stories & poems
School of Folk - The Siglins of the Ark
– Sandor Slomovits
March 2008, Ann Arbor Observer
Photos: GREGORY FOX (top), PETER YATES
(view article as pdf)
When my brother, Laz, and I moved here thirty-five years ago, we'd heard of only three things about Ann Arbor: the U-M (where my brother's wife-to-be was planning to start grad school), the radical Students for a Democratic Society, and the Ark. Even then it had a reputation as one of the best coffeehouses in the country.
I still vividly recall the first time we walked into the Ark that summer. It was a Wednesday night Hoot, when anyone who showed up could play (they call it "open stage" now). A few people were strumming guitars on the front porch of the massive gray Victorian, set far back from Hill Street. Inside, in the living room, a small crowd of people sat on cushions on the floor, listening to a performer standing in front of the big fireplace. Off the main hallway, the warm-up room was crammed with more folkies nervously picking guitars, frailing banjos, and sawing away on fiddles.
We signed in with Linda Siglin and told her we were new in town. She greeted us warmly, but she wisely scheduled us for late that evening, when, to put it charitably, the "less experienced" performers played. We were that. We'd played in public exactly once before.
But that was what the Ark was for, on Wednesday nights anyway – a chance to be bad, even very bad, and to learn and get better. It was, and continues to be, a School of Folk, with Linda and her husband, Dave, as principals. We came back week after week to play three songs and to hear other, more experienced musicians: Peter Madcat Ruth, Mustard's Retreat, Dick Siegel, and Cheryl Dawdy, Connie Huber, and Grace Morand, before they were the Chenille Sisters. We knew we'd arrived when one night, a year later, Linda invited us to finish the first set. It was the prize spot at the Hoot, because the audience was the largest then.
Linda emceed all the Hoots, but Dave was the official manager. Though he rarely spoke, he had a deep and encyclopedic knowledge of folk music and performers, and if you hung around late after shows and Hoots, you could learn much from listening to him. It soon became evident that he also listened carefully and paid attention to everyone. After a while he told us, "You've learned to use microphones, and you're also singing more quietly. The first few times you sang here, you'd blast me off the stairs." And then he scheduled us for our first professional show.
It's no exaggeration to say that if not for Dave and Linda, my brother and I might not have wound up playing music for a living – and certainly not performing the kind of music we play now, or the way we now play. Admittedly, if that were all Dave and Linda had accomplished in the past four decades, their achievement would not be that noteworthy, though unquestionably it has made all the difference in our lives. Truth is, though, I think they have had as profound an influence on the lives of countless other folk musicians and fans of folk music.
In those early years my brother and I came often to the Ark to hear the enormous variety Dave and Linda presented every week. We were particularly drawn to the music of the British Isles. We listened to John Roberts and Tony Barrand, Martin Carthy, Lou Killen, and the Boys of the Lough, and we started incorporating their songs and tunes into our sets. Then one night Dave said to us, "If you don't sing Hungarian and Israeli folk songs, who will?" He remembered that we had been born in Budapest and had lived in Israel for a few years, and he was gently giving us the same advice many young writers hear: write what you know. His words were transformative. They helped steer us to what was most genuine and authentic in our music.
I recall a number of other key conversations with Dave. Turned out he knew a lot more than just folk music. A few years ago, having sung only folk music before, I was starting to make tentative forays into singing jazz, and Dave booked my trio into the Ark. After the concert he suggested that besides listening to the great jazz vocalists, I should check out a relatively unknown jazz trombonist from the 1940s who he said had very vocal-like phrasing. I am certain Dave did not reserve his insightful comments and advice just for us, and that many other musicians benefited from talking with him.
Dave is retiring this month. The Ark will be in good hands. Anya, Dave and Linda's daughter, whom I remember when she was a little girl playing on the cushions on Hoot nights, will be taking over as program director along with the rest of the fine Ark staff.
The phrase "dedicating one's life" is bandied about frequently, especially in election season, but in the case of the Siglins, it fits. They have given so much to our community, and to the wider folk music community. Thank you, Dave and Linda.
Rumi: Poet of the Heart
©2007 Lazlo Slomovits
(This article was first published in the September 2007 issue of the Crazy Wisdom Community Journal. Thank you to Bill Zirinsky, owner and editor, and heartfelt thanks and credit to Coleman Barks, both for his magnificent translations, as well as for the stories of Rumi's life, on which much of this article is based.)
Come, come whoever you are -
wanderer, worshipper, lover
of leaving. It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your
vow a thousand times. Come,
come yet again, come.
This was the first poem I read by Jelaluddin Rumi, the 13th Century Sufi mystic, and I knew immediately that I had a friend. In just a few short lines he made it clear that he knew me (and most everybody else!) through and through - and loved us all unconditionally anyway. There is such hope and encouragement in those lines.
Reading more of his work I soon found out that, compassionate as he was, Rumi could be equally fierce with hypocritical or weak-spirited behavior.
Gamble everything for love
if you're a true human being.
If not, leave this gathering.
Half-heartedness does not
.....reach into majesty.
You set out to find God,
but then you keep stopping
.....for long periods
at mean-spirited roadhouses.
To this day, the more I enter Rumi's world, the more I discover the many-layered richness and variety of the perspectives he gives on life.
This September 30th marks Rumi's 800th birthday. Throughout these centuries, his work has inspired, encouraged, and delighted millions throughout the Middle East and beyond. Although Rumi began to be widely known in the English speaking world only about a hundred years ago, interest in his poetry has exploded to such an extent in recent years that he has become the best-selling poet in America. Popular icons such Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Demi Moore, and Julia Cameron quote him and express gratitude for the gifts he has brought into their lives - which they share with their large audiences. There is a moving story of Leonard Bernstein, the night before he died, asking for several Rumi poems to be read to him over and over.
But it's not just celebrities who have embraced Rumi. You find his poetry quoted in a huge variety of places - in books on creativity, psychology, and business, in self-help and spiritual books, on calendars, bookmarks, greeting cards. Calligraphers decorate his lines on hand made paper, illustrators paint his passionate images of love, dancers whirl to his mystical metaphors, and musicians improvise while poets recite his ecstatic verses. In recognition of his world-wide influence, UNESCO has designated 2007 as The Year of Rumi.
Rumi was born in 1207, near the city of Balkh, in what is now Afghanistan. During his childhood his family moved a number of times, fleeing before Genghis Khan's armies, finally settling in Konya, Turkey. One of the first legends about Rumi comes from this time of traveling. It is said that a great poet and teacher, Fariduddin Attar, recognized Rumi's greatness even as a boy. Seeing the young Rumi walking behind his father, (Bahauddin Walad, a highly respected theologian and mystic, and head of a medrese, a dervish learning community) Attar said, "Here comes a lake, followed by an ocean."
After his father's death, when Rumi was still in his early twenties, he became head of the medrese, quickly gaining a reputation as a great scholar, with many students. However, he himself continued to study with several renowned teachers, to deepen his understanding both on an intellectual and mystical level. He also married, fathered four children, and from the letters one of his sons preserved from this time, we know that he was actively involved in the practical affairs of the life of the community, as well as guiding it spiritually.
With all his knowledge and growing fame, it is said that Rumi knew his studying was incomplete and limited; he longed for deep transformation, not just more learning. Legend has it that, at the same time, a wild mystic, hermit and wanderer, Shams of Tabriz was praying to meet someone who yearned for God in the same passionate way he did, someone who could hold what he had to give. He asked inwardly again and again, "Who will be my friend?" Finally, a reply came in the form of a question. "What will you give?" Shams replied instantly, with no hesitation, "My life." "Your friend is Jelaluddin Rumi in Konya."
There are many stories about their initial meeting. In my favorite one, Rumi, then thirty seven years old, was sitting by a fountain in a square in Konya, reading to his students from rare books that included his father's writings on divine love. Suddenly, Shams pushed through the crowd and knocked all his books into the water. Rumi cried out, "Who are you and what are you doing?" Shams replied, "It's time for you to live what you've been reading about." Seeing Rumi looking despairingly at the precious books in the water, Shams reached into the pool and brought one up - dry. In some versions of the story Shams proceeded to restore all the miraculously dry books to Rumi - who now understood the dryness of mere intellectual knowledge. In others versions, when Shams offered to retrieve them, Rumi turned away from the books and said, "Leave them." Either way, the incident was symbolic of Rumi's initiation into a whole new level of experience, leaving behind his old way of perceiving the world.
Shams and Rumi secluded themselves for many days at a time, completely absorbed in sohbet, mystical conversation. Andrew Harvey, a contemporary Rumi scholar and translator says, "A massive transformation of Rumi's heart and whole being now began to take place in a transmission from Sham's heart to his. Shams knew he had very little time and that Rumi had to be utterly remade so that the revelations he was destined to transmit would be potent in him."
Part of the reason Shams knew he had little time was that he was twenty or more years older than Rumi. But another, more compelling reason, was the growing jealousy of Rumi's disciples, seeing the great influence Shams had on their teacher. Shams was forced to flee from Konya to Damascus. Rumi, overcome with grief at the separation, sent his son, Sultan Velad, to bring Shams back. But the jealousy and hatred of Rumi's students soon flared up again, and this time when Shams left - some say Rumi's disciples murdered him - he did not return.
