A Death of Kodaly

I was reminded this morning, upon hearing some Kodaly, of a short tale that came to me suddenly and full blown while listening to Kodaly's Duo for Violin and Cello at a Seattle Chamber Music Summer Festival concert a few years ago. I don't know how such things happen, but just for the hell of it, here it is....

A Death of Kodály


The Nazi patrol must have heard it, too – the sinuous keening of a violin snaking its way through the moonless forest; we all held our breath.

“Merde!” whispered Kostan, in his international patois of swearwords, “what the hell is that?” in his native Hungarian. I said it sounded like the theme from Kodály’s duo for violin and cello. “Tres merde!” He spat out orders to Bela and The Knife (we never did learn his name): “go, get him before the basta Boche do!” They melted away in silence. “All we need next is a fucking (in English) cello.”

We waited in silence, eleven of us and three mules loaded with plastic explosive and detonators. The crying violin ceased. Another interminable wait, then three figures, like wraiths emerging from the ground, Bela and The Knife, pushing forward an older man – perhaps 50 or so, it was hard to judge these Hungarian country folk, so ground down since the mobilization of ’42 and the abduction of Horthy in Fall of ‘44.

He was not peasant, after all, Kostan’s interrogation revealed, but a teacher. “Of music?” “No, of languages. The violin is just my companion.” “Which?” “German and English.” ”Shit” spat out Kostan, “Western, decadent shit.”

“Hungary is a bridge” bravely answered the old man, “a bridge between East and West – between the culture of the West and your new society coming from the East.” He had correctly sized up his guardians/captors as red partisans. “We need to know many languages to play our role in the new Europe.”

“The dawn comes from the East, old man” said Kostan sardonically. “Now Hungary is to be for Hungarians; we need know only Russian.” “What was that you were playing?”

“Only folk themes. No real piece.”

“It sounded like Kodály” I interjected in my painful Hungarian. “That’s because Kodály sounds Magyar”, said the oldster. “Where are you from? Not Hungary. What brings you here?”

“Right, I learned Hungarian from my parents in Pittsburgh. I’m American.”

Kostan: “Shut up, both of you. I ask the questions here.”

“Many Hungarians went to America”, said teacher in his English. “Our loss; your gain.”

“Yes, teachers like you, and mathematicians and musicians and just steel-workers like my Dad. Our gain; maybe that’s why I’ve come back to help.” What indeed brings me here? I thought. Dropped into Transdanubia with two Tommy sappers to help harass the German retreat from besieged Budapest, to blow rail lines and impede escape to Vienna and Bratislava. Now we were just eleven, eight red partisan and the three of us, survivors, never sure whether we were harassee or harasser.

I went on: “My mother loved Kodály; I grew up with him.”

Kostan: “This Kodály, the composer, right? One of the toadies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire allied with the Kaiser, right? Now a Budapest parasite, right?”

Both teacher and I reacted. “No, no, a great Hungarian”; “a cultural asset”; “his music is timeless”; “his views are very liberal”; “he translates Magyar music for the world”.

“For the Western world” Kostan disdained. “He sells our folk arts to the wealthy, an exploiter of native culture, one who works to keep us ‘native’ and in chains. He is a collaborator, an enemy of the people.”

“You can’t politicize his art.” “The Nazis weren’t even born when he wrote that theme.” “He composes for the world.” “He writes from the soul, not to serve some political plot.” “Art is art; politics is politics.” I can’t remember clearly who said what, teacher’s and my protests tumbling forth.

Kostan coldly looked at us. “Art.” He spat. “All art is politics. Art is rooted in its society. You judge art by who creates it, to what use it is put, then and now…. And now, we must move.” To Bela and The Knife: “This teacher is of no use to us and good use to Germans. Get rid of him. No shooting.”

“No! You can’t!” I protested, but the three were disappearing into the wood even as I started up. Moments later, Bela re-appeared with violin in hand. “What do I do with this?” “Bury it”, said Kostan, ”it’s just a violin.”

I stared open-mouthed.

Kostan paused; then in his Hung-lish: “Americanski, you too bourgeois for health. You good go west when Red army comes. I no can longer protect you after kill Nazis.”

His chill words crackled with truth.

Zoltan Kodaly stayed in Budapest throughout the war, and became an important part of Communist Hungary's arts and teaching communities. He is regarded as a national hero by Hungarians of all political stripes.

Directing or Managing ... or Meddling?

“If you’re managing, you’re meddling.” So said a lecturer in a Chicago conference; he was talking about trustees of retirement communities. I was there in my role with Horizon House. But it’s true for all boards, large or small, corporate or non-profit. His admonition is right on -- when trustees or directors begin to manage, it signals there’s something wrong. As a trustee of Horizon House, Seattle’s leading continuous care retirement community, I hear his admonition ring in my ears when I feel the urge to tell staff how to do their job.

