My Son, in the Peace Corps in Albania

Here's something different. I'm going to post my son's blog post from today, where he talks about a big concert he and his students put on in a relatively small town in Albania.

I'm so proud. My son, Jordan Trabue's, blog post from today...

Today was it. The big concert (koncerti in Shqip). My Youth Council had been preparing for this for over a month. When we voted on projects all the way back in October, one of the big ones was to continue the annual Youth Council Anti-Bullying Concert that the previous Youth Council had held for the two years preceding.

It's easy to say 'yeah, we're going to to a big concert' and more difficult to actually implement it. Over the past month this has taken over my life. I needed to find singers, dancers, someone to give a speech, anything else we might want. I found an anti-bullying skit on the internet and my students translated it then ran it through so many drafts the end plot might as well have been a new skit. I talked to the director of Education in Lushnje, to the director of the local auditorium, the principal and vice principal of EVERY elementary school in the city. We scheduled practices. Hunted down anyone with a talent. When those people would drop out we'd find new ones. It's been a flurry of activity. Tensions would rise one day as half the group didn't show up or someone forgot to make some important phone call, then we'd all be laughing after a particularly good practice or meeting. Finally, yesterday, we had our final rehearsal with all the performers in the auditorium yesterday. It was a grueling three hours of doing everything again and again and again.

Last night I barely slept. I didn't know if anyone would come. I didn't know what would be worse, if no one came or if a ton of people came and something went horribly wrong. I texted with some of my students about things that could go haywire. What if one of the singers accidentally ate a microphone? What if someone in the audience had a heart attack? What if we all simultaneously crapped our pants onstage?! We don't have back-up pants!!

My alarm was set for 6 but I woke up at 5:30 and just stared at my phone for a half hour waiting for the alarm. I got up and left for the auditorium. I brought a guitar with me that I'd borrowed from one of the local churches. I didn't intend to perform but on the chance that one of our singers didn't make it I would be the backup plan.

The Youth Council members and performers trickled in over the next two hours. We got everything ready and waited for the schools.

The first year of the annual Bullying concert there was a whopping 34 students in attendance. The second year There were more, but the auditorium (which can seat 400) wasn't even halfway full I was told. Moreover the students who came were horrible. They jeered, didn't listen, and shined laser pointers on the stage. Part of the reason is that they didn't know what they were coming to. They hadn't been told anything about the concert beforehand, they were just randomly pulled out of the classroom.

This year I went not only to the director of education, but visited each school individually and spoke with the principals. My students and I explained in detail what the concert was, and left a letter with instructions for each class to make an anti-bullying poster that they would then bring to the concert. I doubted we'd have much follow through on the part of the schools but I could say I tried.

When I went out to open the front gate, I was greeted by hundreds of kids with dozens of posters. We let them in one class at a time, taking pictures with their posters. The auditorium wasn't quite full, but was at least at 80% capacity.  Well, we had our audience. To add to the pressure, one of my bosses had visited from Tirana and the local news media had been called in and was setting up cameras.

As the show started we invited the kids with the best posters up on stage to be cheered. Then we had our opening speech and jumped into the performances. First an anti-bullying video we'd found on youtube and added Shqip subtitles to. Then two dancers took the stage. Then a singer.

The whole time I was running around backstage. You go over here. You don't forget to take these props onstage. Girls be quiet! As the next act began, a dancer who danced over a beautiful orchestrated piece while someone read a monologue on bullying, I stopped to watch from backstage. For all my worrying, for all my complaining and whining, things were going pretty well.

Then the music stopped and everything went black.

The audience, mistakingly thinking this was an unexpected, epic end to the piece, erupted with applause. Even I found myself thinking 'when did we change the piece to end with a sudden cut to black?' But no. This wasn't planned. The power had gone out.

I would be later told by the sound guy that, although power outages in Albania aren't uncommon, the building has generators and never in his years working had they lost power during even a practice, let alone a performance. Just my luck I suppose.

For a few moments we were in complete darkness, then the phones came out and there was just enough light to see. the performers had retreated backstage. I walked alone across the stage to the other side to speak with the workers through a translator. Everyone was speaking. It was total confusion. People were running this way and that, to what end I can't guess. The kids were losing it in the seats. Talking and yelling. Everyone was looking at me. "Jordan, what are we going to do?" I was asked again and again by person after person. I was reeling. "I don't know" I would reply. It took about a minute to get my bearings and be decisive. I grabbed four or five of my students and started barking out instructions.

"Go out into the audience. Find the teachers. Tell them we're going to wait for a couple minutes and to try to keep their kids quiet. If the power doesn't come back on then we'll cancel the performance."

My students set to work. I went onstage and began waving my hands. There was enough light that I know the kids in the audience could see me, but there was no way to subdue them. They were talking and talking. It was chaos.

In that moment I felt almost as though I was out of my own body, watching this happen. Everything was happening in slow motion. The kids were talking. I looked at my own students, who had worked so hard on this. Their faces were nervous and confused. I suddenly remembered all those years in America I'd been a musician. All the places I'd played. Traveling on the road. Picking at strings alone in my room. In this moment I felt as though everything in my life had been preordained, that everything that had ever happened to me had been operating according to some kind of logic. That everything I needed in life was already laid out before me.

I turned and walked offstage to where I'd set the guitar I'd borrowed from the church. I slung the strap over my shoulder and walked back on the darkened stage. I told my students "Follow me and shine all your phone lights on me." They did as they were instructed and a halo of bluish light surrounded me as I walked off the front of the stage and into the middle of the audience, strumming my guitar as loudly as I could.

At this point I was the most visible thing in the whole room and people were noticing 'oh, hey, there's a guy with a guitar.' The hundreds of students quieted down out of curiosity. I began to sing one of my songs from my days as a musician by heart. The students couldn't hear my voice for more than five feet or so, but the rhythm of the guitar carried far and even kids in the back were waving their phones back and forth to the beat of the song.

Halfway through the song, the lights came back on and everyone erupted in applause.

We finished our concert. It was a smash hit. Our skit that we'd practiced to death got whoops and applause. At the end a representative from the local government passed out certificates to everyone who had performed. However at the end all anyone was talking about was when the power went off and the American stood in the middle of everyone playing guitar. Even the people who had worked on the concerts from previous years agreed that this one was the most exciting.

I can't help but feel happy. I'd been so worried something would go wrong and in the end something did, and the show was all the better for it.

https://www.jotrobo.net/single-post/2017/12/11/Koncerti