This is when the Rumi whose poetry has come down to us through the centuries begins to emerge. According to legend, holding on to a pillar in his courtyard, Rumi began to turn around and around the pole, (this later became the basis of a core practice of the Mevlevi order of Sufi whirling dervishes) spontaneous poetry of intense longing pouring out of him. Students copied down his lyrics as he kept spinning in his grief. He traveled twice to Damascus, hoping against hope that he would find Shams. It was on his second trip, several years after Shams' disappearance, that a great revelation came to Rumi. He suddenly understood, experienced at the core of his being, that he and Shams were one - he carried Shams within himself. In a poem from that time Rumi expresses their total merging in an unbreakable bond of soul friendship. "Although I am far from you physically, without body or soul, we are one single light…I am him, he is me, O seeker."
This theme of union comes up again and again in Rumi's poetry in a wide variety of ways. It's in his gorgeous images of the lover and the Beloved,
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere
they're in each other all along.
in the powerful lines denouncing all divisions of religion that cause conflict between people,
Two hands, two feet, two eyes, good,
as it should be, but no separation
of the Friend and your loving.
Any dividing there
makes other untrue distinctions like "Jew,"
and "Christian," and "Muslim."
in the advice he gives us on how to live a fulfilling life,
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
in the sublime images of our intimate connection with nature,
What was said to the rose that made it open
was said to me here in my chest.
and most often, in the metaphors for the longing human beings feel to be one with God. Perhaps the most famous of these is the metaphor of the nay, the reed flute.
Listen to the story told by the reed,
of being separated.
"Since I was cut from the reedbed,
I have made this crying sound.
Anyone apart from someone he loves
understands what I say.
Anyone pulled from a source longs to go back."
The poetry kept flowing out of him for the rest of his life, for nearly 30 more years, along with a rich panoply of teaching stories and discourses. The sheer volume of his prolific writing is awe-inspiring - and with all the translations that have been done recently, it is estimated that still only about a third of his work has been rendered into English.
The person who is perhaps most responsible for Rumi's fame in America is his foremost translator, himself an eminent poet, Coleman Barks. He in turn credits Robert Bly, poet, translator and author of the classic book about men, "Iron John", with starting him on what has become his life work of translating Rumi. In 1976 Bly handed Barks a scholarly translation of Rumi and growled, "These poems need to be released from their cages." Bly himself had done a number of translations of Rumi, but since the late 1970's Barks has published book after book of versions of Rumi poems.
I've read Rumi's poetry off and on for many years, but since I heard, five months ago, about Rumi's 800th birthday coming up, I've felt drawn to immerse myself in his work, to read from his poetry almost every day, and to set some of his poems to music. Certain lines have started to come up spontaneously to guide and inspire me. For example, one poem begins,
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep!
Some mornings, when the pull to stay in bed is stronger than the knowledge that getting up to meditate and to work on a new song will be much more uplifting, those lines have actually bubbled up through the lethargy and have gotten me out of bed. Of course, like most of Rumi's poems, this one works on more than one level; going back to sleep can happen in a lot of ways, as we move through our daily lives - and Rumi wants us awake all the time, on all levels of our being.
I'm not the only one on whom Rumi has had this kind of effect. Coleman Barks says, "I find, as I explore the world of Rumi's work, that I keep discovering those qualities with which I need attunement."
Hosain Mosavat, poet, photographer, instrument maker and former teacher, was born in Iran, but has lived in the Ann Arbor area for more than 50 years. He first heard Rumi the way many children still do in parts of the Middle East - his mother sang Rumi poems to him as lullabies. Later, Rumi's poems inspired him to start writing his own poetry - a practice he maintains to this day. When asked how Rumi's poetry has affected his life, he replies like a poet: "It has made me go through life with a sword in my heart, which severs love from that which is not love."
Gernot Windfuhr, Professor of Iranian Studies at the University of Michigan, first encountered Rumi as a student in Germany. He has seen the power of Rumi's influence not just in his own life, but in the lives of thousands of students who have been in his classes - many of which include a focus on Rumi - in the forty plus years he has been teaching. As a scholar, he is aware of subtleties of Rumi's artistry which, as he says, "are impossible to render in translation." And yet, he sees that what comes across to everyone is Rumi's "profound depth of longing, which is probably unsurpassed."
Domenic Tamborriello is a clinical social worker, who is also the primary organizer of RumiNations800, an Ann Arbor celebration of Rumi's 800th birthday, September 28-30. He said, "No one has braided the rope of the human with the rope of the divine like Rumi. Every poem is a love poem to God, or as Rumi would say, to the Beloved. He can find the presence of the Beloved in a drop of the ocean and help us become both that drop and the ocean itself."
As I talked with people about Rumi, it seemed that everyone - poet or not - gave amazingly poetic answers, Rumi's deep influence shining in their replies. Mahmoud Moallemian is a member of the Academic Computing and Network services at Michigan State University. Born in Iran, he has lived and worked in the US since 1982. "Rumi's poetry has taught me that love and tolerance are essential parts of living, especially in today's world." And then he begins to quote Rumi by heart,
From love thorns become flowers...
From love vinegar becomes wine...
From love fury turns to mercy....
And he continues reciting, each line beginning with, "From love..."
Everyone I asked about Rumi responded by talking about love in one form or another.
Sepideh Vahidi, Iranian singer, painter and graduate student in Fine Arts at the University of Michigan,
summed it up most simply, most eloquently. When I asked her, "What are the two or three most important teachings of Rumi -
to you, personally?" She replied, "To be in love, to be in love and to be in love."
Rumi's love knew no boundaries.
The clear bead at the center changes everything.
There are no edges to my loving now.
I've heard it said there's a window that opens
from one mind to another,
but if there's no wall, there's no need
for fitting the window or the latch.
It was, and is, a love meant to dissolve what separates us from each other and from God - whatever our conception of God is. When Rumi died, on December 7th, 1273, his funeral procession included Christians, Jews, Moslems, and members of other faiths, all coming to honor the man who taught and so fully embodied universal love, a love that transcended religion, race, nationality and all the other artificial barriers humans put up between each other. This may be why, 800 years after his birth, he continues to inspire people all over the world - perhaps now more than ever - with a bright hope; that we can each live our lives in touch with our divine source, and from this core of our being, share with each other a profound vision of oneness.
West Side Story
©2007 San Slomovits
This article by San Slomovits appeared in the September issue of the Washtenaw Jewish News.
West Side Story is celebrating its Golden Anniversary this year. The classic musical premiered at the Winter Garden Theater on Broadway on September 26, 1957.
The idea for the musical predated its opening by ten years. In 1947, a friend of famed choreographer, Jerome Robbins, brought up the idea of updating Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. In 1949 Robbins and Leonard Bernstein began discussing that idea. The two had already worked together on a Broadway play, On the Town, an expansion of Robbins' 1944 ballet Fancy Free for which Bernstein wrote the score.
Originally, West Side Story, was to be about a Jewish girl and an Italian Catholic boy from Greenwich Village. In the play, at first tentatively titled, "East Side Story," the conflict was to be religious intolerance. That first draft fizzled and Robbins and Bernstein dropped the project for six years.
In 1955 they revisited the idea again, this time incorporating the new realities of the New York City of the time. In the intervening six years, there had been a large Puerto Rican immigration to the city, which created the usual and chronic American tensions between the established citizens and the new arrivals. Instead of Jewish/Catholic, the conflict in the play now became Anglo/Puerto Rican.
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet became Tony and Maria, the Montagues and Capulets were transformed into the Jets and the Sharks, medieval Verona, Italy was transmuted to the West Side of Manhattan, and the musical was titled West Side Story. (However, you could easily argue that although the story was no longer about religious intolerance, the lyrics of one of the best loved songs from the musical, "Somewhere," not only express Maria and Tony's hopes for finding a place free of prejudice for their love, but also perfectly describe the Jewish longing in the middle of the 20th century for a safe haven in a world long rife with anti-semitism.)
Robbins and Bernstein enlisted Stephen Sondheim, then still a young, not very well known composer and lyricist, (before the fame brought to him by A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, Company, Follies and other smash hits) to write the lyrics for Bernstein's music. Arthur Laurents was invited to write the book for the play. (Laurents was already well known for writing Home of the Brave and would go on to write Gypsy, also with Jerome Robbins.)
The musical created a sensation. The timeless story, modernized to reflect the harsh realities of 1950's urban America, the blending of superior and memorable music, dance and drama, and the collaborative effort of some of the most talented artists in a number of disciplines, made for an instant classic.
When the play opened in Washington DC a week before its Broadway premiere, Leonard Bernstein was invited to the Eisenhower White House for lunch. He later told his wife, actress Felicia Montealegre, "All were talking of nothing but 'West Side Story.' The Washington Post review called the musical, "a uniquely cohesive comment on life…the violence is senseless but Leonard Bernstein's score makes us feel what we do not understand." The New York Times hailed it as, "a profoundly moving show. Everything contributes to the total impression of wildness, ecstasy and anguish…"
The show ran on Broadway for more than two years, 772 performances, and then began a yearlong national tour, before returning to Broadway for another 253 performances. The London production also ran for more than two years and won the London Drama Critics prize, even though it was competing with another no-slouch musical-set in London no less - My Fair Lady.
The film version of West Side Story, co-directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins and starring Natalie Wood, took the musical to an enormous and worldwide audience. It's hard for us to picture today, when even the most successful feature films disappear from theaters after only a few weeks, only to soon reappear on DVDs, that the film version of West Side Story ran for an almost unprecedented 77 weeks-nearly a year and a half-after it opened at New York's Rivoli Theater in October of 1961. The overseas response was even more phenomenal. In Tokyo, it became the all-time top grosser at the Piccadilly Theater. In London it collected the greatest advance sales ever, while in Stockholm it was sold out months in advance. In Paris it ran for 218 weeks, more than four years!
In April of 1962 the film won ten Oscars, including Best Picture and Director, the most ever for a musical. Decades later, the film is still a treasured classic. It's been called the best film musical ever made. In 1998 the American Film Institute included it in its list of the "Top One Hundred Films of All Time."
