Yo-Yo Ma on multicultural music

I heard a terrific “This I Believe” essay by Yo-Yo Ma on NPR this afternoon. As I was cruising down the highway, I was moved by his terse but passionate justification for his work as a musician – especially his role as a cultural and musical bridge-builder.

I could not agree with him more and it struck me that musicians in the church can and must be about this same sort of work. When planning worship, we do not have to choose from just one musical, cultural or spiritual tradition but can choose from them all. We can find things to love in each! And it is amazing to hear such an accomplished and thoughtful musician say that as he has embraced this diversity, even choosing to move toward what he does not understand, it has opened up new meaning for his music-making. I have to believe that the same holds true for the church. Our faith will deepen and grow as we listen to, learn from and love the music of others.

I’m including the text of his essay below and you can also listen by clicking here.

“I believe in the infinite variety of human expression.

I grew up in three cultures: I was born in Paris, my parents were from China and I was brought up mostly in America. When I was young, this was very confusing: everyone said that their culture was best, but I knew they couldn’t all be right.

I felt that there was an expectation that I would choose to be Chinese or French or American. For many years I bounced among the three, trying on each but never being wholly comfortable. I hoped I wouldn’t have to choose, but I didn’t know what that meant and how exactly to “not choose.”

However, the process of trying on each culture taught me something. As I struggled to belong, I came to understand what made each one unique. At that point, I realized that I didn’t need to choose one culture to the exclusion of another, but instead I could choose from all three.

The values I selected would become part of who I was, but no one culture needed to win. I could honor the cultural depth and longevity of my Chinese heritage, while feeling just as passionate about the deep artistic traditions of the French and the American commitment to opportunity and the future.

So, rather than settling on any one of the cultures in which I grew up, I now choose to explore many more cultures and find elements to love in each. Every day I make an effort to go toward what I don’t understand. This wandering leads to the accidental learning that continually shapes my life.

As I work in music today, I try to implement this idea — that the music I play, like me, doesn’t belong to only one culture. In recent years, I have explored many musical traditions.

Along the way, I have met musicians who share a belief in the creative power that exists at the intersection of cultures. These musicians have generously become my guides to their traditions. Thanks to them and their music I have found new meaning in my own music making.

It is extraordinary the way people, music and cultures develop. The paths and experiences that guide them are unpredictable. Shaped by our families, neighborhoods, cultures and countries, each of us ultimately goes through this process of incorporating what we learn with who we are and who we seek to become. As we struggle to find our individual voices, I believe we must look beyond the voice we’ve been assigned, and find our place among the tones and timbre of human expression.”

video clips of All Shall Be Amen and Alleluia

Here are a few clips from Friday’s rehearsal that I uploaded to YouTube. I wish they were a little longer, but they give a sense of how the music and dance went together.

A tapdancing saint

I’ve been traveling a lot in the past month. This weekend was a quick jaunt to New York City for a fundraiser. For the last 6 years I’ve been the composer and musical director for La Compagnia de’ Colombari (The Company of the Dovecote) and it has become a very important part of my creative life. We’ve been working on an adaptation of medieval Mystery Plays, Laude in Urbis (Praises in the City), which we have performed on the streets of Orvieto, Italy during the Feast of Corpus Christi. The piece finds creative energy in a collision and juxtaposition of texts, cultures, musical styles and languages – all within the framework of a populist (i.e. street theater) aesthetic. The “frame” play is St. Luke’s account of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, post-resurrection. As Christ comes alongside, he opens the Scriptures to them. In our production, we literally walk the audience through the town performing various stories from the Bible. These are alternately pious and bawdy tellings of The Creation, The Fall, Noah and the Flood, The Sacrifice of Isaac, The Nativity and the Harrowing of Hell. Music and dance provide glue between the scenes and invite the actors and audience to move and sing together, breaking down the barrier between them (no “fourth” wall). In the final scene, Christ breaks bread and the disciples finally recognize him, at which point an actual feast of wine and food is shared by those who have attended the performance. Talk about communion! The piece is not evangelistic in nature but invites people to hear and see these well-known stories anew – through poetic and idiomatic translations of the original Medieval texts (both Italian and English); striking casting choices (imagine an African-American woman playing God and a child on a red motor scooter playing the Holy Spirit); through music that spans from chant to Dylan-esque folk music; and through lighting and gesture that find their inspiration in the frescos of Fra Angelico and Piero dalla Francesca. I think we are also (perhaps secondarily) doing theology through theater – helping actors and audience to explore fundamental questions about God, humans and the relationship between the Divine and Humankind. It’s exciting work.

I flew into Laguardia on Friday morning and headed to the Museum of the City of New York in Harlem, where we’ve made some great community contacts. The plan is to get to a point where we have two events a year: our Corpus Christi piece in May or June and an Advent/Christmas piece in Harlem during December. We especially want to draw from the amazing creative energy within New York City, including the wonderful mix of African-American and Latino culture in this part of the city.

We had a long afternoon and evening of rehearsal, in which we pieced together an invocation from a Trinidadian poet, several Psalm settings (two newly written for this occasion), a small excerpt from the Second Shepherd’s Play, an Italian Christmas carol and then a finale with all the actors musicians and dancers. This final section included a piece that I composed for my friend Damayanthi Niles’ ordination back in April. It’s a setting of a prayer by St. Augustine of Hippo for choir and percussion.

“All shall be Amen and Alleluia.
We shall rest and we shall see.
We shall see and we shall know.
We shall know and we shall love.
We shall love and we shall praise.
Behold our end, which is no end.”
- from An African Prayer Book, edited by Desmond Tutu

The vocal parts are set in an almost chantlike fashion with lots of imitation and open fifths and fourths (sort of a cross between minimalism and Medieval organum). When you add the steady drive of the percussion underneath it all, it’s pretty exciting. I was satisfied with the piece when the choir at Trinity sang it back in April and was happy to adapt it for this context. What made this particular performance memorable was the inclusion of thirty 8-year old tap-dancers! Thanks to our growing relationships in Harlem and the tireless work of our artistic director Karin Coonrod, La Compagnia connected with Community Works, an arts organization that provides dance and other Arts enrichment for public school students. I was asked to make an mp3 of the piece and sent it to the dance teachers. Then they choreographed the music and taught it to the students over several weeks.

The rehearsal was pretty amazing. On one end of the room were a group of classically trained singers and a percussionist; on stage at the other side of the room were the tapdancers. And then in the last section of the piece we added step dancers in front of the singers. This style of dance comes out of an African-American context – it’s a high energy, full body movement with rhythmic handclapping and fast movements of the arms and legs. The energy that these four women brought to the piece was just tremendous and put the piece over the top. I thought my piece was already a unique juxtaposition of styles but then add tap dancing and step dancing on top of that. And to think that a group of 8-year olds in Harlem have heard and danced to a setting of St. Augustine!!!! This in itself blows my mind.  A fourth-century saint meets the ‘hood. And the text is such a joyous, positive affirmation that I hope they can carry through their lives.

I have a feeling that this is just the beginning of some new possibilities. The interconnectedness and complementarity of the music and movement have got me imagining other ways that seemingly disparate things can find a resonance and a commonality. So often I want to compartmentalize different artistic and musical expressions, but working on this piece I felt the ONENESS of the Spirit if just for a few hours. I sensed the shared human connection between the saint who wrote this amazing text, the children in all their diversity, the different styles of dance, the singers, and ultimately with the Creator. It was a huge moment of affirmation – of my creative gifts, and of a calling to nurture and build the sorts of bridges that will allow these sorts of moments to occur in the future.