Zane on the Zine

"...how about our humanity? What was it like living before we thought of human rights? What was it like before we thought of responsibilities, and moral function and compassion?" - Zane Zalis, music teacher and internationally recognized composer, discusses the background to his "I Believe" concert and demonstrates the power of music in teaching for human rights.

The Bio –

Zane Zalis is an internationally recognized composer and producer, as well as the music teacher at Miles Macdonell Collegiate. Zane graduated from Murdoch MacKay Collegiate and completed a Bachelor of Education at the University of Manitoba, majoring in music and history. Zane is the founder of the music production program at Miles Mac, and has been involved in the development of music education curriculum in Manitoba. Zane also developed the Prodigy vocal program, which has had radio and television performances with CBC and extensive radio play with recording stations in both Canada and Mexico. The students in Prodigy have performed in Austria, the US, Mexico and Scotland, and were guest performers along with Loreena McKennitt, Tom Jackson and others in a gala co-conducted by Zane as part of The Queen’s Jubilee tour.

In May 2008, Zane was the choir director for the North American premier of the Lord of the Rings score, performed live by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and a 160 voice choral ensemble at the MTS Center. Zane has vocally directed five shows at Rainbow Stage and engineered the recording of their Special Performances CD. He also produced the national Remember CD, which has been promoted by the departments of education in British Columbia and Manitoba as a springboard to teaching about Remembrance Day. Zane also directs professionally at the Murau Music Summer Festival (Austria), an event sponsored by the Austrian-Canadian Society whose goal is to improve bilateral relationships between the two countries.
Zane composed and conducted “Let Peace Rain and Music Thunder”, the music for the gala opening of the Arthur Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice. He also wrote the song “Shine” which played at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights launch of the “shine” commemorative pin which raises awareness for the museum, and promotes the idea that everyone can be a human rights “star”. Zane has received recognition for his work as a composer and lyricist of “I Believe”, a full-scale oratorio based on the Holocaust. On May 21, 2009 the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra will perform the world premiere of “I Believe” at the Centennial Concert Hall. Check for ticket availabiility at the WSO box office or Ticketmaster.

The Interview -

I met with Zane in late May/08, in his music classroom / production studio at Miles Macdonnell Collegiate, to talk about his work both as a teacher and as a composer, and how that has intersected with human rights. We started with a blast to the past about his time in high school.

Zane: School was a lot of fun, wasn’t it? It wasn’t really a challenge; you kind of went and did your thing and had a bit of fun. You studied to write your exams and you wrote them and moved on. In grade 12 we all wrote a music test in the library for a final exam of some sort. My entire grade 12 music credit, which was, ah, you know a very nice break, was an exam sitting in the library, which I wrote in 15 minutes and walked out.

D.C.: Wow!

Zane: Well, when you’ve been at it since 5 years old, and you’re writing big band charts by the time you’re sixteen…it’s like….it’s not a challenge. Music; in high school we didn’t have it. So my activities happened outside school. The same thing here regarding composing and teaching, it was designed the same way. I never stopped producing, I never stopped writing, I never stopped recording; I was doing that long before I got here.

D.C.: So you’ve always had this other life?

Zane: Yeah, it was constant and it hasn’t changed. I mean, I’m a teacher, but I’m a producer and composer at the same time, and so it has allowed me a perch to view the world of music education from a different perspective. The other issue that is interesting to me is the shattering of stereotypical images.

D.C.: For example?

Zane: For example, on a personal note, one that I don’t raise too often, is when you choose to teach it’s, “Well I guess if you couldn’t make it in music you decided to teach…Those who can, do, those who can’t, teach.” I’ve heard it 2 or 3 times. But as someone said to me recently, “Well, you sure have shattered that, now haven’t you?” Additionally, I would like for young people to reflect on the definition of “making it” in music. Is it all about fame, celebrity and money? How about quality, integrity, and substance.
One of the benefits of NOT having had the computer is that you were engaged in activities that actually developed certain sensibilities that have depth to them, inherently. For example, I had to write everything out on manuscript paper with a pencil, so I had to develop internal hearing, my abstract reasoning skills, and my ability to hear the instruments playing in my head, and so on, as opposed to having the facility of a computer playing the tracks back and experimenting. So what do they develop? Well, they [today’s students] develop a facility with the computer, and the awareness they can do more and so on and so forth, but what they don’t realize is that they’re held back in other ways.