West Side Story is just as relevant today as it must have seemed fifty years ago. Although the so-called "innocent" Fifties, and the sophisticated first decade of the 21st century are worlds apart in many ways, America today is still a magnet for immigrants from all over the world, and the centuries-old clashes between former immigrants-which almost all Americans are-and the most recent wave, remains a prominent part of our national dialog.
And, of course, it's not only an American tale. West Side Story continues to resonate with audiences, and even inspires today's filmmakers all over the world. Ann Hornaday wrote in The Washington Post recently, "And just this year, the Oscar for live action short film went to West Bank Story, which featured singing-and-dancing rumbles between two falafel stands, one Israeli and one Palestinian - complete with a star-crossed romance. Now that's entertainment to kvell about."
Eulogy For Our Mother, Blanka Slomovits 1918-2006
©2007 Sandor Slomovits and Lazlo Slomovits
One of the defining moments in our Mom's life came in 1944, when she was 25 years old and living with her older sister in the Jewish Ghetto of Budapest. Their mother had just died and the Nazis were rounding up the Jews for deportation to concentration camps. As they were being herded along the streets of Budapest toward the outskirts of the city from where the railroad cars would leave, our mother became aware that they would pass by the apartment building where a Christian friend was hiding her fiancé's mother. Our mother was certain there would be room there for her and her sister too. She also noticed that they were being lightly guarded and urged her sister to drop out of the line and escape with her. But her sister was too frightened to try that, so our mother made the decision to stay with her, rather than abandon her.
And that's how, on December 4, 1944, her 26th birthday, she found herself crammed into a cattle car, on her way to Germany. In the ensuing months, whenever her sister would despair over the horrible conditions in the camps, our mother would say, "We'll show them. We're going to go home." On April 15, 1945 she and her sister were on a forced march near Dresden, their Nazi captors using them as human shields to protect them from bombardment by advancing Red Army and US troops. When the Nazis and their prisoners made camp that night our mother said, "That's it. I'm not going any further with them." Along with her sister and several other women she escaped and hid in the woods overnight. In the next few weeks they eventually made their way to a displaced persons camp and finally back to Hungary.
Fierce loyalty, bravery and resourcefulness, were qualities she would exhibit throughout the rest of her life. Here's just one example: Many years later, in September 2005, shortly after Hurricane Rita devastated the Gulf Coast, Hurricane Wilma wreaked major damage on parts of Florida; the area where our parents lived lost power for nine days. Our Dad was 94 and in poor health, and our Mom, at 86, was in not much better shape. With the elevator not working, and their being unable to walk down the stairs from their second floor condo, they were trapped in their home and relied on the kindness of neighbors to get them ice and food. After a week without air-conditioning, with candles as their only light - the apartment dark even during the day, the storm shutters still in place to keep the sun from overheating their rooms - without a single hot meal, and the stress from the uncertainty of how much longer this would go on, our Dad started visibly declining. Mom swung into action.
She remembered that the Mayor of Hallandale, Ms. Joy Cooper, had put her home phone number in the local paper saying, "If anybody ever needs anything, call me." Big mistake! Our Mom called her up and said, "My husband is 94 years old, and he's not had a decent meal in more than a week. What can you do?" Less than an hour later, the Mayor was at their door with two hot meals. Our Mom said, "Thank you. That's very nice. But we're kosher, and this is not." The Mayor apologized, and promised to make new arrangements. Our Mom gave the meals to a neighbor, and a half hour later, two bearded Hasidim from the local Chabad House arrived with hot, kosher meals. Our Mom called up the Mayor and said, "Thank you. That's very nice. But it's not enough. I can see that there are other buildings nearby that have electricity, and the service trucks keep going by our street. How come others in the area have electricity and we don't?" A half hour later the lights came on - she was the heroine of the building, and all the residents cheered her.
She was beautiful. In photos from her early twenties, before the war, she looked like a movie star. In later pictures, after giving birth to us at age 30, she looked radiant. Friday nights, after lighting the Shabbat candles, she'd put on a special flower-patterned robe, in which to greet our Dad when he came home from the Synagogue. When he placed his hands on our heads and recited the traditional blessing with which fathers bless their sons at the start of every Shabbat, our mother would stand behind us facing him. Among our sweetest memories of childhood is looking up at those times and seeing the tenderness in his eyes, directed at her. It was only years later, when we fell in love, that we started to understand how much joy she had brought into his life.
In an era (the late 1940's and 1950's) when most women had few choices for fulfillment aside from marriage and children, our mother embraced this destiny completely. Being a devoted wife and mother never seemed too constrained a life for her. From the vantage point of the liberated 60's it sometimes seemed like it could not possibly be enough, but for her it was a complete path to a meaningful life.
She was blessed with remarkable good health for much of her long life. The single day of work she missed was the day she fell on an icy sidewalk, hit her head and suffered a concussion. The next day she was back at her job in the garment factory where she worked full time, in addition to her homemaker role, after we moved to the United States in 1960. If there were other times she was ill-and she must have had her share of colds, headaches and stomach upsets-she never showed it or talked about it. And if she was sick with a minor ailment, it never stopped her from cooking for my father and us. Never. How do we know this? Because our Dad did not cook. Not at all. And neither he, nor we, ever missed a meal. Mom fixed them three times a day, every single day. Her motto was the same as that of the post office - the meals must go through - and no matter how she was feeling, they did!
(In addition to the three meals, there was also her famous afternoon snack which she gave us most days after school in a vain attempt at fattening us up. The "snack" consisted of the entire contents of a container of sour cream and one of cottage cheese, stirred together, with sugar added liberally, and served with a large bag of Wise potato chips on the side. Perhaps her one regret in life was that, despite this diet, she could not get us to put on much weight.)
Even after we left home for college she continued to bake big batches of cookies, pastries and sweets for us. Our Dad would package them up, and we would periodically receive huge boxes in the mail. Suddenly, everyone in our dorm was our friend! (She never stopped baking for us. Today, weeks after her death, we still have some of her cookies in our freezers.)
In 1957, when we were still young boys, our parents made the decision to leave their native Hungary in the wake of the 1956 Revolution. The week before we left, our Mom took us around to her favorite spots in her beloved Budapest, where she'd been born and raised. She said to us often that week, "Remember this, because we may not be back." And we have not been back, but we do remember - at least partly because of the love with which she showed us those places.
Despite not being raised in a religious home, she nevertheless had a deep faith in God. After our Dad passed away last year, someone insisted to her that she should go to the synagogue on the Jewish High Holidays, even though by then she could hardly walk, and could not sit for long without pain. The person told her, "You should go, because that's where God will be that day." She replied, "I think God is everywhere. I believe wherever I'm going to be that day, God will be there."
Though not at all musical-it was her bad luck to be tone deaf in a family of professional musicians-she loved music and had an instinctive knack for recognizing quality. It was she who came home from work humming the melodies of the hits of the day, she the one who insisted that we listen to the Beatles. (Our dad and we were musical snobs at the time, and only listened to Italian opera and chazzanut, Jewish liturgical music.) It was also she who used to drive us down to New York City for performances at the Metropolitan Opera House and Radio City Music Hall.
When people have asked us if we come from a musical family we've always credited both our parents equally. Our father passed on to us his voice and musicality, and from our mother we received our enthusiasm and joy.
She was always unfailingly supportive of our choice of career-and of our every other life choice for that matter. The phrase, "I just want you to be happy," never sounded like a stock platitude when she said it to us. Her fierce loyalty and unconditional love never dimmed or faded and was a constant source of nourishment and healing for us even to her last day-and beyond.
At her funeral, a slightly overcast afternoon in southern Florida, it began to rain unexpectedly right after we sprinkled the handful of Israeli soil on her coffin. And then a rainbow glistened low on the horizon for a few minutes before we began reciting the Kaddish, the mourner's prayer. We couldn't help laughing with delight at the perfection of her last farewell. We walked away from her grave filled with gratitude and even a tender joy.
Kaddish for a Cantor
©2006 Lazlo Slomovits
When I was in college and aspiring to be a poet, I went to every poetry reading in a series hosted by the University of Rochester. At one of these readings, the poet William Stafford was asked who his major literary influences were. I waited eagerly for his answer; maybe here would be a clue as to which combination of poets I should read so I could achieve the direct, lyrical, potent compression of language I so admired in Stafford's poetry. Would he cite as influences one of the English greats, Chaucer, Milton or Shakespeare? Would it be one of the American icons, Whitman, Dickinson, or Sandberg? Or perhaps it would be one of the poets he'd only read in translation, Rilke, Lorca or Neruda? Stafford's answer was bracing in its simplicity and honesty. "Yes, I could say all of those and others. But really, when I write, the voice that's before me is my mother's."
I didn't become a poet. I became a singer. And though I could truthfully say that I've been inspired by the singing of Caruso and Callas, Pete Seeger and the Weavers, The Beatles and Janis Joplin, to name just a few, the one whose voice is most before me when I sing is my father's.
My father, Cantor Herman Slomovits, Yechiel Tzvi Ben Yishayohu, passed away at age 97, on January 25, 2006. This is my Kaddish sung in his honor, my Yahrzeit candle lit in his memory.
He was a truly wonderful singer, and my brother and I learned most of what we know about singing literally at his knee; we started singing with him as his two-boy choir when we were knee high to him. My father had a very simple, yet highly effective way of conducting with the forefinger of his right hand, the movement hardly visible to anyone in the congregation, but perfectly clear to San and me. The precise motion of that hand instilled a rock steady, yet flowing sense of rhythm in both of us. We learned about breathing, blending, harmonizing in the same way, almost without any formal lessons from him. He modeled it all thoroughly, patiently, and daily, and we absorbed it by singing with him.
