Browsing in Amoeba Records, I remembered my son's failed quest a few months back to find something called 'The Langley Schools Music Project', that project being a self-described 'guitar-strumming hippie teacher' in the late 70's letting kids in music class sing and play songs they actually liked! I found it, bought it, then brought it home to find myself unable to stop playing it. As the music teacher later recalled, the kids were in touch, supremely, with the themes of all great music--sadness & joy.
A bit of context from indie music website Pitchfork:
Most kids go through some kind of music education in school; probably in elementary school, as secondary schools usually don't have the time or resources to force every kid to partake in music each year. What usually happens is that kids will go through some kind of "general" music class wherein they learn to sing "Kumbaya" in solfege, or organize a performance of "Jingle Bell Rock" on recorders and triangles for the PTA meeting. And people wonder why arts programs are increasingly being cut from public school curriculum.
There are a number of theorists out there with interesting ideas about how we should be teaching our kids about music. German composer Carl Orff had an interesting idea about education: "Since the beginning of time, children have not liked to study. They would much rather play, and if you have their interests at heart, you will let them learn while they play." Most of you probably had some kind of Music Ed experience-- think about it, and consider if it seemed based on anything close to a concept of "play." I remember a lot of being forced to sing "Freres Jacques," and I can hardly blame the kids who knew it wasn't cool to do that stuff. It wasn't, and I doubt anyone, teacher included, got anything important out of that stuff.
In 1976, Canadian music teacher Hans Fenger was inspired by Orff's concept, and decided to commence on a project involving students from several elementary schools in the provi
ncial Langley region, British Columbia. By his own admission, Fenger knew little about teaching music to children, but trusted the kids' grasp of what they liked enough to arrange this project. Chiefly, this project involved recording a group of students in a school gym on two-track, performing their favorite tunes and playing instruments developed by Orff (for use in his Schulwerk program). The recordings were never supposed to be widely distributed, until producer/author Irwin Chusid (Songs in the Key of Z) heard them, and the decision was made to make them available worldwide. So, in the end, a completely local, unpolished music education project is now at the fingertips of serious music fans everywhere.
Fenger himself writes in the booklet accompanying the CD (finally released in 2001), "I knew virtually nothing about conventional music education, and...I knew nothing about what children's music was supposed to be. But the kids had a better grasp of what they liked--emotion, drama and making music as a group. This was not the way music was traditionally taught, but I never liked conventional 'children's music', which is condescending and ignores the reality of children's lives, which can be dark and scary. These children hated 'cute'. They cherished songs that evoked loneliness and sadness."
Here is the 60 student Langley School Music Project performing 'In My Room', 'You're So Good To Me' & 'Desperado'. Actually, the latter is a solo turn by 9 year-old Sheila Behman singing a song about romantic disillusionment -- typically, a subject brooded upon by those much older than 9. But as Fenger notes, Behman "sang it without a trace of sentimentality, a literal reading. I always felt "Desperado" was better than versions by the Eagles or Linda Ronstadt."
As Pitchfork says, this is an...
incredible solo vocal version of a tune that I always thought was extremely cornball. I would go so far as to say that this version of the song, with a young singer performing with so much heartfelt, delicate emotion I seriously almost cried, is definitive.
NPR has in its archives 2001 interviews with both Hans Fenger and Sheila Behman here.
