Create the community you want

When you live in Salem, playing in an old time jam or Irish session means getting in the car and driving 30-45 minutes. Every other Thursday, I carpool to Tim Rowell's jam at the Real School of Music. Once, when sharing the car with three other old time enthusiasts from the North Shore, I suggested that we should just start our own jam at home.

And so every other Monday from 6:00 to 8:00 we sit by the new ship ribs on Derby Wharf and play music as sunny afternoons turn to dusk. Tourists and local dog walkers pass by, occasionally pausing to listen, but it feels as if we are in our own world, a bubble separating us from the people and passing time of the world outside. The "Salem Jamlet," as one of the founding members calls it, has met four times so far, and Scratch Kitchen down the road has offered to host us when the weather gets too cold for playing outside. If you live on the North Shore, come by with your instrument and play along two weeks from today!

When I moved to Salem four years ago, I would often walk down this very wharf alone and wish for community. It is amazing to see what comes from the seeds we plant in our hearts.

You can choose

Since moving to Massachusetts, I have not been camping, apart from field trips with my class. Studying traditional fiddle music changed that, beginning with the Annual Harry Smith Frolic in Greenfield. At this event, well over one hundred Old Time musicians came together for a weekend of camping and open jamming, including a reenactment of all the tunes on the Harry Smith anthology around the campfire at midnight. Most of the participants seemed to be long-time veterans of the event and all had enough endurance to put an Ironman triathlete to shame. One older fiddler remained in the same seat for the entire three days, perhaps not even leaving for sleep or food (at least when I was watching). He became enshrouded in a faint cloud of rosin from his bow, which began to accumulate on his trousers as a light dusting of snow. All the same, his reserve of memorized tunes to lead in the jam outlasted the three-day Frolic.

The second camping adventure was Rustic Roots, a music camp run by Andy Reiner, which, as the website warns, “is not for the faint-hearted.” At Rustic Roots, about twenty students and five teachers gathered together on a pond in Connecticut for a weekend party of workshops, communal cooking, and late-night jams around the campfire. The primitive latrines were a hot topic of conversation throughout the weekend and bodily functions were encouraged by the director. The group was eclectic—ranging from a 20-something law student to an African-raised French percussionist perhaps in her 60s, philosophers, marijuana farmers, and sculptors—but we left the camp as one family, each member having taken enormous musical strides.

A fiddle class at Rustic Roots.

This weekend, a Rustic Roots friend, Theresa, and I were inspired to organize a final musical camping extravaganza….Rustic Roots: The After-Image. We reserved a campsite on a quiet pond in Georgetown and invited everyone we could think of. In the end, we recruited a third recovering Rustic Rootian, Theresa’s colleague, and a Harvard undergraduate, who would effortlessly school us all on fiddle, mando, and guitar.

This weekend, and in all of these events, a beginner faces the inevitable: advanced players calling tunes you’ve never heard of at speeds you will never keep up with. Many of my music friends have pointed out that you will always be around better players and you can choose to feel bad about yourself or you can choose to be inspired. Last night, around the campfire in Georgetown, I struggled to pick up phrases of unfamiliar tunes and to keep up with tunes I knew. Sometimes it feels like an impossible battle, but it is always in those fresh hours of the morning that we see yesterday’s trials through lenses tinted with empowerment. And so I sat on a rock at the edge of the pond before the others had risen and added my own song to that of the Canadian Geese and, at least to me, my battlefield fiddle and novice skills sounded beautiful.

Hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the earth

"Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the earth."

-Rumi

I survived the first week of teaching seventh grade and watched the gibbous moon rise over West Beach with good company, many musical instruments, and a hookah.

This week's primary tasks include an alcohol explosion, a spontaneous fire with sulphuric acid, and building a brick lime kiln. These are among the many joys of teaching Chemistry. If I am still standing by Tuesday....It's north to Georgetown to join about 25 musicians at a weekly Irish session, which has become one of my favorites.

Lately I wake up with a tune in my head and can almost feel my arm gliding a bow across fiddle strings. Perhaps this week before shower, breakfast, brushing teeth, I should just take down a musical instrument and play the tune that has graced my moment of awakening.