His voice was an instrument of great beauty and power. But he was much more than just a Chazzan. He knew how to perform almost every function needed to run a Jewish community. The only two roles he did not fulfill, though he may well have been trained in them, were being a Mohel (the one who performs the bris, circumcision) and hand calligraphing a Torah.
Though he did not get his confirmation as a Rabbi (complying with his father's wishes, who thought the seminary he attended was not religious enough) he nevertheless completed his studies and served as Rabbi in Kunhegyes, Hungary, a small village about an hour from Budapest. Besides being the Rabbi for the Jewish families, he officiated as their Chazzan (Cantor), Baal Koreh (Torah reader), Shochet (Ritual Slaughterer), and Masgiach (the one who inspects and certifies meat as being Kosher). He performed all the weddings, officiated at all the funerals, and taught all the bar-mitzvah boys. He knew how to make and fix a tallis, t'fillin, and a mezuzah. He knew how to bake matzah for Pesach, how to build a sukkah for Sukkot, and how to find and collect the various willow branches needed for a lulav. He knew all the fine points of halacha (ritual), and in later years, when he served as Cantor under Rabbis less scholarly than he was, he'd often get into arguments with them - and he could always quote the resolving text by heart and then find it in scripture to prove himself right.
He also served as administrator of the synagogue in Kunhegyes, its chief fundraiser, and the main teacher of its Hebrew School. In addition, he became the liaison between the Jewish population and the general community, at a time when tact and good public relations skills were becoming more vital with the rise of anti-Semitism leading up to World War II.
And then, with the war, he lost almost everything - his wife and three children, his parents, three of his nine sisters, his only brother, numerous other relatives, and much of the community he'd served - of the 224 Jews who lived Kunhegyes before the war, only 95 returned. On the outside, almost everything was taken away from him. But the faith he had inside remained. And, of course, so did his knowledge and skills. My father moved up to Budapest and started over. He found administrative work in the Jewish Federation, started getting Cantorial jobs in some of the smaller synagogues, and eventually worked his way up to singing in the Dohány Utca Templom, the largest in Europe. While doing all of this he also found time to meet and marry my mother in 1947. My twin brother and I were born two years later.
My father had a prodigious memory that was completely intact even at the end of his life. But he also studied constantly. Every Sunday afternoon he'd sit down and start learning the next parsha, the portion of the Torah to be read the following Shabbat, and then he'd review it every day of the week. When my brother and I were growing up, people in his congregation would sometimes ask us, "Does your father know the whole Torah by heart? Because whatever we ask him, he can quote it chapter and verse in Hebrew, and then he can translate it, and give a commentary on it." Well, if he didn't know the entire Torah by heart, it would be hard to point to a passage he didn't know. In his later years when his eyesight was starting to go, he'd wear thick reading glasses, and hold a magnifying glass close to the scroll and he could still read the parsha faultlessly. We knew it was not just his eyesight he was relying on.
And whether he knew the Torah by heart or not, he certainly knew all the daily prayers inside and out, as well as the prayers associated with Shabbos and the Holidays. In his last year his eyesight got so bad that he could no longer read at all, even with the strongest magnifying glass. So he put down his siddur (prayer book) and sang the morning and evening prayers by heart. Just a few months ago, I sat next to him and followed along in my book, wondering if he really still knew it all by heart. He didn't miss a word.
Yet, of everything he knew how to do, with this tremendous range of skills and abilities that he had, what he did best of all was sing. He was the consummate Schliach Tzibur, messenger from the congregation to God. Whether singing a lilting, joyous Lecho Dodi to welcome the Sabbath Bride, or the centuries old pain-filled melody of Kol Nidre, he could move people to incredible heights and depths of feeling. Even when I was very young, 6 or 7 years old, I remember crying at his singing of some portions of the liturgy. I didn't know then why I was crying. I still don't know, except that his voice could reach inside you and touch the deepest feelings of devotion, gratitude and longing.
When we moved from Hungary to Israel and then to this country, he continued in many of the same roles - Cantor, Baal Koreh, Shochet, Masgiach, and Hebrew School teacher. And, of course, he continued to teach San and me - perhaps his most challenging task.
My father could be quite critical of various things my brother and I did or did not do, but I never remember him criticizing our singing. He might express disappointment in our grades when they were less than A's, our often unenthusiastic attendance at daily services, even about our other musical accomplishments, (mediocre piano and violin playing), but never about our singing. And this was not because we had beautiful voices as children. Yes, we could sing in tune and in rhythm, but our voices? I recently came across a tape of us singing at age 12 or so; the best I can say about the quality of our voices is that they would have been very useful in cleaning out earwax - at a distance!
Perhaps, my father's totally relaxed attitude about our singing came from his relationship to his own voice. Though there were times I saw outsized pride in his learning, which he could wield against those less educated or less intellectually capable, I never heard any of that in his voice when he sang. Like all of us, he could be egoic and opinionated about many things, but when he sang there was a simplicity, a directness, a power that transcended his personality. I think on some very basic level he understood and appreciated that his voice was a pure gift from God, and he offered it back in praise and worship as simply, naturally and purely as it was given to him.
In addition to possessing a beautiful voice, he was also blessed with the gift of composition, improvising intricate elaborations on the nusach (modes) of various holiday prayers, as well as creating many original melodies. He never really recorded either his voice or any of his compositions. My brother and I have just one reel-to-reel tape of three short pieces he recorded in his late forties in a studio in Haifa. He was hoping to use this demo tape to audition for jobs in synagogues in the United States. Our family was poor at the time, having recently left Hungary with two suitcases to our name, so my father didn't have much to invest in a recording. The studio and its engineers were second rate, the tape quality poor, and it had further deteriorated by the time we discovered it 20 years later. To make the whole thing worse, the piano accompaniment is embarrassing; the player obviously had never heard the music before, and with my father probably eyeing the studio clock, he probably had 5 minutes to rehearse it. Yet, with all of that, there comes through a sharp glint of the beauty of his voice, like an almost painfully bright ray of sunlight piercing through a crack in a wall.
Now that voice sings no more, but remains more than a memory to me. It is more than just genetically woven into my being. My father gave me many things, tangible and intangible, but that voice - in which mine is rooted - and its use in uplifting spirits, is my father's greatest gift to me. It's a gift he will keep giving me all my life.
Children's Letters of Sympathy
©2006 Sandor Slomovits
Laz and I were in the middle of a four-day residency at Purdy Elementary School in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin when we got the news that our dad died. Everyone in the school community was extremely kind and generous, many going quite a bit out of their way to help us get down to Florida for the funeral.
When we eventually returned to our homes in Ann Arbor, we found a large package waiting for us, stuffed with letters and drawings from all the kids and staff at Purdy. (They also sent a beautiful bouquet of flowers to our mom.) The letters were very comforting; sweet, heartwarming, touching, full of profound empathy and understanding and … sometimes, very funny. In times of great sadness, perhaps tears of laughter heal as much as tears of pain.
Many of the children wrote expressions of sorrow and offered condolences.
I'm very sorry for your loss. I hope you feel better. I don't have anything else to say except I'm sad.
I would be really sad if my dad died.
Some of them were very observant and thoughtful.
When you were talking to us, I noticed you talked about your dad a lot.
My teacher told us your dad was ninety-seven. I hope he lived a nice long life, even though he was sick.
I'm sure your father thought you were awesome singers. I think you are.
Remember, even if your father is not there, you still have each other.
Some letters of sympathy were heartbreaking.
My dad died too. I feel sad for you.
I know how it feels because my grandpa died. It hurts very bad.
My grandpa died because he smoked and had cancer.
I'm sorry your dad died. I had a baby bunny and he died too.
Many offered encouragement.
A good suggestion for you is to look on the bright side. I hope you aren't too sad, because if you're sad, we'll be sad too.
It might seem like the end of the world, but luckily it's not. My grandpa passed away just last year and I'm still standing. Don't lose hope.
A number were very practical and looked ahead to our returning and finishing the residency-and even past that.
When you come back, I'll be ready to sing.
We're practicing.
Thank you for not quitting on our concert.
It just crushes my heart to hear about what happened to your father. I don't know how you will be able to come back to our school some day and just sing your heart out.
I hope you don't stop singing.
I hope this doesn't mess with your music career.
A few were a little off topic - but sweetly.
Both of you guys are kind and clean.
What was your dad's favorite band?
One child sent a rough drawing labeled, Captain Underpants.
Some offered wise and wonderful advice:
You should play a song at your dad's funeral.
Stay strong for your kids and your mom.
To make your mom happy, you could sing to her and give her a hug and a kiss.
A few showed children's lack of comprehension of the meaning of death; or perhaps showed a higher understanding than our adult one.
I hope your dad feels better.
And there were some that warmed our hearts-and exercised our belly-laugh muscles.
I am sorry your dad died. He must have been a nice guy to have around.
Too bad your dad died, and he was your dad and not someone else's.
It's nice you went home for your dad's funeral. I'm sure he would have done the same for you.
My Father's Heroes
©2006 Sandor Slomovits
My father always revered Jesse Owens and Joe Louis. Surprising heroes perhaps, for a man born and raised in far away Hungary. Not the heroes one might expect of a Jewish Cantor, whose work all his adult life had been the singing of liturgy in synagogues.
Yet, among the most vivid memories I have from my childhood in Hungary and Israel, through my teenage years in the United States, are the stories my father told of Jesse Owens and Joe Louis.
