Message from Larry Long, Producer

My daughter's music teacher opens each new school year with this anonymous quote:

Music is a Science... It demands exact acoustics.

Music is Mathematical... It is rhythmically based on the subdivision of time in space into fractions...

Music is Foreign Language... a highly developed kind of shorthand.

Music is History... reflecting the environment and times of its creation.

Music is Physical Education... It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lip, cheek, and facial muscles, in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragm, back, stomach and chest muscles, which must respond instantly to the sounds the ears hear and the mind interprets.

Music is all of these things, but most of all, music is art... That is why we make music. Not because we expect to major in music, not because we expect to play music all our lives, not so we can relax, not so we can have fun... but so we will be human and sensitive, so we will be closer to an infinite beyond our world, so that we'll have something to cling to, so that we will have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more good... in short, more life.

As Walter Frederick Browder of Gaylesville, Alabama, told a group of students I worked with in the "Elder's Wisdom, Children's Song" project a few years back, "It's important to get an education—not so much to make a living, but to make a life." And how can anyone imagine life without song?

Our process in compiling I Will Be Your Friend began with collecting nearly 3,000 songs from cultural traditions and individual songwriters across the United States. Over a period of months, my friends at Teaching Tolerance and I whittled them down to the 26 that make up this collection.

Our goal was to honor the diversity we find here at home—not so much by including songs about diversity, but by ranging as far and wide as possible in musical styles and sources. The resulting collection encompasses rap, folk, jazz, gospel, show tunes, spoken word and traditional song. We included learnable, singable songs in languages from numerous immigrant communities, as well as several of the indigenous languages spoken in North America today. There are songs of welcome, friendship, caring and courage—and many other dimensions of life in community.

To our great fortune, we were able to enlist the help of master musician, songwriter and choir director J. D. Steele to co-produce six songs: "Somos El Barco" (Spanish); "Vem kan segla" (Swedish); "I Find a Good Friend" (Chinese); "What Can One Little Person Do?"; "Freedom, Oh Freedom" and "Something for Me, Something for You." Each of these numbers features children from diverse communities as soloists, accompanists and members of intergenerational choirs.

We were pleased also to secure original archival recordings by Pete Seeger, Malvina Reynolds, Louis Armstrong, Langston Hughes and Rodgers and Hammerstein. We included these selections not only because they have stood the test of time, but also because they give a historical perspective to teaching tolerance through song.

We were equally enthusiastic about including several artists who are not only great performers but teachers and community organizers, as well. Numerous community musicians assisted us in the recording of this album. Reflecting all their contributions, the final product celebrates the diversity of our nation and world.

It is my hope that I Will Be Your Friend will encourage students, teachers and parents to sing together, laugh together and write music together in order to help build a more joyous and peaceful community.

Larry Long
Producer

About Larry Long
Called "a true American troubadour" by author Studs Terkel, Larry Long has made his life work the celebration of American stories and living heroes. In a curriculum called Elders' Wisdom, Children's Song, he has brought these heroes to the classroom to share their oral history with a younger generation. The children then go on to create songs celebrating the history and triumphs of their own communities and learn in the process to honor the struggles of different cultures.

Larry Long's hundreds of ballads readily capture the American history of our time, while embracing our common humanity with stories about those history-makers who are known and those who are unknown. He has worked in urban communities combining Latin, Somalian, African American, Hmong and Scandinavian students. He has worked in southern rural communities combining Black, Native American, White and Latino stories. Throughout the nation, his work has sought to celebrate our diversity and joint community.

Now a Smithsonian Folkways recording artist, he has sung at major festivals, concerts and events throughout the country, in Europe, Russia, Brazil and South Africa. Long is a recipient of the prestigious Bush Artist Fellowship, the Pope John XXIII Award and In The Spirit of Crazy Horse Award for his work in forgotten communities. The demand for Long's work sparked the creation of a non-profit organization, Community Celebration of Place (see Resources).

Long's work with the youth of Alabama can be heard on Here I Stand: Elders' Wisdom, Children's Song. His latest recording is titled Well May The World Go. The title track is featured on If I Had a Song: the Songs of Pete Seeger, Vol. 2, along with Jackson Browne, Joan Baez, Steve Earle and many other internationally acclaimed artists.

For more information, visit http://www.larrylong.org