As most of you will remember, Daniel Bingamon organized a
fundraiserfor the Porcupine Medical Center on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. I was lucky enough to be among the raffle winners, and one of the whistles I chose was Daniel's Ahava Rabba whistle. Being the practical type, I thought, when it arrived, "Okay, now I'll find a song for my band to sing/play so I can use this." I looked around for a while but wasn't finding anything that matched what I had in my imagination--a folky, old-country waltz tempo. I decided to write one--and that's when some surprising doors opened. From pretty much out of nowhere, I suddenly remembered that one of my aunts told me about how she would feel so desperate as a young girl--extreme poverty, anti-Semitism, many brothers and sisters and troubled parents--and how she would seek some comfort from her rabbi at such times. Once, she said, he told her something that stuck with her: "Only in the blackest dirt can the richest fruits be grown." That seemed something to work with for the song, and it raised my interest about the conditions my father's family left when they came to the United States. There is no one left from his generation now, and alas our family history-keeping has not been good, but I did remember that the family had come from Bialystok (though most of my dad's siblings were born in the US).
From that point on, as I researched the time and place, my heart became an open wound.... The terrible story is
here. The 100th anniversary of the
pogrom is June 1-3.
And the song I wrote, The Blackest Dirt, is
here(5MB) or
here (1.6MB). Many thanks to my band for being so quick to work on it with me and for their beautiful music and friendship.
So, if anyone is still reading (and thank you for that!), I just wanted to share the song, because it feels so connected to this community, and this story: of how a generous-hearted fellow whistler had the idea to help a medical clinic on a reservation where descendants of the first Americans--the only people who were
not immigrants--still live in desperate poverty, and how by my good fortune I was given a whistle that turned out to be not just a whistle but also a key to doors I didn't even know I needed to open, and how, when I see the millions of immigrants marching through the streets, I see my own family arriving at Ellis Island, and how this little community in its most unusual way helps me know myself better.
Thanks again to Daniel, and to everyone on C&F who knows that a whistle is not just a whistle (oh stop it, you guys).
Carol
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