How one spring afternoon in 1935, coincidentally in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I've lived since my early twenties, in the space of less than an hour, the magnificent Jesse Owens tied one world record and set five new ones. How one of those records, the long jump, lasted for more than twenty-five years; longer than any other record in modern track and field history. In his, and our, favorite story, my father told how Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. How Owens' triumphs humiliated Hitler, who had predicted victory for, and had cheered on the German sprinters and jumpers. How Hitler hastily left the Olympic stadium after Owens' victory in the long jump, rather than stay to congratulate Owens. My father would explain, "Hitler didn't want to be seen in a photo with a Negro. He wouldn't shake Jesse Owens' hand."
My father also delighted in acting out the boxing dramas of Joe Louis. Many times, in our living room, back yard, or even occasionally before services in shul, he'd ball up his fists, get into a prize fighter's crouch and show us how the Brown Bomber landed the savage right to Max Schmeling's kidney that fractured two vertebrae in the unlucky challenger's back.
"Two minutes! Just two minutes and four seconds is all it took!" he would exclaim. "They say that a Texas millionaire was at ringside that night, wearing one of those big cowboy hats. When somebody accidentally knocked his hat off soon after the beginning of the fight, he bent down to get it. By the time he looked up, the fight was over." Saying this, my father would laugh till tears came to his eyes. Then he'd add dramatically, "Can you believe it? Hitler had even sent Schmeling a telegram before the fight. 'Congratulations to the new heavyweight champion of the world.'" Again he'd laugh. Again tears would fill his eyes.
My father was a gifted storyteller and the stories of great men were his favorite topic. He knew many stories. Some of them were of singers like him: of Moshe Koussevitzky, the legendary Cantor, Gigli, the great Italian operatic tenor. and Chaliapin, the famed Russian bass baritone. Others were about the teachings and sayings of the great Rabbis of history, and still others were of his childhood and adolescence in Hungary between the two World Wars.
Always, always though, he came back to the stories of Owens and Louis.
And, of his own father.
There are only two pictures left of my grandfather Shaya. In one he is a young man wearing his WW I Hungarian Army uniform. He is posing in profile, his rifle in his right hand, a long pickax in his left. On his back is a full knapsack, and binoculars hang from a strap around his neck. He was an advance scout. His assignment throughout the war was to climb mountains and lookout towers, occasionally behind enemy lines, and report on troop movements. His face, looking out of the old daguerreotype is calmly confident, almost defiant. A man aware of his powers.
When WW I ended, small bands of troops from the retreating Checkoslovakian Army, entered his city of Balassagyarmat and began looting homes. My grandfather stood by his front gate, rifle at the ready. "They are not coming in here," he said. And they didn't.
After the war, because of his Army service, Shaya was allowed a gun permit and carried a pistol in his travels as a peddler. When in the late Thirties the many restrictions against Jews began to be enforced, Shaya lost his permit and his gun. One day, traveling home from a successful selling trip he was attacked by two robbers. Wielding a loose plank from his cart, he knocked both men senseless.
When my father was about twelve years old, one Saturday morning he was walking home from synagogue services with a few of his friends. Grandfather Shaya and the other men were walking some distance behind them. A group of teenagers surrounded the boys, and began chanting, "dirty Jews, dirty Jews." When one of them yanked my father's payis, the customary long sideburns of religious Jews, and landed a blow to my father's head, Shaya came running and the young men fled. He caught two of them from behind and hit them so hard with a fist in each back that they fell face down on the ground.
In 1940, Shaya, despite being 53 years old, was ordered into the munkaszolgálat, the work detail attached to the Hungarian Army into which many Jewish men were conscripted. Stationed far from home, he rarely saw his family. One week however, his unit camped only five kilometers from his home town of Balassagyarmat. That Friday, Shaya decided to walk home to spend the Sabbath with his family. He neglected to inform anyone that he was leaving. When he returned Sunday afternoon his commanding officer accused him of desertion. Shaya retorted, "I'm here. Besides," and at this point he stepped close to the officer and repeatedly tapped the man's chest with his index finger, "If you hadn't seen your wife and children in three months, and you were this close, what would you have done?" The matter was dropped.
Shaya was released from munkaszolgálat when a lookout tower, like the ones he'd climbed more than twenty years before in WW I, now rotted from years of neglect, collapsed under him. He broke his right shoulder and several ribs and never quite recovered from his injuries.
When my brother and I were about sixteen years old, my mother told us one day that she was our father's second wife. That he'd lost his first wife and their three young children in the Holocaust.
This almost unbelievable news was barely comprehensible to me at first. And, it was somehow silently understood in our family that we would not talk about it with our father. After my mother's revelation that day, many years went by before I allowed myself to even think about these things, and years more before I braved talking about them with my father; years before I would understand the sadness I'd always sensed in my father even when I was still a little child, but whose cause I'd never before known; years before I knew why he kept to himself so much, why he rarely joined my mother and brother and me on family outings to parks or beaches, saying that he needed time to study for the next week's Torah reading. We all knew that was not true. He could almost recite the readings by heart after so many years of study and repetition. He didn't need to rehearse every Sunday afternoon, all afternoon.
The truth was, he wanted to be alone. It sometimes seemed to me that he wanted to be alone so much that he was not a part of our family. That day when my mother told us, twenty years after they were murdered, my father was still mourning his first family.
His frequent stories of Jesse Owens and Joe Louis gradually came to mean more to me. I began to see why the victories of Owens and Louis held such mythic power for him.
In June of 1938, when Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling, my father was living in Kunhegyes, a small town a hundred-twenty-five kilometers east of Budapest. He served as Rabbi, Cantor and school teacher for the Jewish families living in that community. Although he was happy in his life in Kunhegyes, he was well aware of the gathering horror of Hitler. After Krystalnacht in 1938 he had visible proof that Hitler's insane rantings could inspire very real violence. In 1942 that horror and violence pounded on his door. When war broke out, like his father Shaya, he was ordered into the munkaszolgálat. He spent much of the rest of the war in work lagers in Poland. When he returned home to Kunhegyes in late 1944, my father discovered he had lost everything to the Nazis.
While he was away in the munkaszolgálat, much of his family was taken to Auschwitz in cattle carts. There, besides numberless more distant relatives, he lost his father Shaya, his mother Rozsa, his only brother, three sisters, and, perhaps most excruciating of all, his wife, two sons and a daughter.
My father always believed that Shaya, had he not been recovering from the fall from the lookout tower, would have never been taken alive to Auschwitz. He was certain that Shaya would have taken to the grave with him a number of the Csendör, the hated Hungarian state police who rounded up Jews to transport to the Camps.
I used to have different fantasies, even more unrealistic. I dreamt that Shaya might have been able to save the whole family.
Jesse Owens and Joe Louis were exceptional men, worthy of my father's admiration. However, my father did not look up to them only for their athletic feats. He revered them because they did something he had not been able to do.
Jesse Owens and Joe Louis beat the Nazis.
Reflections on the "Star Spangled Banner"
©1990 Laszlo Slomovits
(We've sung the National Anthem before a Tiger baseball game every year since 1989. We got to do this after meeting the then-owner of the team, Tom Monaghan, on a radio program. We told him of our long-standing dream to sing the Star Spangled Banner before a Major League ball game, and a few months later we got our chance.This article first appeared in the Detroit Free Press on Sunday, July 29, 1990, just a few days after comedian-actress Roseanne Barr sang her famous shrieking rendition of the National Anthem before a San Diego Padres-Cincinnati Reds game.)
Last summer my twin brother, San, and I were invited to sing the National Anthem at Detroit's Tiger Stadium. On July 30th, just before the game between the Tigers and the Minnesota Twins, we walked out on the field, stood half way between home plate and the pitcher's mound, and faced the flag waving in the breeze out beyond center field.
I had known it would be an emotional moment, and so I'd prepared for it. Having been a professional singer for more than fifteen years, I'd learned that the first few times I sing a powerful song it will move me to tears and choke me up to where I can't continue. So a few weeks before we were to sing, I went to a game at the stadium, and as the singer that day began the anthem, I visualized myself in her place – and, of course, I got all choked up. When the tears started coming, I let them come. Over the next few weeks I kept singing the anthem at home, letting that huge feeling wash over me, until I could sing it without getting lost in it.
Nevertheless, no practice or visualization could prepare me for the energy that rose up when San and I actually stood on the field and started to sing "O say, can you see". Twenty four thousand people standing, singing with you, facing a red, white, and blue piece of fabric that has come to mean a way of life so precious to so many people – it was an incredible thrill! Thankfully, we managed to pour all that energy into the singing, and there were no tears.
Later, as we sat in the stands and watched the game, I thought back to my first memories of the "Star Spangled Banner", and of our coming to the United States.
*****
San and I were nearly eleven years old, and we were immigrating with our parents from Israel to America. Two and a half years earlier, we'd left our native Hungary in the wake of the 1956 Revolution. Our parents had dreamt of coming straight to America, but so did everyone else who was leaving Hungary at that time, and so the U. S. immigration quotas were quickly filled. Now, the dream was about to come true.
We'd been nearly two weeks crossing the Atlantic, and today, November 28, l959, our ship would dock in New York Harbor. Our parents were still eating breakfast down below, but San and I had gotten permission to go topside. Two sailors who had befriended us earlier in the trip, now bought us each a Ginger Ale and invited us out on the deck to catch the first glimpse of land. Neither San nor I had ever had a carbonated drink before; we were fascinated.
