Resources by Leopoldo A. Sánchez M.

Our seminary recently hosted a symposium on beauty. For the occasion, I performed a musical interpretation of a digital art piece entitled “By night and by day,” part of a larger composite of cloud themes depicting God’s presence with his people by artist Sarah Bernhardt. I explored a range of sonorities on the double bass to tell the Exodus story, to depict God’s leading of Israel out of Egypt by a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. To guide me in my portrayal of the theme of divine presence, I composed a musical setting based on a melody from a Latin American song entitled El Señor es mi luz (The Lord is My Light) based on Psalm 27. The psalm speaks of Israel’s trust in the Lord’s protection from adversaries who assail her during her earthly pilgrimage. The psalmist also sings of Israel’s eschatological hope to dwell in the house of the Lord forever and behold his beauty in his temple. In my composition I employed word painting, a technique used in sixteenth century music to match a concept in a written text with a corresponding musical effect. The following description of the flow of the piece explains how I used the range of the double bass to communicate various aspects of the biblical story. High pitch harmonics placing fingers over strings      The piece begins with a variation of the psalm melody using high pitch harmonics, which are achieved by touching the strings without pressing them. This technique communicates a sense of God’s presence on high as Israel prepares to cross the sea. It is a calming presence; God is in control. Energetic tremolos with the bow      The harmonics are followed by energetic tremolos made with rapid bow movements to the chorus of the hymn. This technique expresses the tumultuous movement of God’s people away from their enemies, with the pillars of fire and cloud ahead of them as they rapidly (and perhaps a bit anxiously) make their way through the great waters. Hitting strings with the bow’s wood (col legno) to introduce the theme (chorus)      To express Israel’s proximity to the waters of salvation, I play the psalm melody with the back of the wooden bow (col legno technique), evoking images of drops of water falling on or sprinkling faces and bodies as people prepare to cross the sea. Flowing lyrical version of the theme with the bow (verse, stanza)      Then I play a flowing lyrical version of the theme with the bow, depicting Israel’s safe arrival to the Promised land, which anticipates the final beatific vision of God’s people in his presence. Festive plucking to a Cuban guaracha       Plucking the strings (pizzicato), I play a Cuban guaracha (salsa) rhythm based on the song’s chord progression to express the mood of eschatological fiesta after the people’s safe passage through turbulent waters into the Promised Land. Playing a Panamanian tamborito rhythm percussively on the wood of the bass…      Finally, I sing the hymn’s chorus in Spanish while tapping the top wooden shoulders of the instrument to a tamborito Panamanian rhythmic pattern, using the bass in a percussive way. So, what makes the piece a Latin American interpretation? The most obvious element is the use of a psalm in the Spanish language. But the more interesting ones are the plucking of strings to a Cuban Guaracha (salsa) and the drumming of the wood on the shoulder of the bass to a Panamanian tamborito. But why infuse the text with a Latin American spin? Here the context of the performance matters. I have performed this piece in three settings with similar audiences—predominantly White, monolingual (English), mid-Western church audiences in the United States. By incorporating these elements in the performance, I am inviting the audience to imagine a world in which the biblical story is told, heard, and sung through Latino/a eyes. I am using music as a gentle challenge to see the biblical story in the context of the catholicity or universality of the church, which is a church of people from many ethnicities, languages, and nations. I am also raising awareness about the presence of forgotten Latino/a neighbors whose voices are often not heard, who crave for belonging, justice, and the psalmist’s hope in God’s deliverance. By foregrounding these elements into the piece, my double bass functions as an extension of the Latino teacher-performer’s own identity as a proclaimer of God’s story, a bearer of an inclusive catholicity, and a herald of hospitality, justice, and hope.

