Singing Test

As with many of the activities I do with my English class, I stole the concept from Señor Martín. I teach English to my Samoan students the way he taught Spanish to his American students. It’s not exactly the same, but there’s some overlap. If nothing else, the singing tests brings closure to studying the lyrics and melody of a song, and it’s always fun to watch the kids squirm a little when they have to get up in front of the class to perform.

The test essentially works as follows. After I’ve taught the lyrics and the melody and I’m satisfied with students’ comprehension of those things, I schedule a test. The test consists of groups of around 8 students getting up in front of the class and performing the song. No one gets graded for anything other than participation, but pride is a strong motivating factor, and most students are willing to put in some effort. When all the groups have gone, the panel of judges (i.e. me) announces the first, second, and third place winners. So far I haven’t given prizes, but I think I might try that sometime soon.

When I first tried this with the class, figuring out groups was difficult. As with most social situations in Samoa, students sit clumped into boys and girls, as though there’s an invisible border. I prefer each group has a similar gender make-up, and I found that having an entire row of students group together was the best way to do this since rows run perpendicular to The Gender Divide.

At the beginning I told the students they had to memorize the lyrics, but this resulted in uneven performances where entire groups would go silent or fade into gibberish for long stretches of melody. So I changed my mind and started allowing students to hold lyric sheets. Staying away from the lyrics sheet earns points with the judges though.

Judging tends to be extremely arbitrary and subjective, I’m not ashamed to say. In fact, the more I ham up the judging the more fun the kids have. There’s a reason Simon Cowell was so captivating on American Idol: people like a reaction. When I announce the results, there’s usually a big crowd reaction, hooting and hollering.

We’ve done this four times now, and the kids are familiar with the routine at this point, and have begun to up the ante a bit. During today’s singing test for Cat Stevens’ “Moonshadow,” several groups used percussionists, and two used conductors to keep the group together. The last group that got up to perform did rather dramatic curtain call. The judges gave them points for style.

With the singing test comes task of finding a new song to teach. So far we’ve done Peter, Paul, and Mary; Herman’s Hermits; The Beatles; and Cat Stevens. Apparently I’m trying to raise a new generation of hippies. I’m thinking Simon & Garfunkel next. “Mrs. Robinson”? It might be difficult to explain the cultural context of “Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio,” but the kids would have a ball with the “Woo woo woo” part. I’ll think about it.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Sometimes the gender homogeneity doesn't work out. Today we had an entire row of boys. They did all right.

This group, the curtain callers, tied for first place with the group in the above-the-fold photo.

This was my chalky hand after my science class today. There's got to be a better way to say that.

Salelologa Transfer

“I hate it,” said Harris. “It’s genius.” Harris was this guy I met near the end of my junior year of college. He was a film student, and he was talking about a scene in the movie “Almost Famous” in which the characters are all on a tour bus, and they’re all angry at one another, and then they slowly and spontaneously start singing Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer.” I think Harris was simultaneously jealous of Cameron Crowe’s brilliance and annoyed at the simplicity and contrivance. Oh well, Harris.

Spontaneous singing is a special thing in America; not something we experience on a regular basis. I remember my family once started singing “American Pie” during a game of Catch Phrase. There was also one night at the CNET sales conference in 2006 when our party bus of inebriated salespeople broke out into Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”. Beyond that, I have a hard time recalling any other big musical moments.

I wouldn’t say it’s common in Samoa, but I would say it’s more common. People sing a lot here, and it seems like everyone knows all the words. Our staff party in December was essentially a 2-hour sing-along at a public restaurant in Apia. It was pretty great. But it didn’t seem quite as spontaneous as what just happened on the bus.

I stayed at Supy’s house last night, and he, Jordan, and I took the bus into Salelologa to go to the bank and the Peace Corps office and such. The ride wasn’t too long, maybe 20 or 30 minutes.

I took a seat next to Jordan, Supy sat across the aisle from us.

Last night I whined a lot about the buses that run from the wharf back to Apia, and how I’m not excited about taking that bus tomorrow. So when we got on the bus this afternoon, Jordan asked if there were other things I didn’t like about the bus.

On the contrary, I very much enjoy riding the bus. I like public transportation in general. My first time in New York City, my friend Dustin and I packed our trip wall-to-wall with tourist stuff, but my favorite part was the subway. I like moving, I like going places. I like the idea of a bunch of strangers coming together to share the same space.