D.C.: Where did your interest in music coincide with human rights? Your work on the world premier, that’s focused on the Holocaust, how did that develop?

Zane: The nexus of that particular story is; Janice Filmon called me; she was involved with the Arthur Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice. Janice asked me to sit on a committee that was involved with creating a gala event for the grand opening of the Arthur Mauro Centre. I was able to work with wonderful people there. We sat around the table, met the people involved in the center, and we dialogued. I shared my thoughts. We kept it on campus, which was, I think, different at the time. A show was designed and now it was time to create the content. It’s what I do; write, create, try to see the whole picture. I thought, “What are you going to write?”
As I look back over what I’ve done in the last two decades, I have always had the human aspect in my thoughts as a lyricist. The music comes to me very quickly, sometimes, you know, it can be a bit of labour. But lyrics…the angst to get it right…is a tough one. There’s an ambiguity to the abstract nature of music, which is what I love. The abstract reasoning skills involved in teaching music on the compositional creative level, are akin to the same thing as abstract mathematical high levels, that’s why you can see the corollary between the two. How you can remove that ambiguity is by putting a lyrical content into it, so it creates a focus for what’s taking place.
So the question was really simple, what’s the focus going to be for the opening of, at that time one of 8 or 9 centers in the world, who were creating Ph.D. programs for studies in Peace and Justice? What are you going to write about? You know who’s going to be there, you know its going to be a substantial audience, not just in terms of numbers, but, for lack of better words, heavyweights in the field, and the university, so you have to come up with a topic. So, I started with the book “A Problem from Hell” by Samantha Power; brilliant book on 20th century genocide. I am a history major, I love history. I’m a voracious reader, in that area; I’ve always been intrigued by the law. I’ve discovered that of all the genocidal events that have taken place, the Holocaust is the seminal event, in my opinion.
So I wrote about Kristallnacht, and I wrote a piece called “I Believe”. The piece that was called “I Believe”, is almost like an overture, it was a consolidation of various aspects of being kicked out, rejected, asking where am I going to go? The loss, I guess you could use the word refugee status, if you wish, and then reconciliation at the end of it. The whole piece was about 12 and ½ minutes long. Now that was a feature piece, within the gala show. Also as part of the show we flew in throat singers. I had a rapper do a piece, brought the rapper together with the throat singers. It was really, really, really interesting. Well, the long and the short of it is, it struck a chord, no pun intended, but it wasn’t far removed from who I am anyway.

D.C.: It almost was a forum for something that already existed within you.

Zane: I would agree, yeah …it was the frame. So I found my frame. Janice actually sat Debbie (my wife) and I, intentionally, with Harold Buchwald and his wife, so we met. We sat, and we chatted, and he leaned over to me and he said, “Is the symphony aware of you?” I said, “Well, . . . yeah.” Prodigy’s been around for a long time now, and we did a lot of CBC stuff. We had a wonderful time. But at the time I didn’t realize that Harold was a director of the WSO. One talk lead to another talk, mutual friends got together. Ronnie Myers, a dear friend, brought Jim Manishen from the WSO, Harold Buchwald and myself together for lunch and we chatted about I Believe.

At the time that we were talking to the WSO, I didn’t know that our division, (now my teaching hat, now my composing hat), was planning a community concert with the WSO. I had no clue. So, in these meetings they say, “Well, you guys, the division’s doing this.” And I say, “Pardon me?” unaware of the concert plans. My composing and teacher roles were coming together in the I Believe project. Sometimes people really do struggle reconciling the two roles that I play, but I bring them together all the time, for the benefit of the students and the community, I think, plus they both inform me, they educate me. So anyway, we got together, long story short, we said, “Well, we just bring this piece and do it with the symphony at the very first community concert.” So, I re-jigged it, scored it for full symphony orchestra, and told the story again. The 12 ½ minute excerpt got a resounding response. Harold proceeded to do an article in the Jewish Post, and one thing lead to the other. Jimmy Manishen and the WSO said, “I think we’ve got something here.”