It was a cold, cloudy morning, and a thick fog hung in the air starting just a few feet above the waves. After our eyes had gotten used to it, we could make out a low, dark mass on the horizon. Gradually we began seeing the jutting skyscrapers of the New York skyline. And then, looming up out of the water, a great statue of a woman holding a torch. There had been nothing to prepare us for this sight; we'd never seen a picture of her, nor had we ever even heard of her.
When they saw the statue, the two sailors started grinning from ear to ear and thumping each other on the back. They kept pointing to it, trying to tell us something. Since we didn't speak English and they didn't know Hungarian, we'd been communicating with gestures all through the trip. It didn't matter in the slightest now that we didn't understand their words; the feelings came through loud and clear.
My mother joined us on the deck. A tough, proud lady who had survived the concentration camps of World war II, she stood there now with tears in her eyes. My father, an Orthodox Jew who always kept his head covered, took off his hat. San and I sipped our Ginger Ales, our first gift from this new land, and watched the statue grow as our ship drew closer to shore. It is still one of my most vivid memories – the Statue of Liberty coming into view through the fog, that very first time.
The first time I heard the "Star Spangled Banner" must have been a few weeks later. I don't remember, but undoubtedly it was played during homeroom at the Bronx elementary where we first attended school in this country. Very likely it was an instrumental version, played through the school PA system, complete with static and distortion, from a scratchy old album by the Army-Navy Military Band. If it was a choral version, I wouldn't have understood a word of it anyway, since I still didn't speak English. However, in the next few years, without ever trying, I learned the words and the tune in the same mysterious way that I learned to speak English, play a violin in tune, and catch a baseball.
A few years later, my father, a synagogue Cantor, started performing at social functions in some of the big resort hotels in the Catskills. These events always started with the "Hatikva", the Israeli National Anthem, and the "Star Spangled Banner", which my father didn't know. So San and I coached him on the pronounciation and meaning of the words. Dad was not a quick study – and it didn't help that we were teen-agers, with the lack of patience and respect that seems to go with that age. But I still remember how hard he worked on it. Over and over again, he twisted his tongue around unfamiliar words like "ramparts" and "perilous". Again and again he shook his head and struggled to make sense out of that convoluted hundred and fifty year old poetic syntax. And it wasn't just professional pride or fear of embarrassment that drove him; having survived the Holocaust and the Hungarian Revolution, he was incredibly grateful for the chance to live in this country. He'd be damned if he was going to mess up its National Anthem!
When he sang it in public for the first time, nobody would have mistaken him for a native speaker, but you just knew he understood and felt every single word as he was singing it. He sang it with the same fervor and beauty which he brought to the most sacred texts in the liturgy. As he sang I could almost see "the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air" and the "broad stripes and bright stars" of the very same flag which so moved Francis Scott Key back in 1814.
In the spring of 1965, when we'd lived the requisite five years in the United States, my parents, San and I became naturalized citizens. The ceremony was held in a small courtroom of the City Hall in Kingston, NY. A color guard marched in and presented the flag. Then the Pledge of Allegiance was recited and we all joined in – "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America..." Twenty four new citizens – and what a rich melting-pot of accents!
Finally, a well-known local mezzo-soprano sang "The Star Spangled Banner". Afterwards, my father said, "She had a great voice, but they should have let one of us sing it. It means more to us. We would have sung it with more feeling." When we got home, the first thing he did was hang the flag we'd been given at the ceremony out on the front porch.
*****
And now here it is 25 years later, and the Tigers have invited us back to sing the Anthem again. After we accepted the invitation I knew I had to go to at least one more game before today – just to make sure there are not too many lumps in my throat when San and I face that Star Spangled Banner out beyond center field.
Comments from our Fans
© Sandor Slomovits
In more than quarter century of playing music for children and families, we've heard, and read, some great lines from our small fans. Here is a sampling.
On the subject of our twinship:
"How did you get to be twins?"
"Why are you twins?"
"How long have you been twins?"
"You guys are twins, right? That means you have the same mother right?"
"Where did you two meet?"
"You two look the same from the back."
And, perhaps my favorite. A little boy came up to us following a concert, and after scrutinizing us carefully for a minute, announced, "I have a friend who looks like one of you." And then stood there for another minute trying to decide which one of us his friend resembled.
One more, this from an adult couple who told us, "You sang at the wedding of friends of ours and now they are expecting twins." Our reply? "That's delightful! But we're not taking any credit or blame."
About our songs:
"I like all the music that you played. Of course I do. Who wouldn't?"
"I really liked your program. My favorite song was all the songs."
"Are some of these songs true?"
"My favorite was 'Puppy Love'. I have a dog. He's not a puppy though, but we got him as one. His name is Tyler."
"I liked the song 'Puppy Love' because I have two dogs. One is little and one is big."
"One of my favorite songs you sing is Deli. I noticed you left out the Ziggerman's or something like that, but it sounded just as good."
"You know that song, Oh Susannah? You didn't sing it right."
"You know that baseball song, 'Take me out to the ballgame'? Bob Uecker wrote that."
About our recordings:
"My teacher just got one of your tapes. Now she has them all. I don't blame her."
"As soon as I pay off my Cockatiel I will buy a few tapes of yours."
"You guys are cool dudes. Do you sell your records in Ann Arbor because my dad always goes there to get the kind of bread they sell... yuckkkk!"
"I play the piano and I'm ten years old. I'm going to buy a tape of yours. I hate rock but I love classical."
"When I first played your tape for my mom, she said, 'it's a nice change of pace from Mozart'. We used to listen to Mozart all the time but we listen to you now."
And this from a little boy who wanted to know how much our recordings cost, but said, "How much are your CDs worth?"
We get compliments:
"I hope when I grow up I can take my kids to go see you perform."
"I liked your show. I've seen you two times before. I liked you both times."
"Do you have another job? Or are you good enough that you do only this?"
"At least five or ten people in my class were singing along."
"Do you guys ever catch your breath?"
"I thought you guys were okay."
"Will you stop playing that music! Play heavy metal instead." (1st grader)
"Since I heard you sing I wanted an autograph so bad. So the main point I'm writing this letter for is to tell you I want one."
They get personal:
"Who does your hair?"
"Where do you shop?"
"How old were you when you were born?"
"The one I thought was the oldest was Sandor and I think you are 56 years old. No. I bet you are in the twenties, at least 24."
"I like your music. Do you like me? Are you married? Have you ever been married?"
Most of our school concerts are for elementary age kids. Occasionally though, we play at a middle school. Near the end of one of those concerts, during the question and answer part, we noticed a group of eighth grade boys egging on one of their classmates. "Ask 'em. Ask 'em", we could hear, even from the stage. Finally the boy raised his hand and we called on him. His question? "Do the instruments get you any women?" After the laughter died down I replied that I did meet my wife when she came to one of our concerts. They looked disappointed. That's clearly not what they had in mind.
Unsolicited personal information:
"I got two brothers and one mom and one dad and me."
"Do you have a dog? I have one. Do you have a pig? I don't."
"Do you get nervous when you perform in front of a huge crowd? I do."
"Do you have any kids? I have two brothers. I hate them."
The "from-the-mouth-of-babes" category:
A few years ago we sang the Anthem before a ball game in Tiger Stadium in May. At a school concert the day before the game with the Minnesota Twins, I jokingly told our audience that I guaranteed a Tiger victory. After the concert a little boy came up to me and asked, "So you're sure the Tiger's will win tomorrow?" I said, "Oh yes, I guarantee it." He shot back, "You better hope Kirby Puckett is on the disabled list."
And then there was the little girl who told me about her class having taken a recent tour of the local police station. She was most intrigued by the locker room. She had asked the tour guide, "If you're policemen, how come there are locks on your lockers?"
And finally, one we're still trying to figure out: "Please come back. Take your time."
Bigger Last Year
© Sandor Slomovits
"You were here last year," the boy declared almost defiantly, looking up at my brother, daring him to deny it. Laz nodded agreeably. We play music for children and families and we had, to be perfectly accurate, played a concert at this school not one, but two years before, but there was something in this fourth grader's tone that seemed to say, "Let's not sweat the details, OK?"
"You're not very big," he continued. Again in that somewhat pugnacious tone. No argument there either. "I guess not," Laz agreed affably. The boy, his black high-top sneakers untied, T-shirt hanging down almost to his knees, hair tousled from outdoor recess, put his hands on his hips and delivered his final statement.
"You were bigger last year."
One of my earliest childhood memories is of being in the hospital, quarantined with scarlet fever, craning up at my parents who were waving from the other side of a window high above me. The window must have been at a standard height. It just seemed impossibly high from my three year old vantage point. Perhaps in the same way, to that little boy, Laz had loomed taller two years before.
Near the end of our concerts my brother and I often leave time for questions from the audience. In almost every concert somebody asks, "How old are you guys?" Although we eventually 'fess up to the truth, first we make a game out of it.
"How many people think we're over thirty. Raise your hands."
All hands shoot up.
"OK, how many people think we're over forty?"
A smaller, but still depressingly large group of hands go up.
"Over fifty?"
A still smaller group of hands go up uncertainly. I'm grateful for their hesitancy.
"Over sixty?"
Now they get it and start to giggle. Lots of hands shoot up.
"Older than eighty? "
Everybody's laughing now and all the hands are waving enthusistically in the air.
Then we say, with lowered voices, as dramatically as possible, "You're all still too... low."
Pointing to each other we say, "Between the two of us, we are..." and we name the figure, as of this writing, a hard-to-believe 102, that is the sum of our years.
Twenty seven years ago, when we started playing concerts, kids almost always guessed us to be younger than we were. These days they usually guess a lot closer to the truth. Recently at a concert, after we told everyone how old we were, a little girl said, "Wow, you're even older than my dad." At another recent concert a young mom, holding her wriggling two year old, said, "My parents used to take me to your shows. I grew up on your music."