And it was impeccable because the moment I finished explaining all this to Jordan, we could hear it coming from the back.

At first it was just 2 or 3 guys in the very back row of the bus, all singing—not at the top of their lungs, but not quietly either. It seemed to move like a wave up toward the front, row by row. After 20 seconds, the entire bus might as well have been a choir.

Forgive me, I didn’t recognize the song. But for a moment, the bus was very into it.

And just as quickly as it started, the song and the moment were over.

I looked at Jordan. “Yeah. The bus is cool.”

I hope you’re well. Picture below.

The choir. Me halfway in the frame in my aviators.

Sing-Along

I can play piano by ear—I’m not talking Mozart or Dave Brubeck, but I can instinctively bang out a simple melody line. I only bring this up because my singing voice is so terrible it was sometimes unclear to my family and others whether I knew the tune of a particular song. They’d shake their heads and tell me I was way off, but then I’d play the notes I thought I was singing and from that it became clear I just couldn’t sing worth a dime. These memories came rushing back this afternoon when I sang a song with my English class.

And yet singing was my idea. I took the idea straight from my high school Spanish classes with Señor Martín. See, my English class is a bit of a conundrum: they’re stuck somewhere between TESL and TOEFL. Until recently, I never understood the difference between English as a Second Language and English as a Foreign Language. Now I see there’s a whole spectrum there.

English is prevalent in Samoa; street signs, television, shop names, and newspapers are all primarily written in English. In that sense, students here speak English as a second language. But for my year 10s—essentially the lowest scorers from last year’s Year 9 class—many are so immersed in a bubble of Samoan, English almost becomes more of a foreign language. I’m not berating them or calling them inferior, but this distinction in their exposure to English commands a different style of teaching in the classroom.

So I feel like in designing lesson plans, I need to draw a little less on my own experience in English classes and a little more on my experiences in Spanish and Samoan classes. And my favorite part of both of those was singing. So when I made my lesson plan for today, I scheduled a song.

In my days in Señor Martín class, he would print out the lyrics to a Los Lobos song and then play it for us on the stereo and we’d sing along. Before walking into the classroom this afternoon, I hadn’t considered the absence of the song sheets and the stereo. But everything about my job is improvising. So I wrote the lyrics on the board and had the students copy them into their notebooks.

And then it came time for the song.

Back in Fausaga when Phil and I sang with the EFKS choir during training, the choir director would teach new songs through a painstaking process of him singing each part over and over. Very few people know how to read sheet music so aural is essentially the only way to go. I thought the whole thing was ridiculous. Until today.

I didn’t really consider the gravity of this until the lyrics were on the board. In the absence of a stereo and/or musical instruments, what other way is there to teach the melody except to sing it?

Now, when I said I’d written a lesson plan for today, I kinda lied. I thought about singing, but I never thought about an actual song. I brought my laptop to the lab today, so in the last moments before I headed over to teach English, I consulted iTunes for a song to teach. In the end I decided on Peter, Paul, and Mary’s “Early in the Morning” because it’s a relatively straightforward folk song, and in this country, the slightly Christian slant only makes it more perfect.

Little did I realize the song requires more of a range than “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Teaching it to the class, I’d start the first line singing in my lowest register possible, and still had to resort to voice-crackingly high notes that I simply could not reach. Students, of course, found this hilarious, which was fine except it was difficult to teach them when they were doubled over.

If the lesson was successful, it was only because singing is such a part of the culture here. For one, though I was unable to sing the melody, my kids were impressively able to intuit it. Secondly, their voices are in great shape, and they’re ready and willing to belt out anything at the top of their lungs. In fact, they were so loud I felt a little guilty for disrupting classes on either side of me. Then again, breaking into song in the middle of the day is nothing new.

All in all, the whole thing wasn’t so bad, though next time it might be better to bring a piano.

I hope you’re well.

Students at school.

Lean On Me

Apparently the USC football team has been psyching itself up before practice this season with gospel renditions of Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me”. Word got around to Mr. Withers who showed up to practice to host a sing-along. Now, true, the sing-along may not have spawned as many wins as I would prefer, but Head Coach Pete Carroll knows that it’s a moving song. And so does whoever picked the music for my school’s prizegiving. The students at my school spent a good 2 hours working out and rehearsing their rendition yesterday.

