Louisiana Purchase and Aaron Burr’s Conspiracy

Reading about the Louisiana Purchase can be confusing.  The sign above refers to the Spanish Province of “Luisiana” from 1762-1803.  But didn’t Jefferson purchase Louisiana from the French in 1803?  From the settlement of several towns along the Mississippi and Missouri in the early 18^th century until 1762 this area was controlled by the French.  Even up near Omaha there are still French place names – suburbs of Omaha include Papillion and Bellevue. 

The reason that Spain took control of Louisiana was the Seven Years War, which ended in 1762.  I didn’t know much about it – but it is considered the first real World War.  The main combatants were Britain and France, but many other countries including, Prussia, Portugal, several German states, Austria, Russia, Spain, and Sweden were involved.  The big winner was Britain.  If you ever wondered why Quebec eventually became under British rule – it was because of the Seven Years War.  Britain also got Florida from Spain – but as compensation they made France give up Louisiana to Spain.

After Napoleon took power in 1799 he wanted to regain some of France’s lost empire.  He negotiated a treaty with Spain that ceded Louisiana back to France among many other things.  Then something unexpected happened – slaves on the Caribbean French island of Saint-Domingue decided that the natural law which led to the recent American and French Revolutions applied to them as well.  In 1791 they took up arms against their masters.  It took them 12 years – but they eventually formed the new country of Haiti – the only successful slave revolt ever in the Americas and the largest slave revolt since Sparticus in Roman times.

Napoleon decided that without the prosperous sugar plantations of Saint-Domingue that France’s control of the Mississippi was relatively useless.  Which is why he sold such a vast tract of land for so little money.

Of course the US government still needed to control the land they had just bought.  The main purpose of Lewis and Clark was to see exactly what it is that Jefferson had bought – especially up the Missouri River.  Things became even more tenuous – again for a very unexpected reason.  Aaron Burr was Jefferson’s Vice President in his first term.  Burr is possibly the most complex character of any of our founding fathers.  He solidified his bona fides within the new republic as an officer in the continental army.  He was not only a politician, but he also started the Bank of Manhattan – which became Manhattan Chase.  He was the first politician to use the social group of Tammany Hall in New York.

He was also known as saying anything to get what he wanted.  He would lie, bribe and steal to get what he wanted.  So those of you who are shocked by our current politics – don’t be – dirty politics have deep roots in America.  Jefferson never trusted Burr and made it clear that he wasn’t going to support him for another term.  So Burr ran for Governor of New York.  By that time he had made so many enemies that he lost that election as well.  Angry and frustrated he thrashed out at his opponents.  One person who had been especially vocal against him was Alexander Hamilton.  It being the early 19^th century Burr felt the only way to defend his honor was in a duel.  Yea – politicians used to shoot guns at each other.  Again – our politics don’t seem so crazy in comparison do they?

Burr ended up killing Hamilton in the duel.  He skipped town, but once he realized that he wasn’t going to be charged with anything he pretty much went on like nothing had happened.  What came next was REALLY crazy.  Burr realized that the US grasp on territory west of the Mississippi was pretty weak.  Our country was less than 30 years old.  We simply didn’t have the resources to control this vast new land.  So, he decided to concoct a plan to split off this land and become its new leader. 

To recap – Thomas Jefferson was dealing with twice the land that he started with when he was inaugurated.  In that new land were Spanish people who controlled the land for longer than the U.S. had been a country and who weren’t even told of the secret deal with Napoleon until the Louisiana Purchase was almost completed.  They were more than a little angry, and many people – including Burr thought that war with Spain was inevitable.  Then there were the French in this area.  Many of them didn’t speak English.  They were used to being left alone.  They weren’t exactly happy about paying taxes to the American government.  Then there were the Native Americans.  The travels of Lewis and Clark showed that it was difficulty to know what to expect – peace would have to be gained tribe by tribe.  There were also a lot of nervous slaveholders.  They were scared that what had happened in Haiti could happen in Louisiana.  It turned out that they weren’t wrong to be on edge.  In 1811 the largest slave revolt in American history occurred 30 miles from New Orleans.  And finally there was Burr.  Jefferson’s former Vice President – who was concocting a plan to rip away that new land from the US and form a new country.  He even had eyes on taking over parts of Mexico.

