Holiday Music, and Music in General

Michael and I have been living in what could be called the "buckle of the bible belt" for a third of a century. When we arrived I was welcomed with open arms by the small (but not as small as it is now) Jewish community, but in the larger community, being Jewish had the distinction of being "other." At one point when we had half a dozen children from Jewish families in the public schools, one family put pressure on one of the elementary schools to include a Hannukah song in its Christmas program. Who did they choose for a soloist? Our son.

Since adolescence I have had difficulty with Christianity. It invaded my family of origin, and ultimately tore it apart. After I left my adolescent home for Juilliard, I lived in an apartment with born-again Christian roommates who held prayer meetings in the apartment; and they prayed for my conversion. That didn't help things at all. Then I got married and moved to a small town in downstate Illinois.

Living in a Christianity-dominated community for more than half of my life has had its challenges, but it has become my home. The community has changed during the past three decades. There are some things that are worse, and there are some things that are better. Members of the musical community (school-age kids and adults) used to be mostly university professors, spouses of university professors (like me), or children of university professors (like our kids). Now only one of my students is in a family that is connected with the university. Forty-some-odd years ago the string program in the public schools was discontinued. The public schools still don't have a string program, but we have private teachers who have built a string program that is not connected with the school system.

In our little world the making of music seems to be seeping away from academia into the community (where I believe it belongs).

One of my students told me that they were doing a Hanukkah song for their elementary school chorus concert. It had a violin part, and her music teacher was wondering if my student could learn it. I know for a fact that there are no Jewish kids in the school (or in any school in the area), and there are no parents vying for representation during the holidays. It seems that as our community is becoming more racially and culturally diverse, it is also becoming open to more musical possibilities.

[When I think of that time in the grocery store when the father of a family of string players asked me how I felt about playing Christian music during this time of year (I was too shocked at his question to respond at the time), I realize that our musical community (and its parents) has also grown. No parent of a string student would ever ask me such a question now. Now they give me Hanukkah cards with words of thanks for teaching their kids.]

This part of the country is divided politically, and you can imagine the dominant political worldview is a republican one. I am pretty sure that the majority of people I teach, make music with, and write music for have a different political mindset from the one I have. But I will never know for sure because we NEVER TALK ABOUT POLITICS!

Music is a safe haven from all that is happening in the outer world. It is a safe place for people to make the kind of vital connections that we need in order to feel like human beings. I believe it always has been, and hope that it always will be.



This ensemble, made of people of all ages and abilities (for two of my students this was their very first concert), had about two hours of rehearsal time for this concert ('tis the season of snow interfering with plans to rehearse). The program included a Hanukkah song: the string version of my own "Hanukkah Latkes," which you can listen to here, if you like. Everybody enjoyed playing it.