Directors should be stepping in only

• when staff has asked for help
• or when a job must be done for which staff is unavailable
• or when management must be changed in order to carry out the org’s mission.

But in each case, directors should be asking themselves ‘what is the underlying problem indicated by a need to step in?’

Directors of small, young theatre, dance and music companies often have no choice but to help manage, for they are chronically understaffed. So is that “wrong?” No, not wrong, but unsustainable over time. Committed, volunteer directors and part-time staff can keep an enterprise moving for a time, in some cases for years. But eventually they wear out; if an org is to sustain itself, the time comes for adequate staff resources and professional management systems.

That’s been the case with SRJO: we have reached that awkward stage of being too big to run out of a part-time Exec Director’s back pocket yet too small to afford a full time staff yet too large and complicated to run out of someone’s back pocket. Our directors have stepped up to undertake management tasks in order to get everything done. Our season brochure and concert programs have been produced via collaboration between staff and directors; our fund raising letters are director-written; our terrific new SRJO blog is produced by Bruce Moore, a director; our Jazz Scholars project is mainly director-managed by Susan Jenkins.

But long term, this isn’t healthy. Such shared project management may strain the trustee/executive director relationship as well as compromise the objectivity and independence that trustees must protect.

It’s a stage of growth with all the strains and emotions of a painful adolescence. And like adolescence, it is best grown through and put behind one.

Jim Tune, President of ArtsFund, has seen a number of arts orgs founder by failing to get through that transition. Whether the problem is lack of funding to afford professionals or resistance to change on the part of long-term directors and/or founders, the “problem” is best viewed as an opportunity to arm the organization with the professional staff and systems that will enable it to reach more audience and become a sustainable contributor to the community’s arts culture. Sustainability demands change and growth.

So, what are we doing at SRJO? Setting about to fund supplemental staff – no mean task in this economy – and recruit executive talent. But with transition to executive staff, directors should be able to withdraw from managing (or meddling) and focus on directing, on mission and vision once again.

Scenes of Exuma

Friends from the sea -- that's bro-in-law Tom on the right

Santana's -- beach-fresh seafood with rice and beans

Jerry, the basket weaver lady

Sam, the conch man. Conch salad made on the spot.

The National Family Islands Regatta: Bahamian smacks can really move

The after-regatta parade, where the kids march and dance....

... and folks come to see and be seen.

Dateline: Hooper's Bay, Great Exuma, The Bahamas

Hooper’s Bay -- a long arc of white sand, framed in green palms and sea grape, lapped by crystalline aquamarine waves, empty save for green turtles and us – Ann, Jan, Tom and I. Balmy air – all a balm to body and spirit.

In truth, this is being written from Seattle, for I so easily had succumbed to Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s admonition: “The beach is not the place to work; to read, write, or think.” All I had gotten on paper was “Dateline: Hooper’s Bay, Great Exuma, The Bahamas.”

The Bahamas lie amidst the bajamar, the Spanish called it, the shallow sea. The land so stingy, the sea so fruitful.

Poor Bahamas. Its sine wave history of exploitation, booms and busts, exploiters moving on but always the blacks left in patient struggle to survive. The brown natives, the Lucayans, did not survive, driven into extinction by 1520 through Columbus’ gifts of servitude and desease. Came 17th Century seagoing entrepreneurs -- privateers, in war, pirates in peace -- who berthed in Nassau until the Crown drove them away after the Spanish wars. Then the Loyalist Tory’s taking refuge from the revolution of ‘76, bringing cotton and slaves. The plantations were wiped out by 1820 – the “worm” and the thin soil. The planters left, their slaves left behind. Next the boom of Civil War blockade running, with cotton transshipped to the mills of Britain for gunpowder and manufactures returned. The shallow draft, beamy Bahama smacks ideal for running blockades and landing in Confederate coastal estuaries. The peace of Appomatox killed that boom. Then wrecking and salvage – gifts from the sea -- until the era of steam and better navigation. But along came Prohibition, and bootlegging via Bahama smacks, until repeal ended that too. Today? Tourism and tax havens … and always the sea.

I was last there ’68. Paradise Island was Hog Island then. Lyndon Pindling had just become PM, the 1st black PM. The rush of black power, the echos of Carmichael and Malcolm X made for an uncomfortably self-conscious visit.

This trip was so different, as were the Exuma locals. Conservative, deeply religious, patient. Not hostile to touring white visitors, but with a reserve that makes one self-conscious in another way, that makes me wonder whether they accept my respect or suspect me of insincere condescension. And which of us is the exploiter now?

