Between Rooms and Voices

Fin de Siècle: I will be as a construction

http://www.oregonartscommission.org/creative-oregon

And a review from James Yearly:

http://catabolicguiltcalendar.blogspot.com/

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On September 14th, I will be premiering a piece of music at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Time Based Art Festival. Commissioned by the estate of the poet Leslie Scalapino, it sets three of her poem-plays, each titled Fin de Siècle, to an acoustic ensemble featuring five voices, violin, cello, trumpet, trombone, piano and percussion. It is about 50 minutes long, and will be performed at Washington school, between 12th and 13th and Stark in SE Portland. The show starts at 8:30.
Tickets are available by clicking the link to the PICA website here.

I’m lucky to be including images from the work of photographer and activist Themba Lewis. More information about his amazing work is here: www.thembalewis.com.

The private stories are always the best ones

At a museum like the Rock Hall, there are so many private stories that are necessarily protected and kept out of view because the celebrity associated with rock stars has a private side. And rock stars are also just people who don’t necessarily want all the facts about their lives out in the open.

One thing about exploring the history of women is that the private must be made public, and the personal becomes political. Although this is an old saw, it sings a new tune when we are talking about the materials in the “Women who Rock: Vision, Passion, Power” exhibit. When we saw Wanda Jackson’s dress, a kind of shabby-looking red, white and blue number hanging slackly next to her hand-decorated guitar, our tour guide mentioned that when the museum had asked Jackson for items to display, she didn’t have many dress from the early period.  She explained that her mom made all her dresses by hand, and because they were poor, would often recycle elements, such as fringe and rhinestones, in dress after dress.

What we saw hanging at the museum were elements that may have graced the famous dress that did not cover her shoulders when she first played at the Grand Ole Opry. She was forced by the host to wear a jacket on stage because her dress was “too revealing.” We might have been looking at elements from the dress she wore on Town Hall Party in 1958 when she belted, “You gotta rock your baby all night long” in her growling, assertive voice.(Watch the video here.) Who knows where that fringe had been. But this tidbit of information, which doesn’t appear anywhere in the text of the exhibit or in the catalogue, is the one I keep thinking about. Her mom made her dresses. They were poor and had to make due and recycle.

These stories resonate with people, and especially young people. These kind of details can fuel a discussion about the socio-economic conditions for a young white woman playing music in the segregated American south in the 1950s, and can connect the day-to-day elements of music with the flashes of celebrity and fame that otherwise occupy these exhibits.

I felt very lucky to be able to talk with educators at the Rock Hall’s Teacher Institute about how women who rock can be a way into history and music for many different kinds of learners. We talked about how girls’ singing and dancing games, like “Little Sally Walker,” provide an unbroken link between girls who lived in a time before widespread electricity and ourselves, and the importance of these games in different modes of getting along, different modes of singing, dancing and playing together. (Listen here: Little Sally Walker) If we say, “Girls’ games don’t have anything to do with rock ‘n’ roll,” we are wrong.  If we say the fringe doesn’t matter, we are also wrong. To best connect younger learners with the significance of popular music in American life, in their lives, we have to pay attention to these less obvious, less conventional historical details of the lives of girls and women. The Rock Hall, together with the library and archive opening next year, have tremendous potential to keep telling these important stories, in order to connect to a new generation of learners. I, for one, can’t wait to see what they come up with.

Otherwise, I’m putting most of my brain power into work I’m doing with Diane Pecknold (from the University of Louisville) on a book about how tweens produce and consume music.

I’ve also got some ongoing work related to teaching “Women who Rock” classes at Rock Camps. Daphne Carr and I have put out a survey to people involved with teaching these materials at camps in hopes that we can help them streamline it and also potentially provide more resources for teachers (and campers).

Related to this, in two weeks, I’m flying with three other people who have been involved with Girls’ Rock Camps to give a presentation at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. I’ll be talking about using the histories of women in popular music to engage k-12 students. Here are the blurbs for the workshops we will be presenting:

Accentuate the Positive with Crystal White (Girls Rock!DC)

Why do girls participate and speak out more at rock camp than they do in school? In this workshop we will discuss how adults can create a positive environment that promotes girls’ self-esteem, engages girls to actively participate and promotes collaborative group work and growth. Learn how rock camp volunteers and staff successfully model listening and collaborative behavior.

Express Yourself! (and change the world in your classroom) with Michelle Rush (Girls Rock! DC)

Learn to engage your whole classroom, tap into students’ creativity, raise their self confidence, and empower them to stand up for themselves and others through art–while addressing the content standards!

Women who Rock: Inclusion and innovation in history and social studies classrooms with Sarah Dougher

Learning about girls and women who have participated in popular music traditions throughout the 20th century is an amazing way to integrate music into the history and social studies classrooms. Although girls (and boys) often have access to contemporary popular music where women abound, mainstream images of women and girls are often either over-sexualized or they present unrealistic and consumer-driven versions of “girl power.” By looking at the ways girls and women have made popular music in the past, students can learn how to recognize stereotypes, discuss historical realities for girls and women of other eras (including the ways that not only gender, but race and class play a role in these realities), and learn about trailblazing women who are traditionally left out of music histories, such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Wanda Jackson and ESG.

Hands On Learning Rock Camp Style with STS (Rock n Roll Camp For Girls, Portland, OR)

Life skills development workshops make Rock Camp more than just a music school.  Check out  teaching tools, techniques and rad learning ideas utilized at the Portland RnRC4G and beyond.  What works and doesn’t work in your classroom?  This workshop is a collaboration and skill share and culminates in a group drum lesson anyone can learn.

This is a photo of Leslie Scalapino taken by her husband, Tom White.

I am hard at work on a new piece setting three poem/plays by Leslie Scalapino called Fin de Siècle. This project was commissioned by Leslie’s family in her honor; she died in May of 2010.

The first of these three will be performed on June 15 at Holocene in Portland. This is the first time I have composed for anything besides guitar and piano, so I am pretty excited to hear how it will all come together.

I did a test run of the very beginning of the piece in February when we held a memorial for Leslie at Reed College. She graduated from that school in 1966, and has been an unflagging supporter of the institution.

Good news – I also got an Oregon Arts Commission grant to record this piece in September, and it will premiere at the TBA festival on September 14, at the Works at Washington School. More info to come on that.

The Flash Choir will be featured prominently at the performance on June 15, although working with other musicians besides me and Pat Janowski.  The choir is morphing into an institution which can participate in other projects with other people. There are still people meeting on Monday nights at PNCA; I don’t know the details but will post them on the Flash Choir blog www.flashchoir.blogspot.com.

Both of these poems are from A Bride of Narrow Escape, Cloudbank Books, 2006.

Thirst

Your eyes must stay open
To the color of flowers.
Wherever their bright flash
Catches your gaze, water flows.

You see rain
Days after it stopped raining.
In your breath, you taste
the river running underground.

Replenish

Last night the rain held me under
A roof of sound. The night long
rain hung its murmur over my sleep.
Dreams came and fled, each
A night-opening bloom
that shut itself back into bud
before morning arrived.

My breath and heartbeat followed
A simple-minded routine,
In, out, pull, give way.
Part of me grew
A little more of me sank,
The lost were mostly replaced.
Rain fed whatever was mine.