Well, lucky for Jefferson, a few of Burr’s coconspirators got cold feet.  He was tracked down and put on trial.  His first trial was at Washington, Mississippi – where a brand new college had been built.  Here are some pics of the campus below.  The two large oaks are called the “Burr Oaks.”  Although legend has it that his trial was beneath those oaks – it was actually held in a building that has since been demolished.

Believe it or not Burr got away with it.  He ended up going on trial three times for treason.  He was never convicted.  He lived until 1836 – dying at the age of 80 years old. 

Tomorrow - the man whose legacy is still debated today.  He is on the $20 bill, but he might not be on for long.

Natchitoches and Natchez

There were three cities I visited which were all settled by the French within four years of each other – Natchitoches, Louisiana (pronounced Naketish) in 1714, Natchez, Mississippi in 1716, and New Orleans in 1718.  What stands out to me is how late this part of North America was settled.  This is 100 years after the earliest North American settlements like Plymouth, St. Augustine, and Jamestown.  Even Detroit, less than an hour away from where I grew up, was settled in 1701.  I guess I’m mostly surprised because this part of America feels older than pretty much anywhere else I’ve been in the United States.  Parts of the French quarter in New Orleans have these ram shackle buildings, like the one below, that look more like they should be part of the old world rather than the new.

First I’m going to talk about Natchitoches.  You’ve probably never heard of this place - I hadn’t until I was researching for my trip.  I was looking for places to stop between Dallas and New Orleans and read about Natchitoches in an old book published by Readers Digest that I’ve owned since I was 12 years old.  The main selling point for me of visiting this town was that it is the earliest European settlement that was included in the Louisiana Purchase.  The charm of Natchitoches is how isolated it seems.  Here are some pictures of the downtown.  It sits on the Cane River Lake – which is a remnant of the Red river – which used to pass by the town, but shifted to the east.  The shift of the river severely impacted the town’s trade, but it meant that the architecture of the town has been left untouched.  Here are some pictures.

The middle picture is of an 18^th century house that is said to be of the “creole style.”  Around Natchitoches there is a strong culture of Creoles, who are a racial mix of Spanish, French, Native American and African.  The Creole culture is one of the defining features of Louisiana.  There were few other places in the current United States where races mixed as freely as in Louisiana.  However, I don’t want to overstate the size of their population – only 1.5% of the current Louisiana population identifies as multiracial.  Their importance lies less in their numbers than in how they symbolize the multicultural roots of Louisiana, which is the basis of the incredible cultural contributions that started here and eventually spread over the planet.

Natchez is similar to Natchitoches in that it seems to be stuck in time.  It is set on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River.

Because of its position on the Mississippi, Natchez was an incredibly important city from its founding through the end of the 19^th century.  Signs of this importance can be found in the city cemetery. 

Although the city was founded by the French, it was controlled by the British from 1763-1779, and then Spain from 1779-1798.  The Spanish laid out the plan for the city.  The grave monument above is for Jose Vidal, one of the Spanish grandees who served as a representative of the Spanish crown.  I was struck at the cemetery by how many graves were of people who were born in Europe.  Here are some of my favorites.

I like this one – not just because of where he was born – but the poem that appears to be written by his wife.

“Death called

The Sculptor’s classic chisel fell

And Lyon bade his Art and Friends farewell”

This gravestone was in the Jewish section.  It appears to be for two brothers who died at only 22 and 25 years old within days of each other.  It was erected by their brother Nathan.  It reads:

Alas this stone too truly sadly tells

How deaths unerring relentless hand

Laid low within these narrow cells

Two pilgrims for the spirit land

Farewell my Jake and Abe farewell.

May we meet to part no more

In mansions where the blessed dwell

In the vale of the sunny shore.

Too often we seem to discount the humanity of people of the past.  We see sober paintings and photos of the past and assume that means that people had less emotions or lived more boring lives.   Expressing oneself emotionally – even through poetry – was actually relatively common in the 19^th century.  Even in regular letters to each other people expressed love in very emotive terms.

Another assumption that people seem to make about the past – which is completely false – is that they were more moral than we are today.  A good example of how many people actually acted can be found “under-the-hill” in Natchez. 