"Wow!" was all I could manage. Has it really been that long? When I look in the mirror these days, I do see more lines and less hair, and what hair is left is greying. But my inner view of myself has not changed. Inside, I don't look, or feel older. Inside, I seem not to have changed since I was about twenty five, when I first started thinking of myself as grown up. My audiences remind me otherwise. "You were bigger last year. Wow, you're older than my dad. I grew up on your music."
And yet, because we play music for children, our audiences today look the same as they did twenty years ago. They haven't aged at all. And when I'm singing with them, I feel as if I haven't either.
I have a six year old daughter now. As with the more than quarter century of playing music, I'm astonished how fast those six years have gone; how much she has changed in that time, and, how little changed, it seems, I feel.
It is said, 'time flies when you're having fun.' When you're having fun, I think it also stands still.
Flying a Kite
© Sandor Slomovits, with help from Laszlo Slomovits
My father in law, my daughter and I are flying a kite in Vets Park in Ann Arbor, a five minute walk from our house. It's early on a gorgeous Sunday morning. We have the park to ourselves. The baseball and softball games have not yet started.
The kite, a big purple diamond, is last year's Father's Day gift to me from my wife. Emily runs with it to get it started. I hold the spool and let it spin out. The kite climbs higher. She runs after it as it swoops and soars in graceful patterns in the sky.
My father-in-law looks at the kite and reminisces about going to the hardware store as a kid and asking, "Mister, could I have 5 cents worth of string?"
This was in Kentucky, in the early 1940's. My father-in-law was eleven or twelve years old.
"I was working by then, setting out tobacco slips for 25 cents an hour. In the spring, it's already very hot in Kentucky. I remember that. We made our kites out of thin, worn rags. The long crossbar we made of the dowels you used for poking the holes in the ground for the tobacco slips. The short crossbar was just a twig from a tree. We used a torn up T-shirt for the tail. It worked good."
Emily runs back and asks to hold the spool. I hand it to her, warning her to hold on tight because the kite is high in the sky and the wind has picked up. Bill continues, his memories spinning out, stretching back, like the kite climbing away from us.
Emily hands back the spool. The kite is pulling harder now and she wants to listen. Maybe someday, she will fly a kite with her own child, and tell her of Grandpa Bill. Maybe she will tell her of her own kite memories of this day. Or maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll be there too and the threads of memories will tug at me insistently – from as far away in the sky as the kite is now in the blue. And I'll be able to reel it all back in, for both of them, on that thin but strong-enough line.
A Barn, a Mural, and the Value of One Person's Work
© Sandor Slomovits
Just west of Grand Rapids, Michigan, on I-96, there is a barn with a mural on its side. The painting faces the highway, and is only visible from the road. All the houses in the area are on the other side of the barn. I noticed it for the first time a few years ago while driving by on our way to a concert. I didn't catch all its details but the mural was a colorful, idyllic, pastoral scene complete with a silo. The artist had extended the image above the roof line of the barn by adding, and painting, a wooden facade for the cap of the silo.
The road conditions were bad that day and I was becoming concerned we'd be late. A gusty wind was blowing the thickly falling snow across the highway. I didn't dare take my eyes off the road for long because it was a bit slippery and I was having a hard time seeing my way through the swirling curtain of snow.
Still, even that brief glimpse of the barn was uplifting – a welcome splash of color in the bleak, grey and white landscape. I mentally saluted the artist. I marvelled that someone had taken the time, and made the effort to create something charming and delightful, despite knowing that it would only be visible for a few seconds to motorists going by at seventy miles an hour – or faster.
My brother was asleep in the passenger seat and so missed the sight, but when I told him about it later it reminded him of something he'd seen in Paris a few years ago. On some of the bridges that span the Seine there are intricate sculptures. Some of them are only visible, briefly, from boats as they glide under the bridges.
Although I've been playing music for my living for more than twenty seven years, I still have days when I question the value of my work. "Surely," I think, "what I do is not as vital as the work of the doctor who delivered my daughter. It's not as important as the work my wife does, taking care of our daughter when I'm away." Or I ask myself, "Is it as useful as the work of the carpenters who remodeled our house?"
Every day we go about our lives, usually moving too fast, often fearful that we are late for something, buffeted about by some storm or other, trying to find our way when we can't see very well, keeping our eyes fixed on the road because it can be dangerous out there. And some days, out of the corner of our eye, we catch a glimpse of something beautiful, or hear a sound that lifts us from our fear. We take a deep breath and go on, feeling lighter, refreshed, and perhaps a little more hopeful.
The next time I doubt the value of my work, I hope I remember the mural on that barn.
And, the next time, dear reader, you doubt the value of what you do, I hope you remember that your work, what you create, helps others in ways you can't even imagine.
Spring
Laszlo Slomovits (from his 1999 book, Our Eyes Are Its Wings - Notes in a Heartland Journal)
All night long the bees
in the honeycomb were
whispering about flowers -
how they might be open,
today!
Everybody once was a kid
even us – as illustrated in this story from San (that's Emily Rose at the piano)
© Sandor Slomovits
"I know how to play piano," the little boy announced earnestly. My brother and I play music for children and families and we'd just finished a show in a theater. I was in the lobby, talking with people from our audience.
"That's great," I replied encouragingly. He couldn't have been more than four years old. I pictured him sitting on telephone books stacked on the piano bench, straining to reach the keyboard. "How long have you been playing?"
"Almost a year. I got Ray Charles down pretty good, but my Mom says I need to work on the basics."
A damp memory surfaces. When my brother and I were less than two years old, we managed to climb up on top of the grand piano in my parents' living room and dumped an entire pitcher of water into its innards. The piano had belonged to my mother's father, who died long before we were born. Mothers forgive everything.
I started practicing on that piano when I was about seven years old. Pianos can endure almost anything. I never did get Ray Charles down pretty good -- or the basics for that matter. To say that I was no child prodigy would be a vast understatement. After five years of lessons I reached my pianistic high note when I barely managed to struggle through Stephen Foster's "Beautiful Dreamer" in Mrs. Mauterstock's student recital. Certainly, anyone hearing me that day could have been forgiven for laughing uncontrollably at the suggestion that someday I'd be making my living as a musician.
I quit piano lessons soon after that nightmarish recital. Just a few years later, when I fell in love with folk music and the guitar, it was different. While no one will mistake me for Segovia or Eric Clapton, I can play "Hit the Road, Jack" pretty good, and I can probably even get through "Beautiful Dreamer."
Because I play music for children, parents often ask me for advice about what is the right age to start a child on an instrument, and which instrument is best for young children. They also ask me if they should 'make' their children take lessons when they don't seem to want to. I tell them that I'm no expert on any of those topics. (I am, as I write this, the father of five year old Emily. When people ask me if she's going to take after her dad, I tell them the same thing my brother used to say when his Daniel was a baby. "We know he has the volume.") Then I tell them about my friends, the Tracy Schwarz Family Band, who had a very elegant method for introducing their children to instruments. Tracy and Eloise would lay a banjo or harmonica or guitar on the sofa and then, as they were going out the door for the evening, say to their kids, "Don't touch that!"
All their kids became fine musicians. Their youngest is accomplished on bass, keyboards, harmonica and played in concert with them for years.
Yes, occasionally I do wish I'd learned to play the piano. The longing, I admit, is most intense in airports, as I'm lugging my guitar from Concourse A to Concourse Z. But no, I don't wish my parents had made me practice more. The truth is, I didn't fall in love with piano the way I did with guitar. I don't think I'd have learned more even if I'd been forced to practice.
Now maybe, if I'd started with Ray Charles, rather than the basics...
September 11th – What can we do?
©2001 San Slomovits
Two weeks after the events of September 11, I finally told Emily, my seven year old daughter, about what happened that day. My wife and I had made a deliberate decision in the days following the tragedy to shield our child from the news, especially the horror filled TV pictures.
But now it was time. We knew if we did not tell her, she would hear about it from someone else. So, in the car, after school, on our way to an event where we knew it was likely to come up, I told Emily. Briefly, with a minimum of graphic details, but leaving nothing out.
It is a natural urge all parents have, to protect their children from terrifying images and frightening stories. To wait as long as possible to expose them to the sometimes cruel, unbearably sad realities of our world.
I was sixteen when my mother first told me about the Holocaust. That she was my father's second wife. That he'd lost his first wife and three children in Auschwitz, twenty years earlier. That she'd lost her only brother and her fiancé. I had few questions for my mother that day. The information she'd given me was too vast, too incomprehensible. She and I rarely talked about it again and more than thirty years would go by before I was finally able to talk with my father about his losses.
Now, in the car, Emily also only asked a few questions. "How far is New York? When did this happen?"
We were driving east on Stadium Boulevard and I began pointing out the many American flags and the God Bless America signs and told Emily that these were some ways that people were trying to express their support of our country and for the people who lost friends and relatives. When we got to the corner of Packard and Stadium, members of the Ann Arbor Fire Department were collecting donations. I waved one of them over to our car and put some money into the tall boot he held out. After the light changed and I drove away, I told Emily about the firefighters in New York and how the money I gave would help their families. She said, "Dad, what can I do?" I was touched and relieved. There was no fear in her question, no helplessness. We brainstormed. She too would make a God Bless America sign, she'd empty her piggy bank.
Then she said, "Dad, what else can we do?" I suggested we could be kind to everyone we meet. She enthusiastically amplified, "We could help people. Like if someone falls, we could help them up? Or if someone is lost we could show them where to go?"
"Yes," I said, "Those would be very good things to do." Over the course of the day she kept bringing up the subject and continued asking, "Dad, what else can we do?"
