This Little Light of Mine

For the first session of Art Is... class with 6th grade, I had the pleasure of introducing the kids to the legendary singer Odetta through her  song, This Little Light of Mine. When the theme of illumination was selected for this year's art study, this was the first song that was added to the summer listening list. No matter how many times you hear this song, you can't help but feel a bit warmer. Some songs are magical that way.

I brought in my newest treasure to share with the class, a book of black and white photos found in a used book store. The book's title, I Dream a World, caught my eye. In 4th grade, Ms. Woo uses this Langston Hughes poem to inspire her students. I pulled the book off the shelf, and it fell open to the page with Odetta. I felt a tingle and could practically hear her singing This Little Light in my ear. Odetta had once held this book in her hands and signed it! I bought the book for $7.50, and I will treasure it forever. We passed the book round the classroom — from table to table, hand to hand. I hope to teach the kids that objects, people, and works of art take on a different significance if you can find your own connections to them. As a young person, I was never fortunate enough to have a teacher introduce me to Odetta's music. The truth is, the name Odetta would have meant little to me, had I not sought her story out for myself.

• Odetta was born in Birmingham, Alabama and grew up in Los Angeles, California
• She was trained to sing classically from the age of 13. Her mother hoped she would follow in the footsteps of the great opera singer Marian Anderson, but Odetta knew there could only be one Marian.
• She joined the 1949 national touring company of the musical Finian's Rainbow. While on tour, Odetta "fell in with an enthusiastic group of young balladeers in San Francisco", and after 1950 she concentrated on folk singing.
• She performed at the 1963 Civil Rights Movement's March on Washington where she sang "O Freedom” and "I'm On My Way."
•  On September 29, 1999, President Bill Clinton presented Odetta with the National Endowment for the Arts' National Medal of Arts. In 2004, Odetta was honored at the Kennedy Center with the "Visionary Award". In 2005, the Library of Congress honored her with its "Living Legend Award".
•  Her last "big concert," before thousands of people, was in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on October 4, 2008, for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.

But mere facts do not come close the experience of hearing Odetta sing:



...or speak for herself as she does in this NY Times video, The Last Word, where she talks about hearing folk music for the first time. Odetta recognized herself in the sound, and said that it felt like home to her. Strangely, I think I understand what she meant - sometimes you feel a connection to things deep within your bones.

I was born in the same year that Martin Luther King, Jr. gave Odetta the name "The Queen of American Folk music." As a child, I spent summers with my grandparents in their home in Locke, a Chinatown on the banks of the Sacramento River surrounded by fertile Delta farmland. My Locke is a place both in and out of time — leaning wooden buildings with creaky wooden plank sidewalks; dusty streets where kids could play without a worry about cars; sizzling sounds of ivory mah jong tiles being shuffled and stacked. The lazy summers in Locke gave me a sense of real freedom, but, being a kid, there were harsher realities that I never ever saw. Generation after generation of Chinese-Americans families called this place home, but they had no right to own the land that they lived on - that was the law. And the law was upheld until 2004, when a very determined woman, Connie King, took on the law and won. Our Auntie Connie, the unofficial "Mayor" of Locke, felt a natural connection to another King, when she said, “Martin Luther King had a dream. I, Connie King, also have a dream. My dream is to have a park in Locke in memory of the Chinese men who worked on the railroad, worked on the levee, started the agricultural industry in California and built the town of Locke.” She worked hard and saw her dream come true. Auntie Connie passed away last year, but she is still remembered fondly by those who visit her famous toilet garden. I appreciated her creativity even more when I found out the real reason why she stole out at night to bring the discarded toilets back home. Like Odetta, Auntie Connie was a strong woman who was able to channel her anger to make something beautiful out of an uglier truth. Today, there are only a handful of Chinese residents left in Locke, but thankfully there were enough to speak out when the newer residents tried to rid the town of its abandoned toilets.

After the kids heard Odetta sing, a student asks me if the singer is a man or a woman. I tell him that Odetta is a woman, and he is shocked. Interestingly, the same question was asked when the kids first heard Nina Simone sing too. Can music and art be used to help to teach the next generation that strength, urgency, dedication and drive can be equated with the feminine? I listen to a bright young student who runs her fingers over the faces in the book as she peppers me with questions about Odetta and the many fine women who dared to Dream A World — Ernestine Anderson, Leontyne Price, Lena Horne, Sarah Vaughn, and Marian Anderson. Did Odetta really know Martin Luther King? How old was she when she started singing? Is she still alive now? How did she die? I assure her that even though Odetta is no longer with us, she lived a long and very full life. And I can't help but feel a glow.

This little light of mine,
I'm gonna let it shine.
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.