We watched the National Family Islands Regatta, where islanders race those colorful smacks. We bonefished with Garth, who could see fish afar that we did not see until almost landing them. We walked the beaches and ate conch and drank rum and accepted the peace of the shore.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh said it best:
“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach — waiting for a gift from the sea.”

Arts Governance 2 -- Trustees as ATM’s

By coincidence, the day I roughed this out, The New York Times wrote on the subject of boards as fund raisers. What a distance ‘twixt MOMA and SRJO!

Many arts orgs unabashedly use board seats as ATM machines. It is the socially prominent orgs that can get away with being heavy-handed about it, not only in New York but here in Seattle, too. I dare say the trustees of Seattle Symphony or Seattle Opera don’t have laid on them the $10 million expectation of MOMA or the Metropolitan Museum of Art – that’s right, $10 million! -- but the principal holds: you want to sit with the prominent in this community, either give or get. Check the roster of names the next time you attend SSO or the Opera or the Rep. I don’t want to sound too resentfully proletarian; at bottom, I’m really jealous of their ability to lasso big hitters in support of the arts they love.

In truth, all of us do it to one degree or another. Boards have a responsibility to generate the resources an arts org needs, and unearned income is needed. Typically, earned income from ticket sales and contract performances, from sales of CD’s and those souvenirs in the lobbies, account for only some 40% of total revenues needed to survive and serve the community. (This year, our earned income from performances will be over 51% of total revenues, a high proportion that may say we’re not generating enough elsewhere.) The other 60% or so comes from foundation grants, corporate sponsorships, and individual donations. Grantors are pinched in these days of shrinking investment and endowment accounts. So it comes down to individuals taking up the slack.

As a result, some arts orgs pad their boards way beyond what governance experts say is an efficient size – around 15 active members. Operative word: active. Seattle Opera has a board of 61; the Symphony, 43; Seattle Repertory Theatre, 69. Even smaller orgs pump their boards. Seattle Chamber Music Society, for example, has 36 trustees. These huge boards are there to give and get. Many arts orgs rely on their board’s personal gifts for over 50% of total individual giving.

That’s not SRJO’s way. Not that we’re better or worse – just different. We have a board of 17 (and are actively recruiting for a few more who care and want to work on jazz preservation, presentation, and education – interested?) who are expected to “generate” annually at least $1,000 of revenue – gifts, sponsorships, donations, whatever. Their own gifts account for under a third of our total individual contributions. But padding the board with ATM seats just runs against what egalitarian SRJO stands for – the preservation and presentation of what Jimmy Heath calls America’s “most democratic music”, large ensemble jazz. If some big hitter comes along and wants to join our board that’s an entirely different matter -- blessings upon you, chum.

Same for a corporate sponsor. Didn't you love the way half a mill was raised in one day in response to the threat of cancelling the Lake Union July 4th Fireworks? Maybe that's what we should try? Who’d notice if SRJO threatened to cancel our annual Ellington Sacred Music Concert? Well, by our standards a lot of folks would – SRJO and Earshot sold out Town Hall last holiday season.

Arts Governance -- theory and practice sometimes don't meet

This series on governance of arts orgs has been prepared for our SRJO blog, (which if you care about jazz, you should check out.)

In January, I engaged twenty-some candidates for Seattle U’s Master in Fine Arts Administration (http://www.seattleu.edu/artsci/mfa/) in a discussion of arts governance. Since all of these sharp students have spent two years or more working with arts orgs of one sort or another, they have a pretty good view of staff and executive director matters. But their exposure to trustees and boards typically has been more limited – so that is why I was invited to speak, as President of SRJO’s Board of Trustees.

We talked about theory of board governance – which looks logical and simple -- and then about reality’s disconnects. In theory, a non-profit art org’s board ought to do seven things.

• Define the mission and vision
• Provide resources, i.e., dollars and volunteers
• Select staff leadership, i.e., the Executive Director or CEO
• Approve policies, plans, goals and budget
• Act as fiduciaries, i.e.,

- assure resources are used responsibly and as constituents intend, and
- be accountable for delivery of services that justify the org’s tax-exempt status

• Evaluate and compensate key staff
• Support and encourage, maintaining positive relations with exec director and artistic director
  

This is governance: the act of governing. Serious business -- important. But all too often, we see it abdicated to a strong executive director or to the organization’s founder. Why? Where does theory get disconnected?

First of all, art org directors are volunteers. What motivates someone to be on a board? First, it is love of the art – whether dance or opera or jazz or children's theatre or whatever. And those lovers of the art may or may not be disciplined in financial oversight or priority setting or fund raising or performance appraisal or planning and strategy…. Sometimes it is the prestige of being on a socially significant board like the symphony or opera. In the case of smaller, less visible boards, directors often turn out to have had some relationship with the exec director or artistic director that led to being invited onto the board. So, between the love of the art, the prestige of position, and/or that relationship, objectivity can get waylaid. Hard decisions and diligence can be undermined.

