Getting Started
Another commonly asked question is where the idea for Songs of Hope came from. Well, the vision really started with Jeanne, who had a slightly different idea, which came to her while she was working as the executive director of The Eclectic Company, Inc. of St. Paul and producing a series of children’s recordings called Women of Courage.
At the time, Jeanne wanted to produce a children’s recording that would be made half in the United States and half in the Soviet Union, with kids from the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. traveling to each other’s countries for collaborative studio work here and there. It was nice idea, but the fates intervened, and a series of events prevented Jeanne from putting the project together.
A little while later, in 1987, Jeanne and I began talking about doing the project ourselves, but then the fates intervened again, this time with the rise to power of Michal Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Union. We didn’t entirely give up the idea of doing an international project with kids, but we did let go the idea of a United States-Soviet Union collaboration, since the Soviet Union no longer existed and relationships between the countries were improving without our help.
Then, in the summer of 1989, during drinks at the home of Jim Scheibel, who was then running for mayor of St. Paul, Jim mentioned to us that too few people in St. Paul were aware that the city had six interesting Sister Cities around the world. While we were discussing this with Jim, he vowed that, if he were elected mayor, he would look for ways to make St. Paul’s Sister Cities better known.
Well, Jim Scheibel did get elected mayor, and Jeanne and I held him to his vow with an idea that occurred to us during that conversation at his home. The idea was, simply, to produce a children’s recording not with U.S. and Soviet kids, but with kids from all of St. Paul’s Sister Cities, from cities in China, Japan, Italy, Mexcio, Russia, and South Africa! Of course, Jim being the internationalist that he was, he got very excited about the idea, and eagerly put the prestige of the mayor’s office behind us.
Jeanne and I call those first years the years of smoke and mirrors because, believe me, we were making things up all the time. It’s not that we didn’t have relevant experiences to bring to the project. We did. It’s not that we didn’t spend hundreds and hundreds of hours planning the project in minute detail. We did. But Songs of Hope was an incredibly complex undertaking and we were busy selling the concept to many, many diverse people in the community, including a host of potential funders, supporters, and participants. To get things started, we did dozens of presentations and talked with scores of people. and no matter how well we prepared ourselves, we were constantly surprised by unexpected questions and we found ourselves continually in the position of having to create answers to questions sometimes insightful and perceptive, but at other times bizarre or downright screwy. Sometimes very bizarre! Hence the smoke and mirrors, an English language expression for magical trickery.
Wait a minute, you say. Didn’t you write above that the first project was to be a children’s recordings? Believe it or not, yes, that was the original idea, to do a recording with kids from St. Paul’s Sister Cities. Then where did the Songs of Hope concert tour come from, you might ask. Blame Sue Gens, currently the executive director of the Minnesota State Arts Board, for that change. It was Sue who suggested to us that we should share the international kids with the community while they were here, perhaps by presenting a concert of their songs.
We thought that was a great idea so we started planning for a studio recording AND a concert. However, the first Songs of Hope project ended up being short on money, so we had to choose betwen one or the other of the two arts projects, and guess what? That’s right. We became more excited about doing the concert than producing the studio recording.
With that last, big change inspired by Sue, the fully formed idea Songs of Hope came to be.
Bring kids from other countries. Put them all in a dorm together. Have them rehearse with each other, learning songs and dances from each other’s countries. Put them on stage to share their cultures with the community. Encourage everyone to learn from each other by sharing and living and playing and talking and working and performing and being together. The idea worked so well that we’re still doing essentially the same project today - with a zillion enhancements and improvements, of course - some twenty years later!