Warming the home

Last week my String Swing Home and Studio Violin Hanger arrived in the mail. It sat on my counter for two days until I worked up the courage to face the dreaded toolbox. Grim memories flashed through my mind of failed attempts to install curtain rods, which had resulted in the loss of chunks of my bedroom wall. I checked the screws and rifled through my toolbox for a phillips head (a term I only learned as a Waldorf teacher, where the teachers are also janitors and handywomen). I chose the spot where an old boyfriend used to keep his three foot wide television and tried to place the wood block perfectly straight. Two minutes later, fiddle and bow had a new home and no chunks of wall had been sacrificed for the cause.

Some say that it is not best for the health of an instrument to be left out, due to the varying humidity of the home. I'll worry about that if I buy a nicer instrument one day. After all, my fiddle teacher referred to my instrument as a battlefield fiddle. If it can survive a battle, then why not my living room wall?

And the music plays on

Anyone learning fiddle knows that attending jams (or sessions, if it's Irish), is a fun way to make music a social experience, and also one of the best ways to improve one's playing. Jams are held at restaurants, bars, outdoor parks, music schools, or someone's living room and, at least in my experience, everyone is welcome. Just make sure to play on beat, keep your instrument in tune, and be nice. Some jams are led by a superstar who calls each song and performs it, while everyone else plays along. Others move democratically from one player to the next, calling upon each to lead a song of his or her choice.

As a beginner, any tune that arises at a jam that is already familiar is cause for celebration. I eagerly pick up my fiddle and play along to the best of my ability--despite the fact that the group is probably playing twice the speed at which I learned the tune. Unknown songs require great concentration and listening. I try to figure out where the song is starting, catch a phrase, or two or three, and play along with those parts as best I can. Occasionally the song is so difficult or fast that it is a futile effort and I sit back to listen, making sure to jot down the tune's name if I like it and want to learn it at home. Every time I return to a jam, I know more tunes, feel more comfortable with the speed, and see more familiar faces.

Tonight I set out for the Skellig old time jam in Waltham, to play along and listen in awe to the leader, Alan Kaufman, an old time fiddling legend, who also happens to yodel. As I parked my car in the lot adjacent to the pub, a text message arrived from a friend: "Jam cancelled. Are you coming?" Cancelled? After driving almost an hour? My heart sank.

But in the world of music, there are no bad outcomes, as long as one has an instrument and a friend. I rushed over to the pub to catch my friend and within moments we assembled a group of four friends--all eager musicians who hadn't gotten the memo about the cancelled jam. I knew just where to go and led the group down the street to a picturesque path along the river, where we stationed ourselves on a row of benches and began to tune our instruments.

We began to play and a pair of swans soon drifted over to our side of the river. An elderly couple walked past and sat down to listen, later asking us what our band was called. A little boy looked on for some time before approaching and proudly announcing that he had a violin at home. Another boy told us of his flute, which he had left at home. Two little children with red light-up shoes pranced up, parents in tow, and began dancing. We played "Over the Waterfall" for them as they jumped up and down along the walkway.

I let the music flow over me, pausing to dance about the walkway and absorb my friends' breathtaking bowing technique when the tunes became too challenging. We conversed, taught each other new tunes, and encouraged one another until daylight turned to dusk and then to darkness. Fall was in the air. Fall--a time when things start to move in our deepest souls, old life dies and retreats in preparation for new impulses to be born. Our own plan had died just hours before.... and still the music played on. I strive to make space for the music in my life to play on into the fall and winter and I know that all shall be well.

Final Breaths of Summer

The warm salty air brushed against our cheeks as we stood on the edge of the wharf and lifted our fiddles. I strained to see in the starlit night if my hand was in the right position, as my hand does not yet carry this wisdom in itself. A sweet melody began to pour from Theresa's fiddle, a slow gentle "My Darling Asleep," throwing itself in with the lapping waves and the faint sound of disco music coming from a bar across the bay. By the second phrase I had joined her, letting the lilt of the slow jig carry me out of my head, through my hands, through my bow, to the ocean, the heavens.

As we held the final note, I noticed a dark movement on the sand below us, which rises up between the bay and the wharf at low tide. We peered over and before us was the elegant outline of a great blue heron. A few feet behind was a baby heron. The herons stood peacefully before us and listened to a serenade of "Midnight on the Water," "Tennessee Waltz," "Scollay," and "Ashokan Farewell." Some of these were songs Theresa had just taught me since we became friends at Rustic Roots music camp. Finally we bid farewell to the herons and made our way down the wharf's path back to my home, where the rest of the dinner party remained ensconced in philosophical discussion, surrounded by candles and wine. This is how life should be.