The Sound of Language: Conversations with Orna B. Raz, Part I

This is a written conversation between two friends: The writer and musician Barbara Froman and I: 

In early December of last year, fellow Red Room author, Orna B. Raz, wrote a blog post entitled, “‘Promises to Keep’ and Reading.”  

The title, which refers to a line in one of my favorite poems, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost, immediately caught my attention. Even though I was in the midst of holiday preparations, I took the time to read it because of the title, and the fact that Orna writes beautifully about every subject she chooses. Very quickly, I was glad I had. I had been trying to think of new ideas for Music and Prose, and now here was one, wrapped like a gift, in Orna’s lovely post:

“... listening to audio books has become my favorite pastime while driving. I feel they add life to the written text, and ignite the imagination.”

What better way to express the belief central to every Music and Prose post? That language is an art of meaning and sound?

I was so inspired and excited, I contacted Orna to ask if she would be willing to engage in a series of conversations with me for Music and Prose about the sound of language, and to my delight, she said, “Yes.”

And so, it my great pleasure to share our discussions with you….

BF:  There are so many places we could begin, but it occurs to me that it might be best to start with those experiences that led us to develop an aural relationship with literature. My first experiences with literature came from being read to as a child. Because I already had a love of sound, and my parents were expressive readers, I instantly related to the tones and rhythms of the text. Was this how it happened for you? 

OR:  I believe it all started with the radio, I don’t remember my mother reading a lot to me when I was little. But I always loved the radio and especially radio plays. I read that over one million people watched on television the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth the 2nd in June 1953. It was a year-and-a-half before I was born. Until the beginning of 1970’s we didn’t have a television set at home and Israeli television only started broadcasting around 1966.

As children we listened to children's programs. I don’t remember much of their content, but as a result of some of them my brother and I, together with a cousin, started our own secret society. In our games, as in life, we followed my brother’s instructions (he was always my inspiration, and besides he was much older than us). Most of the children’s program were in the early afternoon, after school programs.  However,  we were also allowed to listen to the best radio drama, at night. It was the program that everyone listened to, about the detective Paul Temple.  I just Googled it and found that it was a well know British radio drama which was translated into Hebrew from English.

BF: Ah, radio…. You know, there’s a popular Saturday afternoon radio show around these parts called Those were the Days, which features recordings of old broadcasts from the 1930’s and ’40’s.” Of particular interest to me in that show are the wonderful plays, such as “Sorry, Wrong Number,” which were introduced to so many on radio. In some ways, I think radio allows the listener multiple benefits: it provides the enactment dramatic works need in order to give them life, and it gives the listener/audience a chance to exercise their imaginations, fill in with images. In a concrete way, it is the best of both worlds—theatrical and literary—and a superb introduction to writing. As a bonus, it also allows the listener, who is not distracted by action on a stage, to really hear the dialogue and words, savor the language itself.

OR: You are right, radio makes the imagination work harder. For me it is the perfect medium. I have vivid memories of my father listening to the radio (especially classical music and news), and my brother, who is a journalist. He started his career in the Israeli public radio and has been working for many years in public television.

BF:  Wonderful, and what an impressive and distinguished career he’s had.  It’s interesting that he moved into that medium, and you moved from radio into print. Yet you point out in your post,  how ideal the medium is for drama, particularly the works of Shakespeare.

OR:  Yes, listening to the records of Shakespeare’s plays helped me understand them better, and they suddenly came to life, especially when I read along with the record. Then Shakespeare was no longer  an old difficult text, but a funny or a sad drama.

Later I read with my girls, usually in Hebrew. At the time we lived in the US, and they learnt to read English very early and read very fast, thus they had no patience to read together. But they wanted me to read aloud in Hebrew.

Years later I discovered that audio books were perfect for long distance driving, I loved listening to them. This method also helped me tackle some difficult texts that otherwise, I don’t think, I would have had the patience to read, like Bleak House.

In the last couple of years, I have been listening to another radio program This American Life, on PBS, and it is a source of inspiration for me. I listen to it regularly as I skate in the park and often write down key words and sentences which I later use. In fact, the last program of This American Life, which just aired, was about radio drama.

 

Once a week I read aloud with a young friend (she is 10). She is very smart but doesn't like to read. It is a great fun when we do it together. (I wrote about it in two posts: "Can Great Literature Save Lives?" and "Ramona the Reader or What Can We Learn From An 8 Year Old Girl?")

BF: I find it interesting that your daughters prefer for you to read to them in Hebrew. Is there a reason for this beyond their greater familiarity with the language?  I ask because every language has its own unique characteristics.  I remember having to sing an aria in English, when the original text was in Italian, and hating it. Everything about the pairing felt wrong to me, as though even the words’ meanings were fighting with the music.

OR: An important reason why, when we lived in the US, I  read to my daughters in Hebrew was that I couldn't find  translated literature in the library or in  used books stores. Almost all the children’s books around were written originally in English. I looked for the books which I read (and loved) as a child, and wanted to share them with my girls. Somehow it was very important for me that they would read them. Since most of the books in Hebrew are translated from different languages it has always been easy to find great children books in Hebrew.

I also wrote about that challenge in several posts: "Judging a Town by its Library," "God’s language – translated literature and subtitled film," and "Balancing between Instruction and Delight—Erich Kastner."