My concerns were not only content, but also artistic. We’re dealing with the pinnacle. Don’t let musicians fool you, for most, jazz, pop, rock, etc.; getting invited to work with the symphony is like an apex moment, it just is. You go to New York, you think of the New York Philharmonic. It’s a cultural icon. By extension, working with the WSO was an absolutely unexpected glorious opportunity. Everyone appeared to be happy with the outcome. I also conducted, and actually even before this I had already concluded that I should write the whole show. I saw the power of the music, and that lead to two more excerpts. But previous to that I had done a cursory survey of high school students here, of what they know about the Holocaust.

D.C.: Limited?

Zane: Limited is kind. This is not a reflection on our educational system. Our problem is where we choose to focus in on. First of all, let’s conclude that most of them didn’t know about it. The handful that did; it was something that happened in world war two. In that moment I made my decision. That was it. What form, though? I wasn’t sure.
But let me explain this… I don’t do just one thing like this, one speck, I don’t work like that. I have to see the whole picture. I love to see connections, because that’s part of the problem of our society, we’ve lost the ability to see how intertwined we are. So I’ve kind of taken it as a task just to show connections and that’s where this project comes from. An analogue would be like this: when they invented fast food. I remember the first MacDonald’s, [in Winnipeg], and it was great! But fast food was a convenience. Real good food was at home when Mom, or in my case, Baba, or whoever else made it. Thank goodness not Dad. But anyway, so, the convenience was there whenever you were in a rush. But I ask you, what has happened?

D.C.: It’s become a main staple.

Zane: It is a staple. So, I felt, the same thing has happened to music here; the exact same thing with the pop music and the radio, which I love. I grew up on The Beatles, The Stones, but I also grew up on Strauss, and I also grew up on jazz, and everything else. So I was aware that as much as I liked the Beatles, and Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea; as much as I grew up on melodies and folk songs, (remember I have a Ukrainian background, I was also playing polkas and sonatas), I learned that Led Zeppelin’s music, and Strauss’s Blue Danube were both beautiful pieces of music. But that’s my background. So what pop music has become is the staple.

D.C.: And some would argue that even within that area things have changed, with it being much more driven by business, rather than the individual artist.

Zane: I swore I wouldn’t be part of that. I’m not going to live my life in music just to dabble. I practiced and I practiced and I felt the power of what it did for me; it gave me goose bumps, it transcended. This music was powerful and it was the language of young people, and I would take that with the content of the lyrics and do it [the show] from inside the mind, inside the mind, of those victims, and the perpetrators, both.
I have a fabulous situation here [Miles Mac], I have a lab. I’m in a world class digital lab here. My students are eager just to be here. I asked them one day, do you mind that I’m having you perform what I write (I Believe) and all that stuff? They love it. The reason they love it, is first of all they can’t get it anywhere else. Secondly, they’re witnessing or involved in the growth and birth of something. Not only that, but the content. Last night I performed an excerpt, and I had alumni who wanted to be part of it. I said, “Yeah, of course.”
I’ve seen the power of the music; if I can find the right words, it is stirring their souls, their minds. They want to know more, they want to study more. The third part is the symphony seems to have really enjoyed it and embraced it in announcing the world premier. The music is serious, symphonic music. I think we sell our young people short, if you ask any of these, or others, they want more than rock.

D.C.: You’ve touched on a few things that I wanted to ask you about. I’m going to tie this in to the UN mandate for education. The UN mandate for education states that education is to be to the full development of the human personality. Very often, music is viewed as a frill, or a fringe…

Zane: Why? Not here. In general, it’s been viewed as a frill, and I’m going to be very specific not at Miles Mac, and not in this particular division. Why is it viewed as a frill? I’ve done a fair amount of work in Europe; it’s no frill in Europe. Why is it not a frill in Europe? Well, it’s the North American, um… corporate mentality, ah… media celebrity, superficial, it’s more fun to be involved in the melodrama of someone’s life on the front of a magazine, than to go home and read a book and to actually have to put an effort out. We want everything fast, disposable. Composing is like getting married. Listening to pop songs and jamming is like dating, fun, some would even say necessary but non-commital. There’s just no comparison, it’s like night and day. Music taught comprehensively is a powerful tool for the full development of the human personality. Consider the following areas addressed; abstract reasoning, physics, discipline, aesthetics, cultural norms, public presentation, creativity, and a host of other endeavors.
But, we have gone wrong – wrong – in our education. I want you to know, to preface this properly; I had no intention of being a teacher. I had no idea that I would end up in education. I was going to do a Ph.D., I was doing my grad work already, but I just couldn’t take, at that time, the narrow mindedness. So I left. I stayed here [Miles Mac]. They gave me an opportunity. I, we, built this from scratch. So, that’s the preface to this, the perch by which I’m seeing from a different perspective. And this is what I see; education is now turning into the practical application of where do I get a job and how do I apply this and so on. You may say, “Well, come on, Zane, economics 101, supply and demand, jobs, free market enterprise…

D.C.: But is that really the purpose of education?

