04 Nov

Humorous Stories For Children

These days, Ronstadt, 63, is performing the music of her heritage. Thursday night she will perform at the Midland theater with the mariachi ensemble Mariachi Los Comperos de Nati Cano. Ronstadt recently spoke to The Star about the show and about one of the many causes for which she is an advocate: music in education.

Talk about the show you’re bringing to the Midland.

I’m singing all in Spanish. I’m bringing one of the best bands in the world, Mariachi Los Comperos de Nati Cano. I’ve worked with them for 20 year and they’re brilliant musicians and great singers. The best part for me is I get to watch them. We’re also bringing a troupe of wonderful folkloric dancers so I also get to watch them dance.

One of the things I love about the show is that it is completely indestructible. I can take it to a state fair and then take it to Carnegie Hall and it’s all the same. … The skirts and the costumes are so beautiful we don’t need a lot of smoke and lights.

The show is extravagant because the music and the dancing are extravagant. Ranchero music is really a celebration of nature and reproduction and biological exuberance clothed in incredibly beautiful poetic terms. The Mexicans have an incredible gift for poetry. In the pre-European conquest days, poetry was essential to expressing yourself.

You had to have poetry. Regular prose wasn’t sufficient. They called poetry ‘a scattering of jade’ because jade was what they valued way over gold. It’s a very rich poetic culture.

These songs have such beautiful lyrics; it’s always a pleasure to sing them. There’s never anything shallow or flippant about them. They’re always very humorous or romantic or desperately sad. But they’re never shallow or inconsequential.

Are your crowds followers of this kind of music and its tradition or do you get fans who come to see you for what you did as a singer and musician in the early 1970s?

We’ve always gotten both. When I switched and went to singing in Spanish I did it so blithely. I couldn’t resist. I loved the music; it’s so much of who I am, it came roaring out of me.

The minute I had the leverage – it took me 30 albums – I finally said, “I’m gonna make a record in Spanish,” and the record label said, “Oh, no you’re not.” I said, “I’ve decided I’ve earned this.” People said, “Oh, what a career move” but it wasn’t like that. I’d like to say it was pre-meditated but it wasn’t like that. It was purely self-indulgent. I loved these songs and wanted to sing them. They were better than the songs I was getting in the 1980s, which weren’t nearly as poetic or well-written.

You are a staunch advocate for music in education. In April, you spoke before a House committee about funding for the arts and you mentioned Jose Abreaus, the founder of El Sistema, a vastly successful children’s-music program in Venezuela. What is your perspective on music education in the United States?

It’s a disaster what they’re doing. One of the things known about the human brain is that pitch is one of the ways in which we sort and process and store information. If you’re Chinese and you’re speaking a tonal language, pitch is vital. Most Chinese children in when they are in choirs that compete internationally, they usually win because the children almost to an individual have perfect pitch. They do because they start attending to pitch intensely from the time that they are pre-verbal till the time they develop speech.

We’re raising generations of tone-deaf kids. You need two sides to learn music: the part where you listen and the part where you actively do it. My experience of going into schools in the United States is we have generations of children who can’t sing “Happy Birthday.” Their experience with music comes from a computer or television not from real instruments out of people’s hands or mouths. And we’re overexposed to music. There’s so much of it. Our sensory input shuts down we’re so overwhelmed with sound. Music has stopped being a voluntary experience, an elective experience, which is what it should be. We shouldn’t be ambushed by it every time we step into a supermarket with stuff you didn’t feel like hearing that day.

So taking music out of the schools is a shame. We know from studies of neuroplasticity that if you make a brain map for music, it overlaps with the ways you learn language and math. If you don’t develop that brain map for music, you suffer in other areas. Music is essential. There are no cultures without music, like there are no cultures without art. It’s that important to the human evolution and human experience.

What is vital to good music education?

What I think children should be exposed to real people playing real instruments in the classroom with them. The San Francisco symphony has an amazing program where they send out their best players who can talk in engaging ways about what they do and why they do it and they play their instruments without amplification and the children get to hear the groan of a cello, for example. We think of the cello as having such a beautiful sound and in the middle of the note it is beautiful. But when the rosin and the bow first dig into the string, there’s a groan. And they hear all those sound. And it’s important to hear that stuff. That’s where a lot of emotion is in that instrument. And the kids are aghast. They’re rapt with attention because they’ve never heard anything like it. They are often surprised at the emotions it incites.

Music gives kids a safe place to put their emotions. Little children don’t have toy emotions. Their emotions are huge and they need a place to put them. Art helps us process feelings. And if you take away their music or their art, you take away the best tools remove one of the best ways for them to process emotions and feelings.

Talk about the program in Venezuela, which you lauded in your House testimony.

In Venezuela, Jose Abreaus went to his government’s Health and Human Services department and said, Let me have some money to teach children music and see if it decreases violence and gangs and helps people lift themselves out of poverty.

They’ve been doing this program for over 30 years and studies have been done and it has reduced rates of violence tremendously and produced an enormous number of really good musicians coming out of Venezuela. Their orchestras are brilliant. All of the crown heads in the classical music world in Europe and the United States have gone to Venezuela and done their deepest genuflections before this man. In Venezuela music is available to anyone who wants it, instruments and teaching, in the tiniest rural areas and the big cities, too.

Why isn’t it that way here?

Here people are so saturated with music they take it for granted. They don’t value it.

In our schools it – and the other arts – usually take a back seat to sports.