“Under-the-hill” was a district for the men who plied their trade on the river.  It was filled with gamblers, liquor, and prostitutes.  Pretty much any town along the river had similar districts.  This area of the country may be religious, but it sure isn’t puritanical. 

Tomorrow the Louisiana Purchase and a founding father behaving badly . . .

Civilization

The above picture was taken on the last day of my trip, but it has the oldest history of any place I visited by far.  The Chahokia mounds, just east of St. Louis was built in the 9^th-12th centuries.  The site was home to 10-20,000 people at its height, making it larger than any European cities of the time.  They found evidence of far flung trade - including sea shells from the east coast, sports etc.  This was a very advanced civilization. 

What does civilization mean anyways?  I bring this up because the argument of what constitutes civilization or even humanity is a very important one in the south.  The concept of civilized vs uncivilized people led the supposed “civilized” people to treat other humans in ways that are so barbaric it’s difficult to come to terms with the fact that it occurred on American soil.

Well, Wikipedia defines “civilization” as “any complex society characterized by urban development, social stratification, symbolic communication forms (typically, writing systems), and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment by a cultural elite.”  When did this start?  The experts state that the first communities that could be described as civilized were 10,000 years ago.  Here is a timeline of the first civilizations.

One thing you will notice is that none of those early civilizations occurred in Europe.  Our modern ideology of the dominance of the “white man” has much more to do with what has occurred over the last 500 years, which makes up less than 5% of the time that Homo Sapiens have been “civilized.”

Being in PA school I’ve noticed an odd tendency.  Every day I learn something new.  It comes so fast and furious that I sometimes forget how recently it was that I learned something.  If I learn something on a Tuesday I sometimes find myself scoffing at a fellow student who asks me about it on a Thursday.  I have to remind myself – “remember, you didn’t know this until literally days ago.”  It’s a weird phenomenon, but I’ve gotten used to it.  I don’t know where it comes from – maybe because it was important and so to admit that I was ignorant of it so recently is damaging to my ego?  I don’t know.  I just know it happens.

I think that there is something very similar that Europeans have done with regards to the idea of which races are “civilized.”  Civilization has been around for 10,000 years.  But even then, as the above figure shows, it wasn’t everywhere at once – nor did it necessarily stick around once it had been developed in a specific place.  The Chahokians for instance, abandoned this site for unclear reasons in the 13^th-14^th centuries.  Was it from overcrowding, mismanagement of resources, warfare, or social disintegration?  Probably it was a combination – but there is no way to tell.  The important thing is that all geographic areas across the globe have experienced this waxing and waning of civilization vs the uncivilized “nomadic pastoralists or hunter/gatherers." 

The concept of “white supremacy” does not hold up to even the most cursory study of early civilization.  Like me with medical concepts – the people of Europe – who only found civilization through contact with people of the Middle East and North Africa – seemed to quickly transition to finding any people who were still living in the same “non-civilized” circumstances that they only recently were liberated from as being less than themselves.  This dangerous and illogical idea still has severe repercussions today.

Next I will discuss the early Europeans who came to the America’s in the places I visited.

Spring Break - Introduction

Introduction

From 3/25-3/31, 2016 I traveled approximately the route pictured above.  Many of the places I visited I had never visited before.  I’m from Michigan – a very northern state, however it has a large number of transplanted southerners who came to work at the auto plants in the mid-20^th century.  The nickname for the town down the road from where I grew up, Ypsilanti, was "Ypsi-tucky."  And no, we didn’t mean it in a good way. 

As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that if I’m going to  convince others to shed their biases that I have to shed my own.  I think the first step to ridding yourself of bias is admitting that you have one.  So here it goes – I think of the south as a scary place.  It’s almost impossible for me to think of the south without seeing white hoods, fire hoses and dogs attacking black people, and people proudly displaying the confederate flag.

Even just posting it here gives me the willies.  And it leads me to think - how can we be a truly united country when one symbol has such different meanings for us?  I’ve lived a lot of places – but I’ve only lived one place that could even be remotely called “the south.” Kendra and I lived in Winchester, VA when she worked for Shenandoah University.  It was a beautiful place, but we never really felt like we fit in.  It was a little too small for us – but the biggest problem was probably that it was too southern.  We just never felt comfortable as northerners.

