nearly two hours while Iris accompanied herself first on grand piano (who knew?) and then on guitar.  Iris DeMent is a singular talent in the much over-hyped over-commercialized world of music.  No one else sings like she sings, or writes songs quite like hers, songs that combine delightful melodies with heartfelt lyrics and intricate phrasing.  Iris DeMent is authentic.  She touches an audience like no other performer I've heard. 

The crowd at the Aladdin seemed to agree.  The sold out house gave her two standing ovations, the first bringing her back for  two more songs including "Our Town", the song she claimed was the first one she wrote that she felt was good enough to sing in public.  (Here's a YouTube version of it with Emmylou Harris.)

What does Iris DeMent have to do with taxes?  Well, although most of her songs are introspective, she does project "progressive" sensibilities (as in the Tom T. Hall song above and on her album The Way I Should.)  She seems to identify with the little people* rather than the movers and shakers.  Were she a politician, I doubt that she would look too kindly on sales taxes or sin taxes or state sponsored gambling to fund programs to benefit the poor and the overlooked in American society.

Put it this way:  If I were running for President, I'd prefer Iris DeMent to Jon Bon Jovi as  my musical entourage.

(*Wasteland of the Free --3rd verse

We got CEO's making two hundred times the workers' pay
but they'll fight like hell against raising the minimum wage
and If you don't like it, mister, they'll ship your job
to some third-world country 'cross the sea
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free)

Tempo Perdido

"Tempo Perdido" may or may not be the best track on Pink Martini's new CD (the first track --"Everywhere"-- a Forbes-Lauderdale original, might well be a perfect song),  but it is the one that includes Jefferson High School's Gospel Choir.  That in itself makes it worth listening to.

Tempo Perdido (lost time) probably isn't a reference to the time wasted on the reconfigurations of Jefferson High School, but it is nonetheless apt.  The slicing and dicing of Jefferson into four separate vertical academies, one of which will be housed at Tubman Middle School, leaves one to wonder what will become of the gospel choir or of the renowned Jefferson Dancers. 

It further raises the question of access to the arts and music for all of Jefferson's students, not just those enrolled in the Academy of Arts and Technology.  As I see it, that's the difference between a comprehensive high school and the experiment in specialization planned for Jefferson. 

Thomas Lauderdale broached the issue himself at Pink Martini's CD-promoting concert at the Schnitz last Tuesday.  In fact, Willamette Week's Byron Beck reports Lauderdale as saying that the Jefferson Gospel Choir no longer existed.  That could well be true depending on the enrollment numbers resulting from Jefferson's latest reconfiguration. 

I wrote a post a while back about the death of music in Portland's high schools.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't see these test-score driven district reforms helping restore music, despite the rhetoric from Vicki Phillips and her minions, to its legitimate place in Portland's public schools.

 

Pink Martini

During my recovery from surgery, it's become my habit, while hooked up to my morning infusion of ProBalance, to listen to one or other of the two CD's issued by Portland's own Pink Martini.

Over and over.

Why?  Frankly, I find it therapeutic.  Not because Pink Martini's music can be characterized as easy listening or as --God forbid-- 'new age'.  No.  Pink Martini's compositions and arrangements are complex, yet accessible, beautifully melodic and lyrically clever, fascinating, compelling, international, and suffused with Latin beats.  I have lots of CD's around, from classical to jazz to rock to Broadway musicals, but it's Pink Martini that I listen to every morning.

What's Pink Martini?  It's a nine member-plus "little orchestra" founded by Thomas M. Lauderdale, a classically trained pianist and former Grant High School student body president and Harvard graduate in literature and history.  Cum laude.  Of some "indeterminate" Asian descent, Thomas Lauderdale is adopted.  And he's gay. 

China Forbes, Lauderdale's collaborator and Pink Martini's exotic and sultry lead vocalist, is also a cum laude Harvard graduate.  On their second CD, Hang On Little Tomato, most of the songs, in French, Spanish, Italian, and English were written by Forbes and Lauderdale.  They're all lovely, but the arrangements and orchestrations of the cover pieces, especially on the initial CD, Sympathique, from Ravel's Bolero to Que Sera Sera are especially intriguing, at least to my ear. 

Thomas Lauderdale says of his music:

“I think our music allows people to dance and sing again with its beautiful melodies and beautiful lyrics. It is entirely romantic and expresses hope and eternal optimism, all the while recognizing that there is a great amount of sadness in the world.”

It's been rumored that Lauderdale, the Portland Public Schools product, wants to be Mayor of Portland some day (he interned for Mayor Bud Clark after college.)   What a wonderful idea! 

But maybe, in a few years when his performance schedule does not demand so much travel, he ought to consider a stint on the school board.  He'd be sure to work hard to restore the music to our schools.

And wouldn't that be a good thing.