The White Randy Jackson

Last week, I served as a member of a "jury" for an elementary school singing contest. Yep, not kidding. My friend Eva helps me teach English at Santa Isabel (she definitely speaks English better than I speak Spanish, despite the fact she's never traveled outside of Peru), and her husband is the music director of the local elementary school. Every year, the school has a big concert/contest where choirs and individuals from all grade levels perform. He always has trouble finding people who are "qualified" enough to serve on the jury to judge the contest. Eva told me all of this a few weeks ago after finding out that I played trombone for 8 years during elementary, middle and high school. And then she asked me if I would be on the jury. I told her I would be on it as a last resort - that her husband should continue looking for people, and if he just couldn't find anyone else, I would do it. And you can figure out what happened from there.

Before the contest, I had to prepare my "resume" that detailed my musical experience. So I wrote down on a piece of paper that I played trombone in concert band and marching band from 8 years. For good measure, I added that I was in my church's handbell choir (which mainly consisted of going to practice about twice a month--and all we really did was play stuff like chords for "Silent Night" during Christmas). After I showed my resume to Eva, she insisted that we spice it up a bit. So I didn't just play trombone for 8 years - I played trombone and studied music for 8 years at the "Institute" of Decatur High School. And when the MC of the concert/contest announced the jury, I was introduced as "Professor" Alex Cornell, a "specialist" in wind instruments, who studied music for eight years at an Institute in the United States of America! They didn't mention that, as a judge of a singing competition, I hadn't EVER received ANY type formal instruction in voice/singing/performance, and the last time I had practiced or participated in any sort of organized singing group was when I was in the church choir in 5th grade. In fact, until my sophomore year of college I thought the only meaning of the word "jury" was the group of people who decides if the defendant in a court of law is guilty or not guilty.

So suffice it to say, as I'm sitting there between ACTUAL music professors (or so I thought--you never now...) getting introduced at the beginning of what would eventually be a 5 hour concert, I couldn't help but feel a little silly and out of place. I was mainly just praying that I wouldn't inadvertently ruin the promising future of some 5 year old musical child prodigy by giving him or her an undeserved low score. I really had no idea what I was doing -- seriously, I don't even watch American Idol!

To evaluate the performers, we (the jury) had to give them scores from 1 to 5 in four categories: pitch, rhythm, diction and performance. Let me just take a moment to say that the spanish word for performance is "interpretación," which I thought (wrongly) meant "interpretation" (duh). I didn't find out until the next day that it actually means "performance." So while they were supposed to be graded on pitch, rhythm, diction and performance, I graded them on pitch, rhythm, diction and interpretation. I quickly learned that it didn't matter that much anyway. As long as you don't give 1's and don't give 5's (unless somebody is REALLY good or REALLY bad), everything will be okay. Throughout the night, my judging method was more or less "hmmmmm, let's pick a random number between 2 and 4." Especially for the 3 year olds. That's right, there were 3 year olds (just choir groups, not individuals). How are you supposed give a group of 12 three year olds a score for "pitch" when the only thing the choir director is concerned about is preventing them from wandering off the stage in the middle of their "performance?" They were all really cute though....

Luckily, one of the other members of Santa Isabel Church, who was once a professional musician, was also on the jury, and he let me copy off of his paper. I'm also lucky that all we had to do as members of the jury was to grade those 4 categories with a number between 1 and 5 and add up the four numbers for a final score. If there was a "comments" section, I'm pretty sure my cover would have been blown. During the couple days leading up to the contest, I pictured us (the judges) giving verbal feedback, American Idol style. I figured I could just be like a "celebrity" judge. They could put me last in the line-up, and after all of the serious judges who knew what they were doing gave technical feedback, I would be waiting at the end as the US native-gringo who just told them if their outfits looked funny or that they gave "a great effort."

I DID end up giving a couple "5's" in the competition. There was one kid who was I think 7 years old who was AMAZING. I learned later that evening that he's been on TV singing multiple times. He sang a mariachi song in a full mariachi outfit. At the beginning of his performance, as the audience sat in silence waiting for him to sing while the instrumental introduction to the song played he suddenly yelled the Spanish equivalent of "put your hands together!" to get everyone to start clapping. From that point on, I was sold.

So that's my first ever jury duty experience - in either a courtroom OR a concert. I guess this is what the "new experiences" of being a Y.A.V. are all about.