September 1, 2008

Our Voices Were Raised Again

What’s it gonna take?

How many lives?

How many voices left unheard?

How many years?

How many tears,

Until the ones in power hear the word.¹

Last weekend I had the privilege of standing on stage at the 2008 Concert for Lost Voices with some of the finest folk and blues musicians in the world – Josh White Jr., Kitty Donohoe, Peter “Madcat” Ruth, the Unity of Ann Arbor Women’s Ensemble, Guys With Guitars and Cliff Gracey – making music for hundreds of people in my back yard and on boats across the lake.

And now here I am a week later. The chairs are gone, the sound equipment has been packed off to another gig and the Scottie’s Potties have been hauled away. As the lingering aromas of patchouli and Zingerman’s beef brisket dissipate into the air over the lake, I am still staggering around the yard, cleaning the last few empty Dasani bottles and dazed ex-hippies out from behind the hot tub.

At last I have a few moments to stop and reflect on what happened here.

For one thing, this year we welcomed Madcat to our Lost Voices family. If you don’t happen to be familiar with his name, he is acknowledged as one of the best harmonica players in the world. I can almost guarantee that you have heard his incredible work in recordings ranging from New Heavenly Blue in the 1960s (Nan and I have their album in vinyl) to several Dave Brubeck jazz records to Ford commercials.

The experience of making music with a flat-out genius like Madcat is kind of hard to describe. He is so responsive to everything that is going on that even as you play the first note of some sort of improvisational idea, it seems like Madcat is on it and bringing it back to you, but with your thought completed and infinitely improved. He came on stage early in the concert with my band, Guys With Guitars, and let me bill him in the program as Willy Wheezewell.

By the way, don’t anybody tell Madcat that I called him a “genius.” He hates it when I talk like that.

We also unofficially added Luna to the entertainment lineup. For those of you who have had the opportunity to attend just about any outdoor musical event around the Ann Arbor area during the past 40 years or so, you have probably seen Luna. She is something of a local icon, tirelessly performing her own very unique dance interpretations in that strangely open space that always seems to exist between crowds and performance stages. Luna performs dressed head to ankle-length skirt in tie-die, and Madcat, who was wearing a Luna-created tie-die shirt, introduced her to the crowd as “my personal tie-diatrist.”

Luna favored the audience and every one of the performers with her leaps and twirls for more than four hours. I’m not sure how she had the stamina – I could probably keep that up for about 10 minutes before you would need to get me an oxygen mask.

My friend Cliff Gracey, who has technically assisted us with our music workshops since the very first one at the WJ Maxey Boys Training School, got on stage for his first appearance at the concert and performed a fantastic set. Cliff is a fine guitarist and has a great voice – which made a nice contrast to mine when the two of us did James Taylor’s Steam Roller Blues.

The Unity of Ann Arbor Women’s Ensemble expanded on their a cappella triumph from last year with a wonderful performance, even stoically overcoming the jolt of my joining them to sing Down In The River To Pray.

Of course, Kitty and Josh, my sister and brother since the beginning of this whole adventure, were their magnificent selves. Kitty introduced cuts from her new CD, Northern Border, and shared the news that her award-winning song, There Are No Words, has been chosen to be featured in a documentary about the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon. Coordinated with the release of the film, Kitty will perform There Are No Words at the televised dedication of a new Pentagon memorial on September 11 of this year.

Josh used a large portion of his set to lend his voice to the music written by the boys in our most recent music workshop at Maxey. This had particular impact on the Maxey boys who had come to work in the setup crew and who were watching the concert from one of the pontoon boats.

There were a thousand other wonderful moments in the concert. Each one amplified the outpouring of generosity and concern from all the performers, from our sponsors – The Braille Project, Westwind Communications, Zingerman’s, National City, People’s Express, Herb David Guitar Studio and Seek Within – from all the volunteers who gave so freely of their time and energy, and from audience and individual donors whose generosity will allow us to continue our work.

Thank you all.

In this column I have often talked about the details of our work with incarcerated and at-risk kids, and you can pretty much count on me doing it again in the future. If you want to find out more about Lost Voices, just check out www.lostvoices.org.

¹ Chorus from How Many Years, music my Mike Ball and Josh White, Jr., lyrics by the Maxey Boys – Copyright © 2006.

Copyright © 2008 Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group.

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