However, we did meet some people who changed the way we looked at the south.  Most prominently was the local running store owner, Mark Stickley.  He is an incredibly generous man.  He helped me with an emergency before he even knew me and most importantly he hooked me into the running community right away.  He also happens to have very deep roots in the area.  His direct ancestors farmed land in the area before the Civil War.  He had direct ancestors who fought for the confederacy.  I’ll never forget when he invited my wife and I to his memorial day picnic that he held on his family’s property along a river.  The picnic was being held a few miles from the entrance to the property.  He had to lead us with his vehicle so that we wouldn’t get lost.  We traveled first on a dirt road – then we were driving through a field – the grass slapping the bottom of our Volvo.  We came upon a family cemetery where there were dozens of gravestones - about 4-5 had confederate flags.  I’ll be honest – my immediate reaction was – “oh, good lord – what did we get ourselves into?”

He proudly pointed out the graves on the freshly cut cemetery lawn – explaining that his elderly mother made him promise to keep up the cemetery – especially on memorial day.  She felt that memorial day was for American veterans of all wars – including those who had rebelled against the US government.  It was kind of confusing for me.  I know this man.  I know he is an incredibly kind man.  As someone from the north it just didn’t make sense.  Sure, I could say “you shouldn’t celebrate your ancestors.  They stood for the subjugation of another race for their economic gain.  The principles they fought for were reprehensible – and by not only lacking shame – but actually seeming to be proud of them – you do a great disservice to humanity.”  But I didn’t.  I decided that maybe this was a good lesson for me.  That my reflexive disdain was probably not helpful and that if we truly are going to be unified as a country – a place where everyone is respected we have to acknowledge that things are more complicated that we would like.

I’m not saying that I changed my mind on the fact that I don’t think it’s right to celebrate the confederacy – but I realized that before I ride on my high horse I need to admit that my understanding of the south is pretty limited.  So, I would say that this trip was in part to come to terms with my biases.  But it was also to visit places that were the birthplace of much of the greatest contributions of America to the culture of the world.  The blending of people from all over the world occurred here in a much more intimate way than any other place in our country – it’s the place where we found our voice as a country.  As northerners we might see our cultural centers as Chicago, New York, Detroit, and Philadelphia.  But if you peal back what things happened in the northern cities you typically don’t have to go too far to see that it was really a transplanted southerner who planted the seed.

I thought of various ways to organize my experiences in the south.  I decided that a day by day account wasn’t going to work.  Many times sites that were close together geographically were separated by time – and there were several sites that were tightly bound thematically but were on opposite ends of my trip.  So, the main organization is going to be chronologically and then by a specific theme – if it makes sense.

My first post will be about one of only 23 US world heritage sites.  A place that had as many as 20,000 residents in the 12^th century – at the time it was larger than London or Paris. 

Spring Break

I can't wait for next Friday.  PA school is a grind.  We have basically no time off.  A three day weekend with no upcoming tests feels luxurious.   So to have nine days of no clinic - with tests still a comfortable month away is going to feel like a months long sabbatical.  What will I do with this time?  Last fall my friends Erik and Laith and I talked about how we needed to go on a vacation together.  We discussed a few different options - my preferred location was New Orleans.  About 6-8 weeks ago I messaged both of them about doing a trip.  I didn't hear back from them.  Well, it turns out that my friend Laith had auditioned for The Voice, but couldn't tell anybody yet.  Erik was just being a jerk (just kidding Erik ; ).

So, now I had to decide what I was going to do.  Find someone else to go with me at the last minute?  Or just go down to New Orleans by myself?  I decided on the latter.  I love traveling - but to be honest I prefer doing it by myself.  I have very particular interests and activities that I like to do on vacation.  Usually they are things that seem odd to others.  Just ask my wife.  We love traveling, but compromising on what I want to do and what she wants to do can at times be challenging.  And as my wife is finishing up her MBA and her break doesn't line up with mine - it seems like the perfect time for me to just do my thing.