I brought my book to school because I knew we were in for the long haul, and as entertaining as it is to hear good harmony mixed with a second-rate synthesizer, I figured the opportunity for reading might arise. And it did. I finished my book. And just as I was finishing the kids started applauding and whooping.

I hadn’t been paying attention, and it turned out we were holding auditions for the “Lean on Me” lead singer, and the kids were pretty good about applauding everyone after they finished. Perhaps the strangest part, or the part that was most different from how things would be in The States, is that each lead singer auditioned with the entire student body choir.

Someone new would be called to the front, she’d sing the opening verse, then everyone would break into song and swaying to the beat and they sounded pretty good. It’s kinda hard to not sound good when you’re singing “Lean On Me” and you’ve been trained to harmonize since birth.

Over the two hours, we saw a slew of candidates from all 5 grade levels. There was a year 9 that had an amazing voice, but kept pluralizing “sorrow” at the end of the first line. Admittedly the good voice should have outweighed the poor grammar, but I couldn’t handle it. I was happy when they decided not to go with her.

A bunch of my kids got up and sang (okay, almost all of them are my kids, but I’m more apt to claim the ones with whom I’ve developed a good friendship) to mixed results. One of my particularly scholarly year 13s, Maryhellen, who I saw playing soccer during the Amazing Race, did a pretty good job. Between computers, soccer, and singing, Maryhellen is quite the Renaissance woman.

Only girls tried out. Though Bill Withers sang the original, the version that is currently popular in Samoa has a synthesized backbeat and is sung by a woman.

In the end, Goretti, a blithe year 11 with a sweet voice and a knack for improvisation, was chosen to sing the song at Prizegiving. She’s the one with the microphone in the photo up top. I got video of the song in rehearsal and during the real thing, but you’ll have to wait until I get to Ausetalia for me to post it.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Alofa from 9.1 takes a turn.

The girls' side. Maryhellen is in the back/semi-back row, third from the left, next to my year 13 Marie, who makes frequent blog appearances.

The boys' side.

The student body/choir.

mp3 players

My year 12s and 13s are constantly late to class. I had a double-period with my year 12s on Wednesday, and only 4 showed up for the first period. And today was no exception for my year 13 class. I turned on all of their computers, and then sat playing Freecell for 9 minutes. And then Marie sauntered through the door and asked where the rest of our class was. Good question, Marie. She went to look for them while I put the jack of spades on the queen of hearts.

She came back and said the rest of the class had gone to a marketing event at the National University of Samoa. Two weeks before the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate exam and I have two hours with my kids, and they schedule a field trip. Boo. I looked at Marie, “What do you want to do?” She smirked and walked to the computer at the end of the room.

The computer at the end of the room is popular in all my classes because it has loads and loads of music. I’ve tried repeatedly to purge my classroom of the stuff. Ethical Issues is a unit in the year 13 curriculum, and we talk about piracy and intellectual property. But beyond the moral and legal issues involved, the most annoying thing about having music on the computers in the lab is there are no headphones and one computer playing DJ OK is annoying enough, let alone two or three or five.

One day I went in and cleared all of the music off all the computers in there, and I watched carefully as my year 12s discovered the Grinch had stolen their Christmas. But just like Whoville, they didn’t bat an eye, and they’d already uploaded quite a bit of music from their rogue flash drives by the time the bell rang at the end of the period.

In any case, Marie, who normally sits in the middle of the room, seized the opportunity to acquire new music on her flash drive. Right now I’ve regulated the music selection so there is only remixed music from Samoan DJs and a couple of Samoan artist tracks. Yes, I realize intellectual property exists in Samoa too, but artists here tend to make music readily available to the masses.

It was my last class of the day, and when I finished shutting off the other computers, I walked over to Marie’s computer to watch.

Samoa has clearly defined musical tastes, and it’s amusing to see what American music is popular here. Beyoncé and Akon are huge. On her flash drive, Marie also has mp3s from Rhianna and Lil’ Wayne and Jordan Sparks and Five for Fighting. Yeah, I said it. Five for Fighting.

“Can you help me?” She asks.

I sit down next to her and I scan the flash drive for viruses (there are 7). Then I check the capacity. She has 13 MB remaining. So I recommend we cut some stuff. She runs down the list with a skeptical eye. She nixes Mariah Carey. And Kelly Clarkson. And Chris Brown. I think I probably save the Green Day by getting excited and playing “21 Guns”.