A couple of years after joining the faculty at Concordia Seminary, I decided to audition for the Saint Louis Civic Orchestra, a community orchestra made up of professional, semiprofessional, and accomplished amateur musicians from the greater St. Louis metropolitan area. My training on the double bass goes back to my middle-high school years at the conservatory in Panama City, Panama, where I had my first orchestral experiences. Coming to the US for high school and undergraduate studies still afforded me opportunities to play in concert and jazz bands and take double bass lessons. That changed with graduate studies. The pressures of performing well in school in a foreign language, increasing time constraints due to important family and work obligations, and very few chances to play the instrument in ecclesial settings led to a period of decline in creative engagement with music. Not an uncommon problem among graduate students and teachers of theology and religion, I spent so much time focusing on the True and the Good that I ignored the Beautiful. By the time I started my first job at the seminary, Beauty had become the Cinderella of my life: Truth and Goodness made it to the Ball. Beauty got left behind. And my life was the poorer for it. But joining the symphony carved out a space once again in my life for the gift of play. What is play but the habit of reveling in the beauty of God’s creation, delighting in its colors, sounds, aromas, tastes, and textures? Being alive in the body! Being engaged by the senses! The symphony became my playground in the theater (better yet, in the concert hall) of God’s creation. [caption id="attachment_250618" align="alignright" width="376"] (Leopoldo A. Sánchez M. has been a member of the Saint Louis Civic Orchestra for fifteen years, the last eight as Principal Bass. He is pictured third from the left. Photo used with permission.)[/caption] So, where’s your playground? We all need one. When I talk to my seminary students about the place of play in life, I frame our conversations in the context of the need to establish a rhythm in life. Got rhythm? Yes, a rhythm, just like in music! A regular, steady, habitual pattern of sound and movement in which we live, and move, and have our being. I use the Genesis story to show that humans were not only created for movement and labor, but also for repose and sabbath rest. The first day of creation already sets a rhythm for life on earth, evening and morning—what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls the dialectic of creation. Yes, we were created to be responsible stewards of our gardens. But we were also made to be thankful stewards who carve out time to stand still and delight in the Creator’s handiwork. As in music, there is in life a time for sound, a time for silence, and a time for play. Indeed, sound, silence, and play in music may be seen as extensions or embodiments of the musician’s own rhythm of movement, rest, and delight. Music imitates, breathes life. Getting into the rhythm of the orchestra reminds me of the need for rhythm in my own life as a teacher. It reminds me to ask myself: How do I embody in the classroom not only a strong work ethic, but also a restful presence, and a joyful wonder about God’s world? In conversations with students, I use the metaphor of the garden, the mountain, and the playground. We were created for the garden and the mountain, for labor and rest. Rest includes time with God in prayer, praise, and thanksgiving. Ora et labora, work and pray, as the monks proclaim. Rest also includes literal rest, especially sleep. Had enough sleep lately? Busy teachers tend to be quite knowledgeable and hands on when it comes to the gardens they are called to tend to. But it can be quite difficult to find that mountain to retreat to amid piles of papers to grade, articles to write, and meetings to attend. It can be just as hard to find time for the playground, for cultivating curiosity and wonder in the beauty of God’s creation. Playing in the symphony has become that creative space between work and rest for me. Like playing the double bass in the symphony, play involves practice, honing a craft, activity, movement. You can’t exactly wing a symphony! And yet weekly practices with the symphony do not feel like regular everyday work. They are more like oases of refreshment in the desert. And more than that, they are like being in a workshop where you imagine and experiment together with sounds, bowings, fingerings, rhythms, and colors to make something beautiful together. The symphony reminds the teacher in me to see my activity and time with students not only in terms of fulfilling a task, but in terms of finding and embodying a rhythm that allows for time in the garden, the mountain, and the playground. Like playing with colleagues in the symphony, life with students is a creative endeavor that glorifies the Creator and enriches all our lives with beauty in ways that allow us to do things together with curiosity, imagination, and delight. Got rhythm? Let’s play!

One of my social media names is “salsasanchez,” a not-so-subtle hint that I love everything about salsa music! Its history, genres, sounds, musicians, and, of course, the dancing! As a bass player, the only thing I love more than dancing salsa is playing the salsa groove on my instrument—or better yet, playing it while dancing! My picture of the new creation includes playing an upright baby bass in a Rubén Blades’ salsa band. But what does salsa have to do with cultural health? Could salsa music foster healthy forms of engagement with neighbors from cultures other than our own? In our seminary’s latest round of curriculum review, cultural health became one of seven desirable health outcomes in the formation of our students for pastoral ministry. I was assigned to assist first-year incoming students with an initial way to assess their levels of cultural engagement. As a theoretical framework for this initial self-assessment, I suggested thinking in terms of three levels of interaction with the cultural other, namely, multicultural, cross-cultural, and intercultural engagements—the third option being the more involved or deeper (and yes, healthier) form of interaction to work towards. The multicultural level merely signals an awareness of the presence of people from multiple cultures in our midst. Such an awareness is a first step in cultural engagement and may lead to knowledge of the other at a theoretical level. The image that comes to mind is that of parallel planets (worlds) that are aware of each other from afar but do not have meaningful contact with one another. It is the least demanding form of cultural health. The cross-cultural level moves beyond awareness of the cultural other toward movement into the other’s cultural world. An apt image for this level is a bridge, which provides a path from one world into the next. Although cross-cultural language can promote more involvement with the cultural other, it can also fall prey to unilateral forms of engagement where the “higher” culture crosses into the “lower” culture to change it—a one-sided crossing that gives rise to unhealthy paternalism and dependency. Which leads us to the intercultural level, the most demanding engagement. The image of a team working together toward a common goal, with each member contributing something unique to the community, best gets at the goal of intercultural collaboration. Hopefully, such collaboration leads to deeper relationships of mutual interdependence in which cultural others move from being strangers toward living as neighbors and friends. To move from my three-level theoretical paradigm into a simple pedagogical tool for self-assessment, I imagined how the use of salsa music could creatively assist students to get an embodied sense of these levels of cultural health in a classroom setting. Enter Rubén Blades! I played one of his songs and asked students to listen for the “clave” rhythm (the groove that makes salsa work) in the piece, which I demonstrated for them by clapping my hands to the tune La canción del final del mundo. The students’ first task was simply to listen to and find the clave in the salsa—an exercise in basic multicultural awareness. But then, I asked students to perform a cross-cultural exercise, to go a little deeper in their engagement with the cultural other by clapping the clave themselves. Some struggled, some succeeded, but all had crossed into the world of the clave! They were not only aware of the sounds of salsa, but participated in music-making in a different (although to some extent, artificial) cultural environment. Finally, I demonstrated for students what a salsa clave looked like in dancing, showing them the basic steps involved. Then, I asked if any of them would be willing to try out the dance. Volunteers agreed to dance next to each other, replicating my footwork to the best of their abilities. Soon enough, we were engaging in an intercultural exercise, one in which we were collaborating in practicing and performing a salsa piece together. Others in the classroom did not dare to dance, but were happy to keep clapping the clave. Some simply listened in awe. Which shows how students at our institutions are always operating at different levels of cultural health with some cultural other. The creative use of salsa music to challenge cultural comfort and instill a vision for a more generous engagement gives me hope in a healthier world—indeed, in a new creation—where we dare to work and play together in clave time. Let’s salsa!