While planning my trip I realized that my route would take me past many locations that have a common theme - a theme that is very much in the national conversation today - our racial divide.  I know - what a relaxing thing to be contemplating during my spring break!  I guess I'm weird that way.  My goal is to write about the history of race relations in many of the places I visit in a way that doesn't shy away from our history, but also cast anyone as the devil.  We are ALL capable of kindness, intelligence, and fairness - but we are also capable of cruelty, ignorance, and injustice.  That doesn't mean that we shouldn't hold people accountable or that I think the Black Panthers have the same moral responsibility for racial strife as the KKK.  But I'm going to try to focus on the dynamics of power, which is in my mind, the main driver of racial animosity - not just in this country, but all over the world.

Will I just be recounting a never ending list of historical injustices that have plagued racial minorities in this country since before its founding?  Yes and no.  Those events must be acknowledged and described fully - so that we can come to grips with how horrific it is that these things happened on our soil.  But, I think it's more important from the context of how those events shaped our current nation.  Why are we so segregated?  Why do minority communities still experience poverty, violence, incarceration and addiction at rates higher than Whites?  What do we have problems acknowledging the contributions of minorities to our nation?  How can it be that in 2016 we are still dealing with racial strife?  Why do people feel like they have to shout "Black lives matter" in 2016?  And is that "reverse racism"?  What do our current presidential politics say about us as a people?

Yep - that's some pretty weighty stuff alright.  But I don't think that we can move forward without conversation.  Sure it's scary.  But like I would say to a patient with PTSD - the only way to move beyond our past is to fully explore it.

Here is a map of where I will travel starting next Friday afternoon.  If anybody has any suggestions of places to visit that are near where I'll be traveling - please let me know.  I've got a lot of ideas, but I do actually realize (contrary to what my wife tells me sometimes) that I actually don't know everything.

Here is a map of my planned route. 

The places I'm planning to visit because of their significance are Kansas City MO, Oswatomie KS, Tulsa OK, Dallas TX, Tyler TX, New Orleans LA, Vicksburg MS, Memphis TN, Ferguson MO.

Wish me luck! ; )

Mind blown

So, um, yeah - that actually happened.  My friend, who I have known, for 34 years was on a TV show that millions of people watched last night.  Pharrell Williams came out of his chair and bowed to him.  Adam Levine said he was "unlike anyone we have ever had" on The Voice.  It was insane.

Not that I didn't think Laith had the talent or ability to "make it" as a recording artist - but I always thought it would happen differently.  I thought that some record producer would catch one of his shows and he would get a small contract and then tour, first regionally, and then nationally.  As he said - he has played over 300 gigs a year for the last 20 years.  Laith is definitely pretty big in the Ann Arbor music scene.  And he had made some significant inroads into Detroit and up north in Traverse City.  He even was playing more nationally in the last several years.  He played in Los Angeles, Denver, New Orleans, Kansas City etc.  But for it to happen - the way that it is happening - like he just jumped on a rocket ship to the moon at the age of 38 is just plain crazy.

So, I don't know if I'm going to write something necessarily every week - but a few things came to mind that seemed worthwhile to discuss.  I thought I'd write a little about some of the influences on Laith musically when we were growing up. Laith is completely his own person and yet he is very much a product of his environment.  I would say that a large number of American musicians have had one of two things which influenced them - a strong church music program and/or a strong public school music program.  Laith had both.

Our church, Zion Lutheran in Ann Arbor, had about 2,000 members when we were growing up.  So, a pretty decent sized church.  But we had two people that not many churches of any size have - we had Dr. Donald Williams and Carol Muehlig.  Don was from just outside of Atlanta, GA.  He migrated up to Ann Arbor to study organ at the University in the 1960's - and found a church home at Zion.  By the time we were in the choir he had been at Zion for ~20 years.  Carol was from Ann Arbor and served as the associate organist and choirmaster.

Don was a great choir master, but also a nationally touring organist.  At the end of the service each Sunday he would play a postlude - many people would stay in the church just to hear him play.  His "go to" was the incredibly difficulty Widor Toccata.  Here is a youtube of the piece so you know what I'm talking about.  It's actually pretty Rock'n Roll to my ear.

