Successes and failures

So today was a day of ups and downs.

It began pretty well in musician class. My musicianship classes got lessons on sonata form. I thought I developed a pretty great lesson plan for teaching it, starting with a drill on tonic/dominant and then using a Bach Invention and the Mozart C Major sonata to demonstrate. The 9 and 11:00 classes went great; there was applause at the end of each class! Who knows if they'll keep the concepts but it seemed like they were getting a grip on it (I've always thought sonata form was easy to hear if explained properly).

10:00 conducting was also fun. I found a trio in the band books arranged for instruments in every clef and transposition so I had people bring their instruments and we created a small lab orchestra for everyone to try to conduct. With 30 people in the class it was hard to give anyone more than a quick run-through and some comments but at least some people had a dose of being up front and leading for a couple of minutes. We'll do the same thing tomorrow.

I began teaching Dona Nobis Pacem in the band class. We did our breathing exercises and scales as always and then I tried to sell them on the singing. I met surprisingly little resistance. I think they realize that their voices are more pleasant to listen to than their instruments at this particular stage, and I've also noticed that Kurds seem to love to sing. I've often heard someone walking down the street suddenly break into some kind of wailing melody, charming and very expressive.
The band is learning the song quickly and it sounds quite nice. My translator was thrilled about it-- he thinks it will be a hit!

Things started to go downhill after lunch. Clarinet class was draggy. About halfway about 5 students poked their heads in the door and asked to attend the class; they were clarinet students from the area. I explained that they were welcome to listen, but since they had missed the band classes and the scale warms ups that day (as well as all the other classes) they couldn't play the pieces that we were rehearsing for the concert with us. They sat down quietly enough, but about ten minutes later, they started pestering me to let them play. "The music is easy! Why can't we play with them? Dr. ____ said we could play" Blah blah blah. John Ferguson sometimes says at the end of a day "welcome to Divastan". I stood my ground and said they couldn't play and they grumpily left.

Then came the 3:00 musicianship class. This one is dominated by the older Arab musicians from Mosul who are more experienced but less amenable to learning from me. Today, only two showed up at 3:10. On top of that, the piano sheet music that I had borrowed from Boran, the girl who does a lot of our translating, had been stolen from the piano where I had left it. This is actually not uncommon here, people are so desperate for music, but I felt terrible about having left her music lying out. Between the missing music and the small class I felt upset enough that I ended up cancelling the class for the day. Afterwards, a contingent of the guys came up to me and apologized for being late, and also Boran's musc turned up (someone was photocopying it so it was only "temporarily" stolen) so all's well that ends well.

Next was trumpet class. My trumpets are coming along with the duet. I put Umar from Basra on the first part which is easier to count and less chromatic, and the more talented younger one from Baghdad on second. The Baghdadi guy has a maid/nanny/surrogate mom who attends class with him sometimes and she has grown quite attached to the classes. I saw her singing in the band class today and invited her to sing with the group. She dresses as a rather conservative Muslim woman but she was clearly loving the music and today she pestered me with all kinds of questions about music and also about teaching and money etc. She has a son of her own who plays piano but he had to quit for at least a year because of some kind of finger injury (I didn't ask if it was a result of the Baghdad violence).

The last class of the day was the flutes. I'm still hoping to have them play the trio version of Dona Nobis before we sing it on stage but it's kind of astounding how slowly they are learning it. Everyone got sent home with desperate pleading from me to practice more.

I ate dinner tonight with one of the translators, Omar. He is an interesting guy. In med school, speaks very good English, French and Turkish (and like me bemoans the lack of a decent Kurdish textbook). He is an Arab from Mosul but has converted himself to Christianity. We had a far-ranging discussion from American culture to languages to Jewish tradition (like many, he cautioned me against letting it be known too widely that I am Jewish) to the bible and the Book of Mormon. A friendly and thoughtful guy, like many of our translators.