Zane: Well, its part of it, I will never ever discount that. I don’t want someone who’s semi-prepared. But if you actually analyze it, what people really want, are smart, thinking people who are creative and / or disciplined, and / or skilled at the fundamentals of communication, who have the ability to know how to work and how to think. You have to ask yourself, are we teaching that? Well, no. We know darn well that these people are cramming for their tests, getting the grade that we want, because we’ve assigned and scripted so much to this letter, this number, this grade. Do we need to manage the system? Yes. Therefore we need benchmarks and references, so we’ve got to have that.
It’s not a case of right or wrong or whether it’s happening, it’s the amount of balance to the situation. Balance. What we need to do now is come back and view what is truly important in this and balance the equation. That’s what I see missing. I see focus on math, I see focus on science, I see focus on tech., and I see all this engineering, and push, push, push society. You can tell that I am passionate about this subject. It really irritates me. Did we live without the car? The answer is yes. Did we live without the airplane? The answer is yes. Did we live without a lot of modern conveniences? The answer is yes, yes, yes. But how about our humanity? What was it like living before we thought of human rights? What was it like before we thought of responsibilities, and moral function and compassion and so on? In my particular area, if you go back thousands of years, what has survived? What has survived is what kind of civilizations did we create? It was the culture, the artistic culture that reflected the mores and values of those societies. Music was here long before the car, and will be here long after we deplete our oil reserves. Why? Because it’s one of our primary human characteristics.

D.C.: It’s integral.

Zane: Absolutely! Supposedly our DNA vibrates on a musical frequency, it’s …it is intertwined; we don’t even really know the reasons why we do all this kind of stuff. But we don’t need an answer; it just IS. What we’ve done is, we’re creating a society of people who think that life is, I guess for some, disposable. We’ve commoditized everything; want to manage everything, not lead. There is a fundamental difference between a leader and a manager. Managers: you take care of this, hand this form in, take care of that, do this and this and this, look at this; that goes here, where’s the quarterly report? And so on and so forth. In leadership, [a leader] sees the big picture, relates it to the smaller picture, how do we get there? What path are we going to choose? How can I inspire you to think along those lines? What kind of tools do you need? How can I help? And so on. And I’m not seeing that. I’m seeing a lot of management, I’m seeing people learning great things about math and sciences and tech. But the moral values associated with that are down the drain. And I could keep on going. But I’m going to conclude with this; what kind of society perpetuated the Holocaust?

D.C.: One that didn’t question.

Zane: You’re right about that…but one that was technologically superior. These weren’t morons. These were doctors, scientists, and a disciplined society.

D.C.: But people who completely divorced from….

Zane: …the moral values associated with their decisions. And then they actually believed it; they actually believed they were decent people doing the right thing. Now, I’m not saying that we’re the same; I will not draw a parallel. But I will say why aren’t we educating the whole person, as the UN stated? Yes, you can talk about the engineering, you can talk about the math, or the corporate profits at the end of the year. I’m not against that, by the way, but how does that impact on our community? How does that impact down the road? Who is this going to effect? We all know that this dialogue could take forever and not get anything done, that’s the price of democracy, by the way. The price of democracy is that sometimes things move really, really slow and, regarding major decisions, a deliberate and long reflective process is necessary.
I think it takes certain strength to say, “Hey, we’re wrong; we need to address human rights.” Why? Because it’s not happening. Never mind rights on the grand scale of genocide, look in your own backyard at what’s taking place. The other aspect is, I know I teach this and I know a lot of other people who do, too; ‘responsibility’. If the individual were to address their own responsibilities in respect to their community, we wouldn’t be worried so much about human rights. It would be a natural consequence of doing “the right thing”.
I am a teacher and I live and work in the local community but I’m just as at home working with the symphony as I am working with projects here (Miles Mac). I’m just as at home sitting with various committees, with business people. I’ve sat on some boards of artistic organizations where you have all kinds of people; you can talk bottom line, I have no trouble with budgets, I’m a producer. But it’s always, always referenced to the bigger picture. I think that’s what we’re missing. I am very happy that people are looking at the “I Believe” project, and kind of going, “this has legs”. But, it would sure be interesting and nice to know that this project wasn’t even needed because we’re OK. But we’re not. We have to be vigilant, and we need more than watchdog organizations. This must be grassroots. I’m convinced; it has to start in schools. What did the Nazi’s do? What were some of the very first institutions that they cut off? The schools… professors, teachers, lawyers, judicial…