Laith has done a lot of study on guitar and none of it was with Don - but I think his ear for virtuoso playing came directly from all those years of hearing Don and Carol play the organ.  One of the most fun things about being in the church choir when we were really young was that Don and Carol would let us play the organ after choir practice.  They called it "monkeying on the organ."  Donald and Carol were not only incredible musicians - but they were giving with their time and wisdom.  They were also a great team.  Don was bombastic - if he laughed you could hear it three blocks away.  Carol is more quiet - but, also very talented and a great teacher.  They showed how one style is not right for every student.  You need a mix of styles to reach the greatest number of people.  Most importantly, they made everything seem very accessible to us.  They allowed us to be curious and creative.  I only wish that Don was still alive to see Laith last night.  

So, although Don and Carol certainly were a big influence on Laith - they certainly weren't Laith's only influence.  Ann Arbor is known for The Big House - but it's also a great place to be as a musician.  It's pretty much a given these days that if you go to a Broadway show there will be somebody in the cast from the University of Michigan musical theater program.  The other "Big House" in Ann Arbor is Hill Auditorium.  And even though the most recent event there was Jim Harbaugh's crazy signing day extravaganza with Tom Brady, Derek Jeter, Ric Flair etc - there have actually been even more historic concerts that have occurred there : )

During much of the 20th century the University's "May Festival" would bring some of the greatest classical musicians to Ann Arbor.  The Philadelphia Orchestra was a main stay while the great Eugene Ormandy was musical director there.  When Leonard Bernstein was in the last year of his life he decided he wanted to conduct one last time in three places - New York, Los Angeles, and Ann Arbor.

Classical was just a piece of music scene in Ann Arbor.  The two most famous musicians to come out of Ann Arbor are Bob Seger and Iggy Pop.  Seger, with his "Old Time Rock'n Roll" appeared to be of the past - but he had a huge influence on the future of Rock - even Kid Rock sites him as his most important influence.  Iggy Pop along with the MC5 basically invented punk rock.  And although Ann Arbor is not Detroit - we certainly are in the sphere of influence of Detroit.  In the 80's, less than an hour from where we lived Derrick May, Carl Craig and others were creating the new genre of Techno.  That energy which created Motown was still there - it was just finding new ways of expression.

Southeast Michigan in the 20th century is one of the most unique places this world has known.  There is a reason there was all this incredible creativity going on.  The auto industry brought in people from all over the United States - but also the world.  A huge Ford plant was just 10 miles down the road from us.  Our friends' parents were not only executives, but they were blue collar auto workers, engineers - and of course professors at the university.  Ann Arbor has a population of only just over 100,000 people - but it has the energy of a town 10 times the size.  The energy of that town on a football Saturday was incredible - but it was also our normal.

Jonas Salk studied here before discovering the Polio vaccine - James Earl Jones found his voice there - Arthur Miller studied theater there.  Because it is a relatively small place and there were so many amazing things going on it made you feel as though anything was possible.  It also gave us a lot to live up to. 

We might have grown up in the 80's, but there was still a lot of the 60's still left in Ann Arbor.  At one time it was probably the most liberal place in America - or at least it was tied with Berkeley.  Cheech and Chong talked about going to Ann Arbor in one of their movies because of the famously soft pot laws.  Local activism and national activism seemed to merge in Ann Arbor.  John Sinclair was a local guy who was a poet, journalist, band manager for the MC5 - among other things.  He got the attention of the authorities with his political activism - he started a group called "The White Panther Party" - which was supposed to be a group of whites fighting for racial equality with just as much as a military bent as the Black Panther Party.  To make sure he couldn't make good on some of his threats the authorities gave him a 10 year prison sentence for giving two joints to an undercover policeman.  His plight became a cause celebre for the entire radical left.  A concert in Ann Arbor in 1971 which was held to try to get him released included John Lennon, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, the poet Allen Ginsburg, Black Panther leader Bobby Seale, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, etc. 

We also had a very strong music program in our public schools.  Laith went to Community High School - an alternative school that was based on much of the educational theory put forth by John Dewey, who was also a faculty member at the University of Michigan.  Community had an incredible Jazz program.  Their Jazz band was a regular at the North Sea Jazz festival in Amsterdam.  Several professional musicians came out of that program. 

So, when I see Laith on stage - I see all of those influences.  It's not just the long hair and beard (which is kind of funny to me because he was pretty clean cut most of his life), it's not just the bluesy voice that occasionally gives way to a clear falsetto, it's not just the virtuosic guitar, it's not just the emotion that he sings with - it's the combination of it all.  It's how he took all of these influences - how he perfected his craft through a lot of hard work - and then put all of it together in a way that is completely unique.

