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Gert-Jan [Blom] ...
sent a CD in the post: The Langley Schools Music
Project's 'Innocence And Despair'. This is a CD of school children,
in the
USA, singing cover versions of songs like 'Good Vibrations',
'Space Oddity'
and 'Desperado' etc. There 21 songs included, and it was recorded
from
1976-77 and devised by their music teacher, Hans Fenger. The
sleeve-notes
describe the process. HF became a music teacher because he needed
to support
his family. He went to university, passed his teaching certificate
and began
teaching. He admits he wasn't experienced in any way, but the
results on
this CD tell me that his in-experience meant he had to fall back
on what he
knew at that moment in time: pop music of the period. The arrangements,
which consist of massed choir, acoustic guitar(s), bass, chimes,
some
electric guitar, piano and other assorted percussion, were a
revelation to
me. There is an enthusiasm there which one often hears when listening
to
children's choirs. Perhaps more so. I was knocked out! 'Space
Oddity' is
fantastic. Here are children ENJOYING and EXPERIENCING music.
No ties with
the business world; no ties with career; no ties with process
of any kind. A
natural experience. It did me good. Gert-Jan simply wrote on
a postcard:
'Please find enclosed a CD that was recently released on the
label I work
for. I thought maybe you might enjoy this...' . I did, and thank
you for
sending it. It also struck me that is the polar opposite to the
very things
I wrote on yesterday's Diary, and that it should arrive when
it did was, in
a strange way, synchronistic. Gert-Jan's CD is the 'Song of Innocence'
to
the 'Songs of Experience' I was mentioning. You can't have one
without the
other, and William Blake knew this very well. Interestingly,
Gert-Jan's
postcard had the painting by Blake called 'Newton' on the front.
Blake hated
Newton's ideas because they opposed the world of 'imagination'
(symbolised
by Jesus for Blake). Newton stood for the rational world.
http://www.disciplineglobalmobile.com/diary/diary-AndrewKeeling.shtml
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