She takes some Savage off the computer. And some Vaniah Toloa. And a couple of DJ OK remixes.

The period passes and we talk about music and Samoa and family, and then the bell rings and she leaves.

I saved you, Green Day. If nothing else, I've kept pop punk alive in Samoa.

I hope you’re well. Pictures will be posted later this evening.















Me and Blakey deconstructing the day at my house.















Student teacher is hanging in there.

On Burning Out, Fading Away, and the Death of Michael Jackson

Afterschool Thursday, I told Mira and Filifili that Michael Jackson died, and after reacting to the news, Mira asked, “What time did this happen?” I thought about giving my answer in Pacific Daylight Time, and then I considered Samoa time, but then I shrugged and said, “During Interval.” We all chuckled. Black humour, but humour nonetheless. But the more I think about it, the more appropriate it is that he died in the middle of the day here because I feel a little in the middle about his death.

Where were you when you heard Heath Ledger died? How about when Ray Charles died? I know exactly where I was when I heard about Ledger: I was working at my desk at CNET when Carmen called out, “Heath Ledger died.” There was an online frenzy. I probably sent an instant message to 20 people. The time between when his body was found and the time word spread to my buddy list was maybe an hour.

I don’t remember how I learned that Ray Charles died. The media fanfare was different back in March 2005 with Facebook just budding and Twitter non-existent or the wide use of text messaging in the United States, but there wasn’t much immediate fanfare anyway. As much as it was news, it wasn’t completely unexpected. Charles was old. News of Charles’s death didn’t oblige the immediacy or intensity of Ledger’s.

In my generation’s first real brush with celebrity death, a passage in Kurt Cobain’s suicide note read, “It is better to burn out than to fade away.” Perhaps this logic explains why Ledger’s death was a media event and Charles’s was quieter and less urgent: Ledger’s star was still burning bright while Charles’s fame had cooled. Though Charles was only 58 when he died, his passing made sense; he got older and he died. Ledger’s death was an anomaly; it was senseless.

And that’s where I think Kurt Cobain is wrong. Perhaps it is amazing to watch a star burn out, but it doesn’t compute. Other than the tragedy of the celebrity lifestyle, there’s nothing to be gained from Ledger’s death. On the other hand, I remember feeling devastated by Charles’s death. His music has a lively glow that endures so well it seems impermeable to aging and death. Charles’s death can’t be blamed on accident or a rock and roll lifestyle; Charles died of complications from old age. That’s a lot more ominous; it’s something none of us can avoid. Perhaps fading away is less shocking, but on some level it is far more menacing.

So did Michael Jackson burn out, or did he fade away? I think he did both.

Media standards point toward burn out. Even in Samoa, I received text messages from Luisa and my sister before and after the news was official. And as soon as I read the first text, I immediately needed to tell someone. Since Digicel has a promotion right now I had 30 free text messages, and I texted half of Peace Corps Samoa with the news. Within 10 minutes of the man’s death in Los Angeles, the news was relayed to rural Savai’i.

Jackson’s death was captivating and awful. He was only 50 years old; by no means an old man. He’d been so hard on his body over the years, and it took its toll. He died young. His death was senseless.

And though his star has certainly faded, its brightness was still shocking. On Thursday afternoon, I had a couple minutes left when I was done with my less in 9.1, so I asked the class if they knew who Michael Jackson was. Despite the kids only being 13 years old, and even though they live in developing country, all of them knew who he was. They were familiar enough with him that when I asked if they knew he had died, they all looked at me like I was crazy. He wasn’t some obscure figure; they knew him well enough that they knew he was still relevant and almost certainly alive. So they shook their heads. I had to clarify that he actually died that day. And when they finally understood, they were shocked.

But it’s undeniable that Jackson’s star had faded. With the scandals and the plastic surgery and the Jesus Juice, things had gotten weird. “Thriller” came out 26 years ago. The man was weathered by life.

So what does that mean that he burned out and faded away? I think in some ways it brings things to a new level. It is wholly deserving of a media event, of specials on TV and radio, of seemingly unending coverage on VH1 (although I’m told VH1 coverage has been minimal). Even on the big radio station here in Samoa, Magik 98.1, they’ve been playing all kinds of MJ tributes. And why not? There’s a lot to make sense of. He had aged, but he was still a star. Still a big star. A big star who had aged. Pretty ominous.