The conversation continues with Part II: Hearing the Printed Word

Here are the links to Barbara Froman's works:

blog   http://beyondwillowbend.blogspot.com

web site  http://www.barbarafroman.com

The Best Parenting Advice: Sorry Teacher I Don't Work For You

 MAY.16.2013 

Parents are forever giving needed and unneeded advice to their children: we always remember Polonius’ advice to Laertes:

"Give your thoughts to yourself,

And don’t act without thinking. . . 

Listen to what every man says, but speak to few.

Take each man's opinion, but reserve your judgment”

 But when I was a young mother  I too was very fortunate "to listen" to an experienced mother and a teacher and to "take her opinion". Her advice proved crucial to my relationship with my daughters and to the wellbeing of my whole family.

My two daughters grew up in Iowa City where my husband was a young professor at the university of Iowa. It was his first job out of graduate school and we moved there when my older daughter was a baby.  When she was about two and a half we were looking for a preschool for her. Since in Iowa City all the public preschools took children only at the age of three she went to a private preschool which was part of a music school.  This special preschool met 3 times a week for two hours and did a lot of music activities with the children. The teacher asked us if our child would like to learn an instrument.  In the preschool they taught the children to play violin/ cello/ piano in the Suzuki method at a very early age. Since her older cousin played the violin my daughter asked to play that instrument.

That is how, without noticing, we entered the very competitive world of music through a tiny back door.  The two major principles of the Suzuki method are that the child learns to play by ear and that she never practices on her own. One parent has to be the teacher at home, and since my poor husband was tone deaf I was that parent.  Thus for years I practiced the violin and the cello with my daughters. We got up every day at 6 am so that they could practice before going to school and would be free (I wrote about chores at my post Between Chores and Personal Freedom) once they got back home.

What started as a childhood activity became a major  part of our life when my daughters became a little older and the teachers started to put more pressure to practice longer and harder.  Then one day I was talking with another mother who was older and experienced. She had four daughters who played musical instruments.  Here is her advice:

 “Practice at home with your girls,

 but be careful not to side with their teacher.

You have to live with your daughters

and not with their teacher.

Love your girls and don't push them,

thus you'll enjoy a happy and healthy family life”.

This sounds like an easy and logical advice and I really wanted to implement it. But as a young mother I found that it was a challenge to “to reserve my judgment”. The desire to help the girls realize their potential made it hard for me to resist the teachers and not to push. But whenever I forgot myself my husband was there to make sure that I heeded the advice of the other mother.  He reminded me that I “worked with my daughters and not for their teachers” .

With age my daughters started to practice on their own and they assumed responsibility for their music education. And today, thanks to that advice, music is still a happy part of my daughters’ life.

Enigma Of A Cultural Hero Or Between Arik Einstein And Bibi Netanyahu

NOV.28.2013 -

I am sad today, my favorite Israeli singer Arik Einstein (1939—2013) died suddenly yesterday morning. He wasn’t only loved by me, he was immensely popular. But since he was a highly private person and his family asked for a quiet funeral, I didn’t expect that an official state funeral would close down the streets of Tel Aviv.  Moreover, I couldn’t imagine that our  prime minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu would appear at the funeral and claim Arik Einstein as his own. This was a hit below the belt--please let Arik RIP. I wish my last memory of the beloved singer could remain untarnished by an image of Bibi Netanyahu making yet another speech.

Actually this is a good place to start because everything about Arik Einstein was the exact opposite of Netanyau. Arik Einstein was a very talented man who wanted to be left alone, to maintain his privacy and to do the things that he loved quietly and outside of the limelight. Netanyahu is an intelligent man who cannot survive without constant attention and demands plenty of recognition for everything that he does.

Privacy is not a concept that Netanyahu appreciates; his rise to the top has only been possible thanks to television: like a sunflower he basked and flourished in its light. Since his days as the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations (1984 to 1988) when he “perfected his technique,” he has not missed an opportunity to be seen in public or to speak on television.

In contrast, in the early 80s Arik Einstein, by then already a successful and highly acclaimed singer and actor, stopped appearing in public.  However, he never ceased working and continued to make music and record. He had a special talent to attract and discover quality musicians and to bring out their special qualities. He collaborated with a large number of musicians and sang their songs in a beautiful clear baritone voice.  His clean and unaffected voice has become a symbol to everything which was honest about Israel, a voice of yearning for better and simpler days. 

 Arik Einstein changed the music scene in Israel for the better but never took any credit for it. He  even refused to accept the most prestigious award in Israel, the "Israel Prize.”

In an extrovert and noisy nation like ours, it is incomprehensible how such a private person who has stayed home for more than 30 years could become a national symbol and a cultural hero.  This quality of not tooting one's own horn but just doing the job quietly and professionally, even meticously, is also not a common Israeli trait. At the funeral someone said that every one of us has his/her own Arik.  I feel that this could be part of the answer.  We would like to believe that we are a little better than we really are,  and  that within us we have some of the humility, professionalism and integrity that Arik had.

It helped that Arik was good looking, witty and graceful, and since he withdrew from the public eye so long ago, he never grew old. In our hearts  he remained the Israeli Peter Pan -- forever fresh, handsome and young.

As for Bibi, unlike Dorian Gray, this fine looking man did age publicly in front of our eyes and his faults have become increasingly prominent - one of the unfortunate effects of over exposure.

Still since he took the time to be at the funeral and to speak about Arik, perhaps it could be an opportunity for Netanyahu to learn from this cultural hero a lesson about integrity. If such reflection does take place, I wouldn’t even mind to have my last memory of  Arik Einstein mixed with an image of Bibi.

  

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U58uKBDtZyo