Dismissal Song Magic

The dismissal song at school usually doesn't make me cry, but today something magical happened.

During the last period of the day, when only Heidi, Marvin, and Louise are in the learning center, someone started playing the Anonymous Somebodies CD. I asked the students if they could picture students in the distant future listening during school to their recorded singing, as they were doing then--listening to the singing of former students: Shane, John, Heidi, and Crystal. Marvin looked at the two girls and observed that they'd need a bass, then followed with some funny comments about his own very un-bass voice. He's a late bloomer, and refreshingly cheerful about it.

Just as the quartet was finishing "Di De Ta Deo" (Can't remember for sure how to spell these words.), the typing students and the German students emerged from their respective classrooms at the sound of the final bell.

"Do you want to sing that song for dismissal?" Mr. Schrock asked as he headed for his desk to preside over dismissal. He quickly found the beginning of the song on the CD and let Shane, John, Heidi, and Crystal lead the way. The students chimed in, with such joy and finesse that I was blown away. On and on . . . swelling and ebbing, soaring and whispering--through the whole complicated, echoing song.

I didn't really know it well enough to help, so I mostly listened. It was lovely. Being in the lively presence of our high school students helped make up for missing the people singing in the recording. Right now they are all far away, scattered from Colorado to Ohio to Thailand.

I thought of Wendell too, who first taught our students that song during one of my first years of teaching at Pilgrim. He's been in Virginia now for the past four? years, and I don't see him very often. But I still think warm fuzzy thoughts about him occasionally. For all the arguing (Ahem, very lively discussing, I mean.) we teachers did while he was here, we sure had a lot of good times.

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Is "Di De Ta Deo" (or a clip of it) available on the internet? If anyone out there can post a link, either to the Anonymous Somebodies rendition or another one, I'd appreciate your doing so.

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Shane recently sent us a CD of the Laudate group's singing last summer. More great music. Maybe someone will post a link to that as well.

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I marvel sometimes at how easily people learn "nonsense" sounds (in the minds of people who don't understand the language) when they are set to music. I can't imagine our students letting the words of an African language roll so easily roll off their tongue in any other setting. But when they've learned them in the context of melody and rhythm, the language flows--light and lilting.

It's enough to make a teacher cry.