RE: Where's the Ruach?

[Adrian A. Durlester <durleste...>]

Jeff:

I don't think you are alone in your experiences or your feelings. Here in 
Fargo, in our small Jewish community, it is even more important to "maintain 
the ruach" to help our kids keep some sense of identity with klal yisrael. Yet 
exactly the scenarios you describe have been my experience here in Fargo. I 
would add that it is even beginning to happen to the adults. For us, there is a 
core group in the 21-35 range for whom the music is a central part of their 
Jewish experience. We have few adults in the 35-55 range that have the 
identification with the folksong era anymore. For them it has been supplanted. 
Oh yes, it makes for great nostalgia (witness what happened at the Biennial RAC 
concert) but those moments are rare and far between.

I have been told by some teachers and parents that the 4-8 grade kids no longer 
join actively in the singing because it isn't "cool." There is a heightened 
sense of individualism and a diminishing sense of community.

Nothing seems to get through to them. Not the "old standards" nor the slick 
California style pop (you know who I mean,) nor even the rock sounds of Sam, Ma 
Tovu, etc.

Have we failed to pass our legacy down? Yes, we have. We've given up trying to 
fight the changes. After all, look what happened. The things we marched and 
protested for-and finally won. It's all been turned topsy-turvy now and our 
gains are being taken away. So weary and disillusioned, we stop fighting. We 
adopt and embrace the new technologies (and I am as guilty of that as anyone.) 
But what have we given up in the process?

We look for "fixes." We try little tricks-changing environment, reorganizing a 
space, different songs, adding percussion, interactivity, etc. All of this 
makes us feel as if we are attacking the problem. The reality is, these only 
address the symptoms.

Are you (and we) getting stale? Probably. We are, few of us, creative geniuses 
from which brilliant melodies flow daily from our birth until the day of our 
deaths. We instead have little musical epiphanies and rely on those to carry us 
through the bad times. Problem is, we are running out of epiphanies to carry us 
on.

Your list of the possible causes is on the mark. Minimal music in the schools. 
Minimal music everywhere. Even on TV. Gone are the days of full-fledged theme 
songs. Now we get snippets and jingles.

Folk singing needs a new "target." Oh, a few try to lament the state of society 
and sing cautionary songs about technologies. But they are so out of the 
mainstream in viewpoint that they are overlooked. We need to find a more 
mainstream issue to spur a new round of folk singing. We're already doing it 
for the 40-6- crowd. The spiritual/renewal/healing stuff you and Debbie and 
others are writing-they are the folk songs of this era. But they are, 
unfortunately, not for this generation.

The single guitar or piano can't compete. But is the problem in the 
orchestration or is it in the content? Remember, the Jewish rock stuff doesn't 
seem to be getting through either, except in Orthodox circles. Making the music 
MTV like isn't the solution in and of itself.

What made a Pete Seeger concert special? The music? The message? Neither? A 
combination of both? Or other factors? I vote for other factors. The folk music 
of the 60s appealed to the secularized Jew and Christian looking for some 
remnant of Judaism or Christianity to cling to. Now we have entered a 
post-modern age of theology, with a renewal of spiritual quest and a resurgence 
of interest in more traditional worship forms. How can we create a folk music 
that speaks to this?

Are we afraid to try this new spiritual/healing/traditional stuff on our kids? 
Why do we fear that? (Parent's reactions? Kids disconnectedness?) Maybe that is 
what they are looking for. Maybe we are wrong to assume it's just for adults.

The again, maybe I'm totally off base with that idea.

Your comment about the increasing complexity of the music strikes me as true. 
But then, maybe it's off base as well. Maybe today's kids can handle more 
complex music-just not the kind that requires them to read music. Maybe it's 
just us older farts that have trouble. (It never ceased to amaze me how, during 
my childhood, my sister and all my friends never had trouble understanding and 
learning lyrics to the songs on the radio, whereas I, the classical prodigy, 
never seemed to be able to get them.)

I'm no curmudgeon, and neither are you. So that is not the root of our 
inability to understand "where kids are today." Is it perhaps because we have 
to work to accept the new things, but the kids grow up with them as matter of 
fact? Surely that is as true for preceding generations. Or is the accelerated 
pace of change a major factor?

Maybe that's what we need to sing to? The lack of constants? Or would the kids 
be disconnected from that and maybe we need to sing about the joys of constant 
change (if there are any?)

What do kids perceive as the wrongs in our society? When we figure that out, 
maybe we'll know where to go from here.

I have no answers. I'm just writing this for catharsis as you likely did. But 
surely, among the three groups you have written to, we can brainstorm a few 
ideas.

Adrian

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adrian A. Durlester  -  durleste (at) plains(dot)nodak(dot)edu
Production Manager, Festival Concert Hall, North Dakota State University
Director of Music, Temple Beth El, Fargo ND
List-Owner for hanashir (at) shamash(dot)org; Co-Owner for L-Torah (at) 
shamash(dot)org
Editor, Bim Bam (for Torah Aura Productions)
Evening Program Chair, CAJE 23 - San Antonio TX, Aug 9-13, 1998
Alternate Email: aad (at) iname(dot)com  adriand (at) aol(dot)com