D.C.: Intellectuals.

Zane: Yeah, people whose profession is just to think. That’s what we do as teachers.

D.C.: So how do you as a teacher bring that balance to your classroom?

Zane: Oh, well, through projects right off the top. We sing, we talk, and I mean…do you mind?

D.C.: Not at all.

Zane: This is what we need, let me do this excerpt here… (To the students) Is Jamie here?

Jamie: (from one of the computers in the room where several students are working with headphones on): Yeah.

Zane: OK, come here, please.

[Zane strikes a few notes on the grand piano as a young student walks over.]

Zane: This is the post liberation sequence. In this sequence the camps have been liberated by the Westerners. Everyone thinks it is a happy thing; well, of course it is. But suicide rates went up, deaths went up. What now? What’s going to happen? The Jewish people, among others, have been liberated from here, but they have nothing. They’ve lost everything; their families, their friends, even when they go back to their communities, their homes have been taken, claimed by others. This is way into the show already.

[The young lady has a cold, this command performance was not expected, and due to the cold she hasn’t been practicing. She points all this out to her teacher. He assures her that is OK, and just to go ahead and belt it out.]

Zane: OK, here we go. (He begins playing the music.)

Janie: (Singing. Her voice portrays utter dejection and despair)

What’s now? What’s now? I’ve no place to go.
No home ….
I’ve lost everyone
Everything
There’s only me
And memories……….

What now? What now?
Will I love again?
Don’t know how
Not sure what to feel.
Not sure what to say…………..

Zane: - Now I’m her conscience.
(Singing) But…
The cold the dark, the hunger pains, the cry for help, but no one came….

Jamie: (completes the piece, the music is from the heart)

Zane: Thank you, OK. OK. So now you’re a student, you just sang all that, now…how can’t you teach that?

D.C.: For me sitting here listening, the tears are right here. (I can feel the heaviness and the tightness in my chest, and the tears just beneath the surface of my eyes.)

Zane: That’s a snippet of the show. There’s….(He begins playing and singing another snippet). There. See what I’m saying? I think, and I hope that you can see, student involvement in the I Believe project.

D.C.: Absolutely.

Zane: Yeah, that’s how it works. But if I talk to you as a history teacher at the front with a book, it’s still effective, it’s still needed, but it’s only one piece. Music transcends that.

D.C.: It touches emotionally.

Zane: OK, now that I’ve got you, let’s talk, right? That’s how it works, right? That’s the project. (He begins another piece on the piano.) This is the death marches. (The music is compelling and evokes despair and finality.)

D.C.: What I’m thinking of is that very often when they marched people, there were others who were being forced to play marching music…and so the internal thoughts and feelings were being masked.

Zane: That’s right.

D.C.: This gives it back. It’s…. the impact of the music, that music in that scene and what you’re doing here.

Zane: Well, what I’m trying to do…. I’ve had the lesson of working with survivors, I get their feedback. I want to know, I’ve got to get it right. This is for them.

D.C.: What was the feedback?

Zane: Well, it’s encouraging. It’s very good. In this sense, according to those who’ve heard it; according to them, I have captured what was inside of them, to the point where one survivor said to me, that those were the exact words he said. And that’s moving… when you get that….it’s ineffable. For whatever reason, I write … the music and words that are coming out of me are words they thought, felt, or said. My time with Holocaust survivors is deeply felt in my heart and my mind and I am truly concerned with representing their emotional experiences accurately and compassionately.

