[Dixielandjazz] Beebe's kids and other young folks

[Charlie Hooks]

on 8/6/02 1:12 PM, Nancy Giffin at nancyink@ulink.net wrote:

> So while it may
> be a shame that we missed out on classic material, it's not our fault for
> not knowing what our elders know.

    You're absolutely right, Nancy: it's not the kids' fault.  But I'm not
sure Jim was saying that, either.  I know that as I was reading his note
(and shaking my head in agreement), I was thinking NOT "what silly kids!"
but that "our generation just isn't being able to pass on that which was
passed on to us."  

    "Beautiful Dreamer" wasn't "our" generation's music.  It wasn't even our
great-grandfathers' music.  It was All Generations' music, a Stephen Foster
song, a song that my generation learned--well, God knows where--from the
culture in general?  Not from the radio, especially.  Glenn Miller was on
the radio, not Stephen Foster.  But we learned those songs SOMEWHERE.  Same
place we learned "The Little Brown Church in the Vale" and "The Spanish
Cavalier" and "Reuben and Rachael" and "Frankie and Johnnie" and "Loch
Lomand" and and...

    Wherever we went to learn things like that, we don't go there anymore.

    We watch TV instead?  Is that what's happened?  That's surely part of
it. An enormous part of our cultural base just isn't getting passed along:
nursery rhymes, Stevenson's poems (what kid knows "Oh How I Like to Go Up in
a Swing"?), things that have been around much longer than I have, longer
than my grandfather was.  This knowledge has been held in common by the
generations--until the present generation, which does know a few things: it
knows Winnie the Pooh (because of TV) and it knows Tolkein (because of the
movies).  Dr. Seuss we are lucky to have.  And Maurice Sendac.  So we are
adding to; but we're losing much too much.

    I think that's what was bothering Jim.  Of course, he did say: "she
didn't want to hear about it.  I am pissed about this.  Public TV ran a nice
special on Foster recently and I was hoping my kids might watch it.  I know
they didn't."  But the scandal to me is not that the kids "don't want to
hear about it," but that they still need to hear about it at all!  They've
been through 12 years of at-least-lets-pretend-it's-school, and they don't
know Stephen Foster??  Don't know "Sewanee River"??

    Our bucket's got a hole in it!  We're leaking culture like a sieve.

    Your point about learning between generations being a two way street is
well taken.  But one must not carry this too far: the difference between a
person who has learned a great deal and one who hasn't yet is vast, and it's
no good pretending otherwise.  Jim knows a great about music and musicians,
knowledge he has acquired at cost; his kids (like any kids) spurn this
knowledge to their loss, not his.  (He's also much more tolerant than I am:
he'll defend the Beatles top and bottom; I won't.)  But he worries about
those kids because they're his.

    All young people should be like you, Nancy: may we please clone you?

Charlie