Dancing in the Sky

I'm listening to too-loud recorded music coming up the hill, maybe from the Kennedy HS athletic fields, maybe from the playground at the Marble Hill houses. Now it's accompanied by the bells from the Church of the Mediator on Kingsbridge Avenue. I have the choice of being irritated by a DJ's choices at 9:30 on a Sunday morning, when I would like a little quiet, or trying to enjoy the music. It reminds me of a flight to Florida.

It was a spring in the early 90's when the JFK senior advisor asked me to help chaperone the senior trip. I was asked late because they had to replace another teacher at the last minute. I admit to feeling some kind of way about that. I also had a longstanding question about why senior classes of 700 to 1000 kids took ambitious trips each year that typically included about 40 kids because nobody else could afford them on top of paying for yearbook, graduation, and prom. But I agreed to go.

Forty Bronx high school seniors may feel like a tiny number when you compare them to 5000+ teens in an eight-story building. But it feels like a large group on an airplane with 400 passengers. I do not need to explain how a bunch of teens can seem to take up a lot of space if you aren't a high school teacher. A lot of families were looking cross-eyed at our kids. Our kids were too excited about the trip, and too attentive to one another to notice. But this airplane had another group of passengers on it - not immediately obvious - that was smaller in number, but even larger in their energy and spirit.

Up in first class was a salsa legend, the brilliant Cuban singer Celia Cruz, on her way from NYC

to some gigs in Florida. But riding with us was her entire band. And shortly after takeoff it turned out that every single musician, whether percussionist or horn player, was carrying some little percussion instrument: cowbells, maracas, güiros, claves... I don't remember what else. They took them out and started playing. It was joy. If you have heard an ensemble of Latin percussionists, each playing their own rhythm, adding up to something transcendent, you know exactly what I mean. These were professionals, part of one of the best bands in the world.

It was really good. So good that some of our kids couldn't even remain in their seats. They were up in the aisles and dancing. 

A family behind me was now so uncomfortable that the dad asked me to make them stop. "Huh?" was my articulate and thoughtful reply.

He asked me to make the musicians stop playing. I skipped over the bizarre association that led him to conclude that my authority over our students extended to every person of color on the plane. I just asked, "Are you guys going to Disney?"

He nodded. I said, "Disney has some really special musical acts. Some of them you sit down to hear. Some of them are just playing in the streets of the park as you walk around. But I promise you that none of them will be as good as this. Maybe you should try appreciating some of the finest musicians you will ever hear playing for you for free, out of sheer love of music."

He wasn't happy. The flight attendants asked our kids to return to their seats because they needed to work the aisles. The band didn't go on much longer. But my memories are of the music itself and of the ability we each have to choose whether to appreciate it.

It is 10:30. No more music from down the hill. Maybe they were asked to wait until later. Maybe their event is over. It's a quiet Sunday morning again.