[He plays a few bars evoking a striding Nazi with a sinister and contemptuous undercurrent.]

Zane: The Wannsee Conference; it’s where the final solution was formalized, generated by the German high ranking officials at this meeting, at a beautiful mansion. Heydrich was one of those at the meeting; he’d gathered the interior ministers. He was basically trying to tell them that this was a done deal; that this was going to happen. He’s talking about the Jews, how do you classify what’s a Jew? He’s saying, “Whether they believe, or believe they not; it doesn’t really matter if they pray or not. It’s racial principles that I emphasize, justify, remove, remove, remove, display, display, sanitize. Let’s gather this disease and pack them in endless trains. Dozens deep, no room to sleep, no hope to gain. And on this train, what father / daughter, father / son? I give to you the legal rules, by which you choose, every single one.”
That’s why the Holocaust is grounded that way. It was engineered, long haul, long time, by heads of State. State sanctioned; not under the carpet, not behind the scenes, state sanctioned genocide. The Holocaust has everything within it that you need to go no further to study the most noble aspects of the human being, and the most depraved aspects. I chose to focus on the Holocaust for a number of reasons. There is such an ancient track record of anti-Semitism! Historically and intellectually I understand how it came to be; scapegoat mentality etc. And, I understand the crux of where it may have come from; albeit misdirected and twisted. I can follow that kind of investigative, convoluted trail to those feelings, those sentiments and everything else but WOW, how did they arrive at those conclusions?! For example, blood libels. I don’t get the pure emotional depth of it; how you can hold anger or a scapegoat mentality for that long. The one thing I teach here; don’t you dare point your finger at someone else till you look in the mirror first. So to have these people with years and years of this kind of stuff, it’s like…

D.C.: It’s a separation. Committing something like murder or some heinous crime physically against another person, there has to be a separation

Zane: Something has to be switched off, yeah. Or the emotion takes over…

D.C.: Or, yes, the other way around, too, either the thinking is cut off, or else the emotion is divorced. So that integration between emotion and intellect, I think that’s partly what the music does.

Zane: Well that’s in the plan; in the synopsis I actually use that; its intellect wedded with emotion, and that’s exactly it. I don’t think reasoning and logic, by the way is the highest level of human intelligence. I think that the highest level of intelligence is intuition. Someone might perceive that as “airy fairy”, whatever you wish, it has no substance. Well, the first thing you have to do is define intuition. This is how I define it; it is the sum of all your experiences, both intellectually and emotionally, to come to a decision or a conclusion that takes the totality of your existence in the blink of an eye. And what appears to be without thought has a mountain of experience, behind it.
I don’t need to know when I play something, or write something that it’s right, or to think about if it’s wrong. If it’s wrong, I’ll know. Intuition to me is like, “It’s not right.” “Well, why?” “I can’t tell you…” We discount our feelings that way. Contrarily, you’ll hear me say, “never mind your feelings right now, we need to think over here.” It is a case of balancing all aspects of our thinking/feeling process, how we interpret and apply meaning to our world. But the final decision is what feels right. But what feels right, is not feeling on a superficial level, it’s core feeling, and that’s where I think we find our compassion more aligned.

Zane: So, the work is the sum total of who I am, of all my experiences, and for whatever reason there is synchronicity and a connection between that and the Holocaust survivors. I wasn’t raised Jewish. I was raised a Canadian Ukrainian Catholic boy, I played the accordion at age 5, in a suburb. But, we are all closer than we think. If music did it for me, why can’t it do it for other people? Specifically, by extension, schools? Because if the Nazi’s were smart enough to get to the schools really quick, and get them while they’re young, then why aren’t we doing the same thing on the other side of the coin? The answer will be, “Well, I am.” I agree, pockets...it’s not pervasive. We’ll explore the possibilities of I Believe, that’s one of the things I’ll do while I’m in Israel, and I think it would be an absolute stunning, wonderful situation to have a choir comprised of Jews and Arabs. You can’t really stay angry at each other when you’re singing together.

D.C.: Do you think, that when a people have been traumatized, that the processing of that trauma, and the healing, doesn’t really happen until that inner experience can be expressed in music?

Zane: (Looking through a sheaf of papers) actually, someone stated exactly what you just said…somewhere here, I can’t find it right now, but it’s exactly that… “It’s not over till the singing starts.”