Governance is work, and in these days of tight money, hard work: arts orgs are struggling to serve and survive. If governing and supporting isn’t fun, a volunteer director begins to ask ‘why am I wrestling with all this?’ One of my challenges then, as President, is to make it fulfilling and fun (and that is tough for old sobersides, here, who gets all uptight about projects, forecasts and due dates.)

Enough for now; I’ll post more later on how reality tests trustee theory.

What Creates a Responsible Commonwealth?

Last Thursday, at the Olympic Club, a fellow member – a committed Libertarian -- gave a provocative speech on liberty. His views echo the early pioneer creed of self-reliance, freedom to choose, and readiness to take responsibility for the outcomes of those choices. He decries any government mandates – whether to participate in Social Security or wear seat belts or whatever. Thursday night, I pondered a response about the balance of freedom and commonwealth; if not government in our complex, heterogeneous society, what mechanisms constrain liberty from becoming mere license?

Friday morning, I joined the leadership team of Horizon House to have breakfast with Geoffrey Black, General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ. (Horizon House, Seattle’s leading continuous care retirement community, was founded 50 years ago by members of Plymouth Congregational Church, a UCC affiliate; we still have ties to the UCC though we are a heterogeneous, multi-faith community of curious, active persons dedicated to creative ageing. I serve as a non-resident trustee.) This was a remarkable coincidence, coming as it did after my musing on the responsibilities of free citizens to a community of free citizens. The Reverend Black talked passionatly about peace and justice and what his community of faith had to be and become to minister effectively in the 21st century.

The UCC, itself, is remarkable. Formed but in 1957 by the merger of the Congregationalists of my forbearers with the Evangelical and Reformed Church, and small (only 1.1mm and shrinking like so many other mainline denominations), UCC has swung a disproportionate weight in the fights for civil rights, against Apartheid, for women’s rights, for gay and lesbian rights (UCC lost 400k members in 2007 after officially endorsing gay marriage), against nuclear arms proliferation, and so on and on. And these are not merely positions; this is a church of deeds -- showing up, organizing, contributing, calling, laboring, feeding, housing, providing sanctuary, whatever.

The UCC is committed to peace and justice; its congregations are open and welcoming to all of whatever ethnic or social strata or sexual persuasion, so long as one shares belief and commitment.

My home church was Colonial Church of Edina, a Congregationalist church led by Dr. Arthur Rouner, a congregation that decided to opt out of UCC at the time of merger. When I came to Seattle, I was attracted to Plymouth Congregational and its senior minister, Joe Williamson. His was a remarkable intellect; he later served as Dean of religious life at Princeton University. Plymouth continues to live the UCC progressive, activist tradition: Plymouth Housing Group operates 800 units of low income housing; its supports sister church relationships in emerging nations (it was through Plymouth that I was able to go and take a close look at Nicaragua in the Sandinista years); it has persistently protested the Iraq war. I served it for a while as head of adult education, studying and wrestling with the complexities of these kinds of moral and ethical questions.

It wasn’t the church’s activism or stand on issues that ate at me. It was questions of belief and faith. I dreaded a certain question at breakfast with Rev. Black, since I am no longer a member of Plymouth – or of any church. Why, when I obviously admire Plymouth and the UCC?

For years I had swallowed my doubts and salved my conscience by rationalizing that the Apostles Creed was merely poetic metaphor, or by standing silent while my fellow congregants stated their true belief in trinity, in resurrection, in an activist God who would intercede in the affairs of men. My doubt of a ‘loving’ God who obviously did not intercede to mitigate the chaos, the tragedies, the inhumanities of the world grew; along with it, my sense of hypocrisy. And then I began spending more time in Southeast Asia, increasingly exposed to the teachings of the Buddha.

My journey finally arrived at a point where I no longer can call myself a Christian. I still revere the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. We know he would be appalled by some of the deeds committed in his name But also that he would be delighted by others, like those of progressive UCC’ers committed to Acceptance and Peace and Justice. I have come to accept the Buddha's disdain for questions of the nature of God as an unkowable distraction from the problems of dealing here and now with suffering, self control, and injustice.

But the Thursday question remains: what mechanisms should we use, if any, to balance freedom with community responsibility? Is it enough to rely on 1.1mm UCC’ers or ten times as many Methodists or twenty times as many Baptists to handle the demands of 300millions more Americans, many of whom may not be responsible and self-sufficient, who have needs and suffer injustice? What creates a responsible, civil commonwealth? And what is the proper role of the majority, i.e., of a government of the governed?