He Plays the Drum in the Animals’ Language

From the Series “With Babies”

1. Q: How do you usually draw, paint or decorate?

A: After dancing we quickly lay down a long nylon sheet and put paints, drawing boards, and props out as well. Once this is ready, we settle down again. As soon as there is silence in the room, we started playing the music to which we were dancing, and then the children begin making their representations.

2. Q: And they didn’t receive any instructions?

A: Not even the advanced ones. They loved painting, they happily set out to create.

3. Q: With no instructions from the teacher? They were just painting?

A: If a child is drawing at home, does anyone tell him or her what to draw? My grandson, Miklós, was drawing nothing but dinosaurs at the age of five, sheet full of all sorts of dino figures. Nowadays he paints spiders instead, together with their webs and flies. Sometimes a hermit crab, or ladybirds. 

4. Q: But you have a pedagogical objective, don’t you?

A: The pedagogical objective is the joy of creation. Our musical attention could be related to colours and shapes, too. In our courses, music was born in movement and reached representation later. In the case of Erika Fleck’s teenagers it happened the other way around, they got immersed in painting first.

5. Q: And you didn’t even have an art teacher?

A: Not for the little ones. One fine day, however, József Pállai popped up unexpectedly in the advanced group. It was a beautiful day. It all started when Zsófi, one of our most reticent children, who was mostly chewing the end of her ponytails during painting, suddenly became very good at painting: she painted a cherry tree in full blossom. The page was full; it was really glittering. What happened to Zsófi? They had a new art teacher, a young man whom they loved very much. Well, why don’t you call him to our course. And Jóska appeared.

6. Q: Wasn’t he bothered by your freedom?

A: Not at all, he belonged among us from the very first minute. He is a painter, his pictures are beautiful and although he works as a teacher, his soul remained free. He talked with children about their pictures with pleasure: he usually praised some detail which he found especially well-done.

7. Q: Did he offer some themes?

A: He never did. Nor did he offer solutions. Nor any changes. All he said was: “Be careful, guard your values”. Children tend to “overpaint” their pictures, to daub on, to flood them with paint. Yet the picture has a happy moment when it is ready.

8. Q: Didn’t he show some tools though?

A: Oh yes, he did, that was great, for example, he showed how much may be done on a single sheet with a piece of coal or a pencil. Lines and shooting movements, arrivals and disappearances. In my green book there are some conversations between Jóska and some child about the picture he or she drew or painted.

9. Q: Didn’t they tell you about the pictures?

A: Sure they did, whoever was ready could take their picture to the tape recorder and choose either of us.

He plays the drum in the animal’s language

24 November 1988. Resedas

African drums

Zsófi: I drew a lot of flowers, one became yellow and stayed close to the earth, the blue ones went up in the air, and there is a heart here, and there are some other hearts here because hearts are the drums.

Klara: Please, tell us a tale Zsófi.

Zsófi: Once upon a time there was an old man who carved a drum for himself in the jungle. While he was carving the animals were running around, I drew these white lines here to show where they were running. The old man finished carving the drum, sat on a tree among the branches, started drumming, and his music became very happy. The animals became happy, too, they were running around, they could not really dance yet.

K: What do you mean?

Zsófi: They couldn’t turn cartwheels, stand on their arms, do somersault, or shake their butts. They even bumped into one another sometimes, and then they had to apologise in the animals’ language.

K: Did they have a common language?

Zsófi: No because they were not attending this course and could not yet speak with their eyes. But they didn’t hurt each other, lions did not eat zebras. 

K: Why?

Zsófi: Because the old man got them out of that habit with his music. Foxes did not eat rabbits, rather, they were eating a handful of grass. Can you see? He is chewing the grass here in his den. Because the old man got them out of the habit of eating one another. Because they must not quarrel in such a beautiful countryside. That is why the sounds are everywhere here, this is drumming, these are the hearts, can you see?

K: Did your animals understand the old man’s drumming?

Zsófi: Animals understand the language of instruments. Even I understood it.

K: How could you understand it?

Zsófi: Well, it flew into my head then into my hands and became deftness in my hands. Deftness flew into my hands. And I drew the animals, they are already dancing, grabbing each other’s legs and trunks and dancing. The zebra is beside the lion, and it didn’t eat it, but was rather stroking it.

K: Dear Zsófi, can you see the old drummer?

Zsófi: No I can’t, I just know he’s there. And he plays the drum in the animals’ language.

10. Q: I can see that the music was “African drums” What does this mean?

A: It’s a real African recording from an authentic source, from the folk music archive of Unesco.  We chose it carefully. The children loved folk music from all parts of the world. 

11. Q: Why didn’t you dance to Hungarian folk music?

A: From Hungarian folk music I could only choose such pieces to which they could not attach memories of some previously learnt movement. Traces of previously learnt movements suppress spontaneous movements. They did dance to parlando-rubato songs performed beautifully by Éva Szőcs.

12. Q: Do learnt movements bother you?

A: Yes, they do. I wonder if such learned movements are only on the “surface” of memory or born out of a different function of memory. I know for myself how difficult it is to learn a prescribed or demonstrated movement. I have to struggle to “get it”. I never have to struggle for my spontaneous movements, I would dance for hours, joyfully relaxed. Like Zsófi’s jungle animals. 

13. Q: What did you say to Zsófi after she has told you the tale?

A: As you can see from my questions, I try to use “What do you mean?” and “Why?” types of questions to make the story roll a little bit further on. But at the end I couldn’t help asking her whether she saw the old drummer.

14. Q: If she said she could, would you believe her?

A: I always believe children. Since I never give them grades, they never want to deceive me. Whether she can see the old drummer or not, she represents him anyway. I myself can see as the old black man sat on the tree among the branches and started drumming on his newly-carved drum. And I can see the animals holding each other’s legs and trunks, as they are dancing.

15. Q: Shouldn’t you mention that a carnivore can’t eat grass?

A: Well, the fox was there in Zsófi’s picture chewing a handful of grass, and not a rabbit! Creative imagination is sacred and so are the tales. Could you imagine that at the end of such a wonderful story there would be scientific reality? Zsófi knows well that lions do eat zebras. In her tale, she tells how the old man’s drumming kept the carnivores from killing other animals. He did this with his music.

16. Q: But we know that it’s impossible, don’t we?

A: Still, how fondly we dream of a world where the lion and the kid are playing together. Even as adults, as old men or women we crave for that world. We hope, maybe someday…!

17. Q: Why did she draw hearts in the picture?

A: Because “hearts are the drums”. She showed a heart here, a heart there. The essence of the story is that the old man worked wonders with the drum he carved. He changed the animals with his drumming. Perhaps people could be changed, too?