There is so much construction going on in Ann Arbor right now that the common complaint is that the city doesn’t want us to go anywhere. Fortunately, the route between our house and the downtown library is still passable, and I’ve traveled it three times in the last three days.
On Tuesday, the draw was the Gratitude Steel Band. For this concert, the band was two men playing two steel drums each and a third man playing non-steel drums of various ilk. People who play steel drums are called pannists, and the pannists added instruments—a saxophone, a flute, vocals—from time to time.
The sound of steel drums is rounded and hollow and bright, like a marimba, but it makes the air shimmer. It has a nonlinearity to it that plays and dances and doesn’t stay in its own lane. My sense was that the band’s repertoire was unfamiliar to most of the audience, that many of us were just enjoying letting the sound wash over us. Near the end of the performance, Gratitude offered bits of Harry Belafonte and Jimmy Buffet pieces, and that was a pleasure of a different sort.
The children in the audience started to dance as soon as the pannists began to play. But the action really got started when the band invited them to try the hula hoops stacked here and there. None of the kids knew how to hula hoop, and every kid wanted to try.
Persistence pays, and skills improved as the concert progressed. Also, the kids figured out the hoops rolled fabulously on the library carpet. So well, in fact, that more than one child was seen in alarmed pursuit of an escaping hoop. Everyone looked good doing it, too: the musicians in matching Hawaiian shirts and the children looking like a little United Nations.
Wednesday’s attraction was klezmer music, an evening performance in front of a packed audience. The group was Klezhundheit.* Instrumentation included soprano, alto, and tenor sax, trumpet, two trombones, tuba, electric flute, keyboard, violin, bass guitar, and percussion. Some pieces included vocals, and a vocalist sometimes told jokes.
Klezhundheit** includes music educators and took a moment to cover the klezmer scale, which the speaker characterized as sounding both happy and mournful. The audience definitely leaned toward happy. Enthusiastic even. Eager to dance. At one point, some forty adults had joined hands for a hora,*** and the dance floor was never empty.
The overall tone of the evening was joyous. The music was lively, impeccably rehearsed, and improvisational, a great combination. The musicians looked to be working hard and having fun. It was a tremendous concert. No wonder Ann Arbor loves its library.
Thursday’s draw was another concert, of quite another type. Alina Celeste & Mi Amigo Hamlet. Two people. Guitar and occasional uke. Vocals. And a focus on Spanish-English bilingualism. The little guys who didn’t go hear klezmer music the night before were probably getting a good night’s sleep for this experience.
Lots of kids showed up for this activity, and it was indeed active. They learned new songs. All the songs had motions. Some involved moving from place to place. Or handing things back and forth with a partner. And, oh, yes, the songs were in Spanish. If asked later about what they’d done at the library yesterday, I imagine most of the kids mentioned the songs first and the Spanish later, if at all, because the songs were such fun.
They were catchy, too. One of them is still stuck in my head, and it only had three words: palo and palito, which mean stick and little stick; and eh, which means eh. Pretty painless for language acquisition.
The library’s summer game started this week. It’s exceedingly popular. More than fifteen thousand people played it last summer. One way for game-players to accumulate points is by collecting codes, so each of this week’s concerts had a code. For Gratitude Steel Band, it was STEELPAN. For Klezundheit** it was ACHOO. For Alina and Hamlet, it was PORQUENO.
My friend Janice and I are going back to the library tonight for another performance. A drag revue this time. We expect it will be a lot of fun and expand our horizons. Maybe it will extinguish my earworm about different-sized sticks. And we look forward to finding out what the code will be. If it’s great enough, we may have to sign up for the summer game. It’s good to live in Ann Arbor.
12 June 2026
*After each mention of the group’s name, the proper response is “Bless you.”
**Bless you.
***There were hardly any kids there, as it was late in the day.