She didn't ask me about forgiving and I was relieved. It was two days before the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. In Judaism it is customary on Yom Kippur to ask for forgiveness for any harm we may have done, and to forgive those who have harmed us. But for me, right now, it felt too soon to forgive.
I thought of my parents. What did they do on Yom Kippur after they discovered what the Nazis had done to their families? Did they forgive? Later that day I called and asked them, first about the hijackers. Did we need to forgive them on Yom Kippur?
"No", my father said. "If someone comes to kill you, it is your duty to try to kill them first." Which was the most poetic justification for violence I'd ever heard, but not really a reply to my question, so I pressed on. Had he ever forgiven the Nazis on any Yom Kippur in the last fifty years?
"No," my father said again. "Forgiveness does not apply to situations like that." My mother was silent.
Besides his first wife and three children, my father also lost both his parents, his only brother and three of his eight sisters in Auschwitz. Perhaps he is right. Maybe forgiveness does not apply to situations like that. Nor to the events of September 11th.
Emily asked me why were the firemen the ones who were collecting donations? And I told her of the New York City firemen. And of all the other people who performed brave, kind and loving actions on that day and since. People who tried to save lives, did save lives, sometimes at the cost of their own.
I think again of my parents. How they and others in their families survived, while so many others were destroyed. How they were saved through the grace of God, their own personal strength and courage, and also the kindness of strangers who helped them, often at the risk of their own lives.
I will not desecrate the memories of the victims of either the Holocaust or of September 11 by comparing them. Yet I will remember, about both events, the generosity and the selfless sacrifice of strangers. I think of the words of Anne Frank. "It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart."
And I think often of Emily's question. "What else can we do?"
Goodbye, Mr. Bones - Remembering Percy Danforth
©2002 Sandor Slomovits
I met Percy Danforth in 1976, after my brother Laz saw him play the bones in Donald Hall's "Bread and Roses." "You won't believe how much music he can get out of four little pieces of wood!" Laz told me. I called Percy and asked me if he would show me how to play, and with his typical generosity, he said, "Of course." I was not a quick study, but he was a patient teacher, and his enthusiasm was infectious. Finally, like thousands of others Percy taught, I started to get the hang of it.
We performed together dozens of times over the next sixteen years. I remember the way he'd kid around on stage: "Welcome to the rehearsal," He'd tell the audience, then joke about "tuning" the bones-which he actually could do by adjusting them in his hands. But most of all, I remember the dreamy look on his face as he "danced" the bones, and his surprised, joyful expression when we hit the final note together. He'd laugh, shake our hands, and say, "That came out all right." With Percy, countless times, from formal concert halls to folk festivals, coffeehouses, and schools, it came out all right-and much better than all right.
The last time we played a concert together was at a senior citizens' Christmas party a couple of years ago. We invited him to play a few tunes with us, and Percy, at age ninety, was still in great form. The seniors, many of them years younger than he, were inspired.
On June 1, Laz and I played at Hillside Terrace, the retirement community where Percy and Frances, his wife of sixty-five years, lived. As usual, I introduced him as "the man who taught me everything I know about the bones." I also told him what a thrill it still is for me when people come up and say, "You must have learned to play the bones from Percy Danforth-you look just like him when you play."
He died nine days later. Goodbye, Percy. Thank you.
For further information, please contact Sandor by e-mail at slomovits@hotmail.com.
Click here to order the Danforth Bones.
Click here for instructions on how to play the bones.
Ray Schairer
©2002 Sandor Slomovits
Percy Danforth is a name familiar to most people in the bones-playing community worldwide. Percy, who learned to play the bones as a young child in the early 1900s, began teaching them to others in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the mid 1970s and went on to play and teach the bones throughout the United States and even in Great Britain right up until his death in 1992.
Less well known, but perhaps equally deserving of credit for the bones' rise in popularity in Percy's wake is Ray Schairer, the man who has fashioned all the bones that Percy and his many students – and the students of his students – have played.
Ray, born in 1922, is the third generation of Schairers to farm land near Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was born on his family's 120-acre family farm and grew up running it alongside his dad, and then continued by himself after his father's passing. He planted grains, milked cattle, raised sheep and chickens – doing what used to be called general farming.
Along the way, he also became a fine woodworker. His dad taught him the basic skills as a young boy (Ray still has the first workbench his father made for him) and Ray went on to hone his skills, fixing and making furniture and fashioning everything from wooden bowls to miniature mantle clocks, lathe works and other craft articles. As a young man he began teaching woodworking to boys and eventually, as the times changed, also to girls in the local 4-H program. Recently, the Washtenaw County Extension Service honored him for 55 years of 4-H leadership.
His fame as a woodworker and teacher is probably how he came to the attention of Percy Danforth. By 1976 Percy Danforth had enough bones students that he needed a steady supply of high quality wooden bones. Percy played everything from genuine bones to ones made of plastic and ivory, but he preferred the sound of wooden bones, especially pine. He came to Ray's workshop one day in 1976 and showed him the bones and asked if he could set up a system to turn out large quantities of wooden ones. Ray still has the curved piece of pine that Percy brought with him that day to show the exact curve he wanted on the bones.
A business relationship and friendship was formed which lasted till Percy's death and even beyond. Ray continued to send royalty payments from the sale of bones to Percy's wife Fran, and now sends them to his children.
For more than a quarter century, in the converted chicken coop on his farm that served as his wood shop, Ray has turned out bones. The wood shop is small, with its low ceilings serving as a reminder of the original purpose of the building. It is filled with all the standard woodworker's tools, band saw, belt sander, table saw, lathe, stone sharpening wheel and a full assortment of hand tools, plus some custom made power tools to shape and sand the bones.
To make the bones, Ray takes 5/4 inch boards of wood and first cuts out the curved shapes, about a foot long and about 3/8 inch thick, on his band saw. Then he pushes each piece twice through the shaper he designed and built with the help of an engineering professor at the University of Michigan. The shaper puts the concave shape on the bones that makes them comfortable to hold and play. Then he sands each bone on a three belt sander he fashioned, first with medium grade sandpaper, then with fine and finally with emory paper. Then it's back to the band saw to cut off the extra length on each end. (When finished, the bones are 7-3/8 inches long, but he needs the extra length at the beginning of the process to push them through the wood shaper and to hold them on the sanders.) Then it's over to the drum sander to sand the edges he's just cut. A coat of Minwax is next and finally he affixes the tiny decal in the center that says "Danforth Bones."
Ray estimates that in the past twenty eight years he has made over thirty thousand Danforth bones. “I haven't had chickens in here for thirty years. I make more money turning out bones than I ever did raising chickens.” A comment that says more about the economic conditions of the family farm than it does on the profitability of bones making.
Although he's shaped thousands of bones Ray has, literally and figuratively, never cut corners. He uses the most modern of power tools, yet is a true craftsman in the old tradition of woodworkers. Certain that it would be possible to set up a mass production system for turning out the bones, he says that's not his way. He likes his more deliberate, hands-on approach and takes pride in knowing that he handled every pair of bones before they left his shop.
Percy sold the Danforth bones at his many concerts and workshops at schools, coffeehouses and festivals. He usually played bones made of soft pine but people asked about other woods and so Ray began turning out bones made of cherry, hickory, walnut, oak, maple and exotic woods like ebony and rosewood. As Percy's fame spread, he began getting orders from music stores and individuals all over the United States and from as far away as Europe, Australia and Japan. Today, ten years after Percy's death, Ray continues to fill orders from all over the world.
Ray himself has learned to rattle the bones but his primary musical instrument is the piano. He still plays on the beautiful old upright that his grandmother bought for his father when his father was six years old. "That's the piano I learned on too. We had a trio, my dad, sister and I. He also played the violin and my sister played the saxophone." With typical, and misplaced modesty Ray adds, "As long as I was accompanying them I could get away with it. But I didn't want to be up there as a soloist." Ray is retired now. He and his wife Jane, they recently celebrated their Golden Anniversary, now live in the Chelsea Methodist Retirement Community. Retirement has allowed him to play his beloved piano a little more, but has not slowed him down a bit. Ray and Jane sold the family farm to a distant relative and so he still has access to his wood shop there, but the Retirement Community also has a well equipped wood shop in the basement. Many mornings find Ray down there working on various projects and, of course, fashioning more bones.
He continues to experiment with new woods. He recently heard of a company in Wisconsin that is making lumber from logs discovered at the bottom of Lake Superior, wood that had sunk there well over 100 years ago when the virgin forests of Wisconsin were first logged and tree trunks were lashed together in huge rafts and towed down to Chicago. Lake Superior's frigid waters have preserved this wood – from forests standing long before the Declaration of Independence was signed – in impeccable condition. Ray now fashions maple, birch and pine bones from them. The wood is very close grained and beautiful and Ray says admiringly, "This is real wood. You don't often see wood like this anymore." The sound is different too, sharper and crisper than bones made from the same conventional woods.
Ray has never advertised, but word of his well-crafted bones keeps spreading. Bones players who learned from Percy are legion and when people see his fine instruments they want their own. Some of Percy's students who play music professionally, play them in their concerts, and after the shows people ask where they can buy them. There is even the principal of a nearby elementary school, himself a bones player, who every year teaches all his fifth graders how to play. He uses tongue depressors to get them started and then orders a pair of bones for each of them as a graduation gift. "Sometimes I think that interest in the bones has waned and maybe I've made my last set of bones, but then I get another big order," says Ray. "This thing just has a life of its own. I love making the bones and I'll keep doing them as long as I can."
For further information please contact Sandor by email at slomovits@hotmail.com.
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