Sports is what we value here. Sports teaches teamwork and how to act in a cooperative manner. Music does all that and way more. It teaches you how to express feelings in a non-violent way and how to experience beauty and transcendence. We can’t get around suffering. We are all going to suffer and having a great way to transcend it is the key to living successfully. That’s what art does. It gives us a transcendent experience so you can process it, you can rise over it, you can fortify yourself or you can go down, singing a song.

What makes you optimistic?

The Abreaus program is so amazingly successful. … Sometimes you see the Japanese orchestras and they play wonderfully well and accurately. But I sometimes wonder, where’s the story here? It gets a little mechanical. These kids in Venezuela play not only technically perfect, or close to it, they are also richly passionate and they tell their little stories.

Children’s emotional stories are really something. They really pack a wallop. We as adults tend to turn down the volume. After 30 years, we’re like, “Woah. How much more can I take? Let’s shut this story off.”

The kids have the biggest and the most urgent stories to tell, and it comes out in the music. And when you see them in the orchestras – a 9 year-old first violinist or a 9-year-old concert master, you go, “Wait a minute. Something is going on here.” They’re not playing well for children, they’re playing well. They’re not like performing seals. It’s because they need to tell their stories. And you see great satisfaction in their little faces.

What would you like to change about the role of music in our culture?

We should be playing our own music at home. We delegate so much of our music and art and dancing to professionals. We only see the best of the best so it’s a little lopsided. You don’t’ see the middle-level and lower middle-level and amateur performers because it’s all been eclipsed by the professional performer.

It’s a shame. We should do our own singing and dancing. Maybe it’s not as good as Placido Domingo or Yo-Yo Ma, but it’s yours. It’s what you do. I sit down and play piano in the corner of my house once in a while -- and very badly -- or the guitar when I need a little private moment. A lot of music isn’t meant for public consumption. It’s meant for you to do in your own moment of sorrow or joy. Music can express those feelings, and those moments aren’t always meant to be shared.

Profit From Writing

Posted by Essay Help on November 4, 2009

If you’re passionate about writing and deprivation to make it your career, you need to be resourceful, professional, determined and self-motivated to follow. Writing for a living isn’t easy and unless you’ve already landed a five figure book deal for your latest novel, you need to be as creative in generating income as you are with your words.

To help you profit from writing, here are a few opportunities to explore:

Writing for Magazines

This is the turn point for many freelance writers who deprivation to be published and paid. Magazines require good content and many editors allay rely on freelance writers to provide it. Although the market is competitive, if you can produce well-researched, original articles to accommodate the magazine’s communication and readership, you’ll have a greater chance of success a commission.

My tips: Focus on writing about what you know, drawing upon any doctor knowledge or interests. Consume the Internet to contemplate publications all over the class to increase your markets.

Compose Greetings Card Verses

Greetings card companies often attempt original line or prose for their range of cards. If you have a forte for writing abbreviated humorous or meaningful passages, this could provide a booming opening for you.

My tips: Accept a look at the verses in greetings cards to contemplate their communication. Create a few distribution verses. Note the name of the greetings card publisher and contact them for their current requirements.

Create Copy for the Business Aspect

One of the more lucrative writing opportunities is copywriting for businesses and public aspect organisations. If your writing is concise, clear and fresh, you’ll find thither is a market for your services producing leaflets, guides, press releases, advertising copy and blade content.

My tips: Produce a portfolio of your activity to appear the diversity of your skills. Attend a business network event to market your services.

Accept a Body Writing Job

Freelance writing is great but if you prefer the relative assets of a regular income and the warmth and animateness of a creative office environment, you might consider applying for a body based writing position. Many opportunities exist for journalists, copywriters, blade content writers, editors and feature writers. Recently, a major company even required the services of a dedicated letter writer! The skills of a quality writer are in demand and you’ll find that most salaries reflect this.

My tips: Drop time writing a professional CV and produce any distribution writing. First impressions count!

Become a Ghost-writer!

Any writers make a reasonable living ghost-writing other people’s life stories. You can receive payment on a work-for-hire basis or on a royalty apportion agreement. If you enjoy interviewing people and writing at length, this will have great appeal.

My tips: Communicate to other ghost-writers and research the book publishing field so that you gain a reasonable employed knowledge of the current trends.

Compile Crosswords, Puzzles and Fillers

Writing abbreviated filler material, from anecdotes to puzzles, can be quite rewarding. Many publications feature a regular crossword to entertain their readers. Although considered to be quite a closed-market, it is deserving approaching publications with ideas or samples for consideration.

My tips: Research your markets carefully. Aim new publications where thither may be openings. Offer fillers and puzzles relevant to the aim readership.

Expand Your Range of Services

Any writers find it easy maculation typos or English grammar mistakes. If you’re one of them, consider action a course in editing or proofreading to expand on your range of wordsmith services! Thither is often a decent demand for these services so it will provide an additional author of revenue.

My tips: Accept a course and gain a qualification. Contact publishing companies as many now consume the services of freelance copyeditors and proofreaders.

Self-Publish

If you have doctor knowledge, consider writing and self-publishing a book or a broadcast of guides or newsletters! With the right issue and good marketing, you can build a niche publication. For example, any authors have turned their hobby of walking into providing guidebooks and newsletters on local walks. You could do something similar, whether your interest is handicraft, cycling, cooking or woodwork.

My tips: attempt print-on-demand publishing or publishing electronically to keep costs down piece you’re building your publishing adventure.

Good luck in your career as a writer! With the right approach, you’ll find thither are many opportunities to become a booming wordsmith.

Tags: freelance writing, writing, writing jobs