One of Laith's albums is called "Long Time Coming" - a long time coming indeed brother.

My friend Laith

Image from "sneak peek" of The Voice with what appears to be Pharrell Williams coming up to say something to Laith.

On Monday, February 29th my friend Laith Al-Saadi will be on the TV show "The Voice."  I've known Laith since I was five years old.  When I found out that he was about to be "famous" - it made me think about our friendship - and I made a few observations that I thought would be worth sharing.  Especially since eventually he'll need votes - and I think the more you know about Laith the more you are going to want to vote for him.

Laith and I met at Zion Lutheran Church because we both sang in the choir.  To be honest, even though we were around each other a lot from the time we were in kindergarten until we graduated high school - we didn't really become good friends until the beginning of high school.  I have never really thought about why that was - but, this opportunity of his on "The Voice" kind of made me come to grips with why I didn't think of him as a friend when we were younger.  I saw him as a threat.

To explain that a little bit further - my dad is a high school choir teacher.  My father's mentor was Dr. Donald Williams - the organist and choir master at our church.  I was a pretty decent singer when I was younger and so was Laith.  Who was going to sing "Once in Royal David's City" on Christmas eve?  While we were still boy sopranos it usually was between me and Laith.  Who was going to get a lead in the production of Gilbert and Sullivan?  Laith and I usually shared the same role. 

He was in the well respected Ann Arbor Boys Choir.  I was in the Ann Arbor Youth Chorale - a group that was created by my dad.  I can remember one year when I was given a role of the page in Concordia University's yearly production of The Boar's Head Festival.  Laith came to one of the performances.  I can still remember that I specifically wanted to sing well to show off to Laith.

As we got older I started to be more interested in sports than I was music.  And to be honest - I just wasn't as good of a singer once I hit puberty.  Laith on the other hand grew as a musician in a big way.  I can remember hanging out at his house about 6 months after he started playing the guitar when we were 15 years old.  There wasn't a song I could name that he couldn't play.  At that point I threw in the towel.  I would never be the musician that Laith would be.  Luckily at that point I had other things going on where I could focus my ridiculous competitiveness.

Another part of our blooming friendship was our mutual friend Erik.  Erik's dad was one of our pastors.  I had been good friends with Erik since I was five and Erik was six.  Many times the only reason I hung out with Laith, was because I wanted to hang out with Erik.  But, Erik's dad took a job at a church in Grosse Pointe, MI when we were in Junior High.  Given that our common friend was no longer living in town Laith and I started hanging out much more together. 

Laith eventually started a Blue's group called "Blue Vinyl."  At the age of 16 his band was playing at Rick's Café - once of the major college hangouts in Ann Arbor.  He would get me into his gigs at Rick's by claiming that I was their "roadie" - all 125 pounds of me.  I went to a different high school than Laith - so I sold their CD's to my friends. 

Most importantly - Laith was my friend who I called when I was feeling down.  Not that Laith and I had deep talks about our feelings necessarily - but there was something about being around Laith that made me feel better.  Laith's incredible intelligence and creativity expanded my world.  Being around Laith reminded me that there is a big, beautiful universe of experiences out there - and he many times brought me out of the self obsessed funk that afflicts many teenagers and young adults.

Laith has made it as a professional musician for his entire adult life.  He is an integral part of the Ann Arbor and Detroit music scene.  I've been proud of what he's been able to accomplish as a musician.  But this is a much larger opportunity than he has had before.  I'm excited for him, but I also know that these contests can many times be about things other than talent. 

A few years ago Laith played at my parents' 40th anniversary party.  My father, who has a doctorate in vocal performance from University of Michigan, went up to him afterwards and told him that he was the most talented musician that he has ever been around.  Laith seemed genuinely touched.  Regardless of what happens I want Laith to remember what my dad said that day.  He is an incredible musician, but he is an even better friend.  I wish him the best of luck and I hope that everybody reading this will vote for him.

And remember Laith - if you ever need to show them your musical range - I am always available to come out to LA and sing "We're called Gondolieri"!

Here is Laith singing one of my favorite originals of his - "Gone."