“Wait… what’s that word again? For the note that repeats?”

“Ostinato.”

“Um… can you text that to me after we’re off the phone?”

George Burton laughs. It’s the same deep, hitching giggle that healed my spirit for the first time more than twenty years ago. Thankfully, that laugh still does the job today. 

As George’s laugh fills my car’s speakers, I’m driving to school to pick up my plants and a spare Chromebook in anticipation of my classroom remaining cold and dark for who-knows-how-long. Yesterday, my sister and I challenged each other to find a sentence that you cannot begin with, “It’s so crazy,” right now, and we called it at impossible. 

Later that afternoon, an email furloughed her from work and provided instructions to file for unemployment. All of our spirits could use some healing.

At the school, we keep our careful six-foot distance from colleagues, cautiously greeting each other and shaking our heads. We don gloves to pack up boxes of classroom supplies and haul them to our cars. After a few stutters, my school is getting ready to launch a version of “flexible learning” next week. There are new rules and guidelines and practices. Everyone is gathering what’s necessary to do their best.

I’ve heard the word “navigate” used more times in the last week than in years: “navigate” new platforms, new technology, new systems, new challenges. My heart and my head ache from all the energy spent on navigation. I simply want to do what is best for my students, and to take care of my own emotional and physical health at the same time. But we are in uncharted waters, and it’s hard to tell if the map I’m creating with minimal planning time is accurate. Maps are carefully cataloged and archived for the last century of education. The route forward with Chromebooks, online ‘office hours,’ and asynchronous classes seems hazy at best.

Through all the navigation and pivoting, the Zoom meetings and webinars, George’s new album “Rec•i•proc•i•ty” has been my soundtrack. It’s not background music—it’s too emotionally resonant and complex for this. But I’ve been listening to it since a week before its February 21 release— a privilege you get with a few decades of friendship— so the songs are more familiar to me than a lot of other aspects of our world right now. 

The second track, “Finding,” is my morning alarm each day, and I wake up quietly singing its chorus. Days go by, I just get older and never wiser. You can’t convince me that this song is not the perfect anthem for “navigating” our way through social distance and days that seem to last months.

But the song I’ve been stuck on this week is the first track, “Gratitude,” which is why I called George today to ask him about the single repeating C note that sets the rhythm for much of it. Even when the horns start dancing a melody on either side of this note (which I now know is an ostinato), even when that melody blurs into a tune sung by a vocalist, you can still feel the repeated note pulling all the song’s elaborations together. 

George tells me that the rhythm of the ostinato came from hip hop. He wanted it to stick, to be catchy and contagious. So he pulled in the tools that would work best, setting aside the careful definitions of genre that often seem to be part of jazz music. 

He laughed as he described this, too, although his tone was more serious.

The Inquirer called George’s work “multidimensional,” which describes the musician as much as his music. As George has traveled the world, collecting influences from months in Morocco and gigs with legends, he’s become expert at using tools that work best to express his ideas—rules be damned. “In general, Burton likes to use his jazz quintet to ends that don’t always fit a jazz quintet’s typical method, pulling indie rock and chamber music and occasional electronic soundscaping into the mix,” according to the New York Times, where “Finding” landed on their weekly playlist in February. (My high school students were impressed that he was listed ahead of Post Malone.)

That note. That ostinato. That steadiness that supports other creative, inventive melodies. The word is derived from Italian, or perhaps from Latin, but its roots mean obstinate. More softly, stubborn. Even more gently in the thesaurus: persistent. 

I think this catchy, anchoring note is why I’ve been playing “Gratitude” on repeat this week. With George’s invented rhythm behind me, I’m trying to re-invent practices that will help my students to remain stubborn (read: persistent) about their learning when all foundations and routines have fallen away. Maybe to keep me a little obstinate, too. 

What is the consistent ostinato that we will now set to our days and weeks? When we’re together in the classroom, the steady repetition of classroom procedures creates anchors. Students know and trust how we’ll use our time together—so this frees them up to creatively riff on those patterns. We embrace laughter and surprises because there is an underlying steadiness that supports us. I now have to re-design what those anchors look and feel like, with the complication that we cannot meet, laugh together, or truly respond to each other in real time until this crazy chapter is over.

My frameworks are my course descriptions and curriculum. But what practices will make the underlying fundamentals of potential and creativity stick for my students when they no longer have access to daily support from their peers or regular coaching from their teachers? It worries me to think about all the heavier foundations that might be eroding for them too.

It feels like I can’t honestly define myself as a subject-area teacher anymore. Like George, I feel like I need to cast traditions and genre aside and use whatever rhythms will work best. I’ve been doing a lot of “navigating” this week as I try to figure out what those rhythms might be. And I’m fairly certain of this: my ostinato will have a lot less to do with technology, apps, or techniques, and a lot more to do with ways to maintain connection and build empathy. 

“Rec•i•proc•i•ty” is peppered with wisdom from 95-year-old Sun Ra Arkestra saxophonist Marshall Allen. George interviewed him during a European tour. Allen opens “Gratitude” with a gravely quote: “But you playing music and that’s a lot of energy. And you affecting folks. Affect people’s destiny and shit. Music ain’t no joke.”

Teaching ain’t no joke either—ever—but especially now. The responsibility of affecting people’s destinies feels heavy today. Here’s to all those who are inventing crucial new rhythms and genres, and doing the best they can. 

Listen to the whole album here. Or, better, buy it here and support an independent artist.