For the past 25 years, I have dreamed that one day I would convince Charlie King to come to India and that I would find the money to make it possible. Charlie is a folk-singer and a social change activist in the United States and we have been friends for thirty years. We met in 1976 on a march for disarmament and were arrested and jailed several times together for protesting against nuclear power and the Trident submarine.
Charlie kept up his life of crime – or at least his dedicated and active opposition to war and injustice – while I moved to India and became a respectable citizen. But we kept in touch. He sang at our wedding and was godfather to our first child. He did benefit concerts for the school for children with mental handicaps which I run here and he encouraged our daughter in her pursuit of music. He kept us supplied with all of his latest CDs and we tried to meet whenever I visited the United States.
And every time I saw him, I would tell him that one day I would find the funding to bring him to India. It got to be a standing joke with us and though I meant every word, I don’t think he took me very seriously.
This year, finally, everything fell into place. The organization I work with has been actively involved in a campaign for inclusion. It began as a simple and straightforward movement to get children with disabilities into mainstream schools, but soon developed into a much wider understanding of what it means to be included, as well as a vision of what an inclusive world might look like.
As we talked with people around the city about the rights of the children we work with, we realized that we share the world with a staggering array of life forms, each with its own importance. Saying we are all interconnected is not a platitude, it is a fact. We suddenly understood that although we had been selling inclusion as the path of virtue, it was really common sense – one might even call it self-interest. We exclude at our peril.
But we also realized that such a utilitarian view of inclusion is both narrow and limited. Beyond it is yet another: one which revels in the sheer variety the earth contains and celebrates life for its own sake, not for what it does for us. It’s a wonderful world, unpredictable and full of surprising twists and turns – and that’s where a person like Charlie comes in.
As part of our awareness campaign, we had planned a serious and educational lecture series on inclusion and how it could work in schools here in the city where we live. We called in eminent and scholarly people to talk about the important issues at stake. But we wanted the campaign to end with a celebration, a festival of song that would take all of our concepts of interconnectedness and the preciousness of every single person, animal, rock and tree and set them to music. And somehow, we managed to convince our funders not just that this was the only way to do it, but that Charlie King was the man who could pull it off.
Charlie arrived on a Monday and set to work the next day. For the entire week, he performed in small concerts around the city, dazzling each audience to such an extent that within five days he had a devoted following who had memorized his songs and was ready to join in at the slightest invitation. He also conducted music workshops for high school students which were like watching history come to life. Weaving song and story, he took the children through the Civil Rights movement in the US and helped them to see the crucial role of music in that struggle. In the last workshop, conducted with the choirs of four area schools, he taught the children a song which they were to perform with him on stage at the big concert two days later.
The Big Concert! Our ambition was to fill the hall to capacity – 1000 people – in a benefit performance which we hoped would raise 50,000 rupees, but we were pretty nervous. For one thing, a crowd of that size was about five times the size of any we had ever managed in the past. For another, this was Charlie King, not a local pop star. We knew how good his music was, but would it play in Peoria?
We needn’t have worried. The work of the previous week was all we required. Charlie had created such loyal fans that they went out and sold tickets with a religious zeal, because they couldn’t bear to have anyone they cared about miss out on such an experience.
On the evening of the concert, there were over 1000 people in the hall, spellbound by one man with a guitar. Although the grownups were shy at first about participating, the children who had attended his workshops were anything but and as the evening went on, inhibitions faded, the singing grew more spirited and heartfelt and on several songs, the audience broke in in the middle to cheer and clap. It was the last number, however, which brought down the house.
After inviting the school children to join him on the stage, Charlie started in on “We Shall Overcome”, a familiar tune here, and much loved. Suddenly, he switched from English to Hindi and began singing not only the tune they knew, but the language they understood best. The crowd came alive then, and rose to their feet as one, cheering and laughing and singing their approval with such feeling that many were moved to tears. His accent was American, but his heart was no different than theirs, and his songs and his stories were the same. What better demonstration of inclusion could there be?
