Wandschneider

We’re trying something new at the Josephy Center: “Music Bags” at noon on the second Tuesday of each month. We ask musicians to come and sing or play a few tunes and talk about their music. Not quite a recital, not quite a lecture or question and answer, but a little bit of all three.

Last week Lauren Bihr was the guest. We thought we’d get a few songs and the story of how she came to singing, how she does it and what’s coming next. We got a lesson instead.

She began with brief words about her singing past, about singing with her family and in a church band under her father, frustrating college music classes and then finding herself in a Portland-based bluegrass and folk’n soul group called Bitterroot. She toured with them for four years, and when the group disbanded, she landed in eastern Oregon, singing and recording with local musicians and raising a small child.

And then came the lesson. There were about 15 of us. We took the chairs out of rows and put them in a circle, and then Lauren explained that there was another model of music than the ones we are most familiar with. With a few funky video clips on her computer, she took us back to a six-month African musical journey she had made between high school and college.

Voices, drums, clapping hands and shuffling feet illustrated a different teaching and learning story. There were no obvious leaders, no stars, just people learning music together.

It starts with breath. So we breathed together, and then sang some African words together, passing a drum from hand to hand, learning to hit the beats as we did so. Then rounds. “Row your boat,” but not in two or three groups, but each of us picking up the cues and singing the words — and what came of it was not cacophony but melody, rhythm and music.

Several years ago Mary Louise Nelson gave me singing lessons as a birthday present. At 65, I found myself singing in the Wallowa County Chorale, and for three years rehearsals were high points in the week and performances peaks in the year.

When Randy Morgan wasn’t directing, he sang tenor beside me. He told me, as we prepared for the “Hallelujah Chorus,” and later, as we performed it, that if I could not hit the high notes I should just mouth them.

But I hit ‘em! In large part because Randy was singing beside me

Lauren reminded me of that joy — and reminded me that music is more than metaphor for everything else; it is a model. And, while it seems the current model, from baseball to politics and business, is all about soloists, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Today, the soloist—musician, politician or ballplayer — who makes the biggest splash and the most money is deemed the most successful: the high point man; the Forbes’ list of world’s wealthiest; the president or dictator who wields the most and loudest power.

But there’s change in the air. I remember reading somewhere that our country always swings between individualism and community. The women marching — and now the students — point to change. Even in basketball, where LeBron James, who might be the best player in the world, and his team fade while team-ball Golden State attracts imitators.

The team-ball Gonzaga Bulldogs just made the sweet 16, and our Joseph High girls and boys basket-ballers made it to state without stars.

When I think back to my coming of age in the ‘60s, what stands out is that communitarian spirit. We were naïve of course.

The Peace Corps did not make the world peaceful; the Civil Rights marches did not make a color-blind world; the women’s movement did not make women safe from exploitation and harassment; and the European Union has not solved the problem of nations getting along.

But what a ride! What a thrill to be a part of that choir of young and old, black, brown and white, men and women, singing our way to a better world.

If you are under 40, you might not remember that the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was once on the record charts or that UCLA once dominated college basketball. And yes, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played there for a time, but John Wooden coached the team ball that won 10 of 12 NCAA titles, seven in a row. Name the stars on those teams.

We’ll never get everything right, but we can remember “murderers’ row” in baseball, the four-horsemen in football, the CCC camps that helped lift us out of the Great Depression, and we can sing, play and work together now and nudge the world to better.

Columnist Rich Wandschneider lives in Joseph.