And yet I can’t help feeling ambivalent. The intensity of the media fanfare didn’t have the Heath Ledger intensity because with all of Jackson’s strange health issues, it wasn’t entirely surprising. And I don’t know that his fade away is as menacing as Charles’s; he essentially burned out in the early 1990s, and his life since then has been completely outside my reality.

The man was iconic, and I respect that people are in mourning. But I can't help feeling a little ambivalent. If anything, I feel like we've all been in some kind of mourning over Michael Jackson for a long time.

In any case, I hope you’re not forgetting the Jackson 5 LPs. Pictures below.
















Briony and Erin 78. Erin 78 is finished with her service. She leaves Monday. This and the pictures below were taken at her goodbye dinner last night.
















Rosie, Sara, Cale, Casey.
















Cale and Christian.
















Casey, Kate, Koa, Erin, Sara.

Intro to Music

When brain-storming topics for Cultural Explorations, I’ve considered doing a music post several times, but the topic seems so dangerously broad it would be impossible to capture the music of a nation and a culture and a popular culture in one post. Music is everpresent here, whether students are singing at an assembly, godawful crap is blaring on a bus ride, or Vaiolo is playing music from her cell phone during class (which I’ve politely asked her not to do).

I’ve been listening to the radio for the last two hours, and it’s mostly been pop, but I swear, just moments ago, the Lord’s Prayer (the Protestant version) just came on with a fully synthesized instrumentation and one of those percussion tracks that my dad hates so much. Oh! And it just medleyed (medlied?) into Auld Lang Syne! The next song, not kidding or embellishing, is Jimi Hendrix.

This is indicative of the broad variation that happens on the radio here. It’s almost as though American pop culture came on so fast that Samoa hasn’t figured out what to do with it. It’s like a much more wholesome version of the American culture wars (Willie Nelson just came on.).

Part of the problem also comes from the fact that English is mostly a second language here, which makes it more difficult to differentiate between musical genres. Growing up in California, I heard quite a bit of music from Mexico growing up, and though I discern broad music styles from one another, music on my Spanish radio show would be all over the place. In fact, all of the Spanish music I have on my iPod is thrown into the same “Español” genre. So I guess I won’t be the first to cast a stone.

Part of the problem is also that I’m listening to the less popular Star 96.1. While music on the über-popular Magik 98.1 is distasteful by comparison, it is got a more steady consistency. That consistency involves a bizarre mix of ABBA and hip-hop and strange covers of popular American music with heavy, heavy synthesized backbeats.

One of my students wanted me to copy some files on to her flash drive, and I was able to copy a folder of music she had on there. I think the folder is a relatively accurate cross-section of popular music here. Among other things, it includes:

• Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” remixed to the point that it is only recognizable through the words and melody. The voice has been sped up so he sounds like the 4th chipmunk. There are zooming noises, fake clapping, and man yelling “Ha!” over and over in the background (Incidentally, the real radio release of “I’m Yours” is also popular);
  
• ”Get it Girl” by Keri Hilson (Do people know who this is?);
  
• A Samoan hip-hop song called “Mou Malie ae Manatua Lelei” that has spoken word and a hook. It’s passable, I suppose. I think the title means something like “It’s Fine If You Go, but Remember the Good”.
  
• A track by Samoan artist Vaniah. He’s like a Samoan Aaron Neville singing in the style of Jack Johnson. His stuff is good and catchy;
  
• 16 other tracks of remixed hip-hop and R&B. R&B is referred to here as “slow jams”; and
  
• ”Hey There Delilah” by the Plain White Tees.

Really, it’s difficult to convey all this without including links to samples. I regret this, and I’ll work on it and see what I can do.

In the meantime, Star 96.1 is playing a weird sound-alike cover of Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World,” which was originally recorded by Tears for Fears. And that’s the thing that really bugs me about these strange covers; Gary Jules’ cover was so vastly different from the Tears for Fears original that it’s almost like a completely new song. But doing a very close cover of his cover seems wrong. Make it your own.

Anyway, I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Note: The picture above is the silkscreen print on the side of a tote bag one of the teachers here uses on a regular basis. I like it because of the Diet Coke logos and the name "Patty" and it says "Patron Saint of Shopping".
















More Culture Day practice. I like this one too.
















The sky here is dramatic.





















Culture Day practice drumline.