The name David Amram is branded on the brains of generations of Canadian children. Amram is a musical polymath with an impossibly impressive list of collaborators ranging from Charlie Parker to Leonard Bernstein to Pete Seeger to Tito Puente. Nevertheless, Amram cheerfully admits that his greatest recognition may derive from his cameo in the contemporary repertoire of children’s music; he is immortalized in Raffi’s couplet “A peanut butter sandwich made with jam / one for me and one for David Amram.”
Amram met Raffi, then an aspiring folk singer, in Toronto in 1971. Amram’s good friend Ramblin’ Jack Elliot was playing the Riverboat, and Raffi was there every night. Back at Raffi’s place, there was jamming and conversation, out of which came the idea that Raffi sing songs for children. Years later, Amram learned of his minor celebrity when his own kids told him that all their friends wanted to meet the man who Raffi was singing about. Amram laughs heartily about catching up with Raffi years later, and discovering “he couldn’t think of anything to rhyme with jam!”
Amram radiates enthusiasm in recounting this — and any — anecdote. At the age of 79, he remains passionate about all forms of music this planet has to offer, and the possibilities for everyone to make their own cultural contribution.
Amram is in Toronto to perform a concert in support of his soundtrack to the documentary The Frontier Gandhi, directed by T. C. McLuhan (daughter of Marshall). The movie profiles Khan Abdul Ghaffar ‘Badshah’ Khan, a Pashtun leader who was a Muslim contemporary of Gandhi in confronting British colonial rule through non-violent means. Amram’s musical accompaniment draws from a wide vocabulary of Afghan village music, the tablas of Miles Davis alum Badal Roy, a chamber orchestra and Persian, Greek and Turkish ingredients.
This mélange is typical of a career that is the very definition of diversity. “When the term ‘world music’ became a rack in the record shop, instead of being considered a schizophrenic nutcase, I was referred to as somebody who wrote melody, harmony and counterpoint and used ‘authentic’ ethnic materials. I was suddenly told I was a pioneer of world music,” he muses.
Amram dismisses such attempts at institutionalization. “The concert that I’m going to be doing won’t be some anthropologist coming in from the USA to represent the obscure music of the unfortunate,” he says wryly. “Rather, it will be myself as one of many people who has spent his whole life trying to become educated and share the little bit that he knows. It will be welcoming and fun, whether or not [the audience] has heard a note of the kinds of music we’ll play.”
Count on a freewheeling performance, animated by Amram’s eclectic assortment of wind instruments and much storytelling — an approach that has always gone down well in Toronto. He is deeply impressed by the ideal of a multicultural mosaic within Toronto and Canada.
“When I was a kid, I was introduced by my uncle (who was a merchant seaman) to the world that he knew, to the idea that there were a lot of people, places, music, dances and food — all of which were valuable and special. Way before I started spending time in Canada, I wished that [America] could have that kind of attitude to not think of people as foreigners, or ethnic, or different but rather people that could show us something that we didn’t know, and could share. In Toronto there’s such a wonderful respect for all these things.”
Working out of New York for most of his career, Amram now lives outside of the city as he continues to create art at full steam. Next year, his operatic adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night will be filmed for television, and his fourth book will be published.
His zest for creative expression has no doubt inspired his now-grown children on their own musical odysseys in the Big Apple. Surely his irreverence is reflected in daughter Adira Amram’s Funny Or Die–approved electro-comedy, “Mom Song.”
Surprisingly, coming from someone who hung out with Kerouac, Ginsberg and major figures in ’50s jazz, Amram thinks New York is more vital than ever these days. “It reminds me of the excitement of being there in 1955 but without a bunch of kids with paste-on goatees and horn-rimmed glasses with no lenses pretending to be beatniks. They’re finding their own ethos and having a wonderful time with what’s available. They are actually achieving more, and on a higher level, than we did when we were signed to record companies with so-called promotion.” Big up yourself, Williamsburg.
Speaking more universally, Amram concludes, “There’s a better attitude among young people than I’ve ever seen. Ultimately that’s the way it should be. That’s what you call civilization — where arts are a part of everybody’s life.”