Postcards in the Air : SONGS

Friday, September 25, 2026

SONGS

Have you ever had a song stuck in your head? When the gospel song, "Oh Happy Days"sung by the Edwin Hawkings Singers, became a hit in the late 1960s, the words crawled into my brain and stayed there for days. I hadn't thought of that song in years until we went to the Flower Piano event at Golden Gate Park. One of the musical groups performing in the Great Meadow of the botanical gardens burst into happy singing with that song. "Oh Happy Days" is still rambling around in my head this week.

Flower Piano at Golden Gate Park

For the last couple of weeks, Flower Piano provided various places thoroughout the botanical garden for local musicians to perform music from jazz to classical music. Performers change every day and performed for an hour each session. On a week day when it was less crowded, we stopped to listen to Doug Goodkin and the Pentatonics in the Fragrance Garden. The group offered a subtle lesson in the development of jazz from its early roots of blues and gospel singing to ragtime to swing and on to the present. Goodkin is a former music teacher at the San Francisco School and invited the audience to participate in the music-making. The San Francisco School has been around since the 1960s and has the air of the experimental education that developed back then. Goodkin was responsible for introducing the Orff Schulwerk method of music education to the school. The Orff method teaches music through movement, exploration, and improvisation.

After listening to the Pentatonics and the Community Music Center Choir with their rendition of "Oh Happy Days," we walked over to 9th and Judah, had a quick lunch and hopped on the N Judah to get us home. The best part of the event for us waited there. We watched "Secret Song," a documentary on Prime about Doug Goodkin and his teaching methods. He describes himself this way,

"I didn't love school as a child, but was enchanted by the world's wonders and always curious how the world worked -- or didn't work. And so, in a mixture of revenge and vision, I became a lifelong teacher."

I identified with his comments and as a former junior high school teacher, I lovedwatching him in the film as he worked with his students. He uses a combination of imagination and quiet discipline, showing them how to be empathetic and collaborative, all the while seemingly just having fun.