sonia | Larry Gordon, founder of Village Harmony, his memory for a blessing

Larry Gordon, founder of Village Harmony, died Tuesday November 9, 2021 after a solo electric bike crash on November 1. He was 76.

Here are articles from Seven Days and VT Digger about the worldwide outpouring of grief and song.

It feels like the ringing silence after a great tree falls, waiting to see what else was taken down with it.

My grief feels wordless, shocked, bereft. I've been at camps with him, danced Balkan dances with him, learned songs from him. I expected him to continue to be there, and the camps to continue to be there, even if it was hard for me to attend.

Clickable zoomable map of hundreds of people who love, respect, admire Larry Gordon.

Songs Stay Sung by Zoe Mulford, with Windborne. Gorgeous, appropriate song. Here's a youtube video showing the singers.

The community remembers by Jim Lowe, excerpts from people's remembrances of Larry Gordon, starting with Lee Gordon, Larry's younger brother.

Also, November 15, 2021 - LARRY GORDON, A SISTER’S MEDITATION by his older sister Linda Gordon.
I need to start with family. Both of my brothers inherited—not genetically but socially--our mother’s drive and impulse to build community projects. She organized child care centers and pioneered a progressive approach to child care; Larry built a creative mode of bringing music, and participation in making music, to thousands; Lee created a group of bilingual, bicultural schools for Jewish and Palestinian Israeli kids. Lee and Larry have both devoted themselves to bringing people together for great purpose. Both are selfless and single-mindedly committed to their causes, willing to sacrifice personal gain for the benefit of others. And both have great charisma.

They both traveled unlikely paths. I won’t go into Lee’s, but, looking back, I can see Larry’s first steps toward his future even in childhood. He absorbed our father’s “handyman” skills, which no doubt provided a base for his future vocation as a carpenter. His analytic skills also appeared early: our father taught me to play chess and when I was maybe 8, 9 or 10, I taught Larry to play (he’s 5 years younger than me); within a month he could beat me. His chess interest faded as he got into sports—he became a very fast sprinter. Having been an unusually talkative kid, he soon grew quieter, using his voice differently—by his teenage it was clear that he had become a beautiful singer, taking lead roles in high school musicals and Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. While still in high school he started a madrigal group, foreshadowing his interest in exploring unfamiliar musical forms. Meanwhile he became focused on social and political injustice, active against the American war on Vietnam while still a Portland highschooler. At college (he followed me to Swarthmore) he became part of the New Left and SDS, then joined an SDS community organizing project (ERAP) in Newark; this organizing experience laid a basis for creating Village Harmony. Not only a musician, Larry was a superb organizer.

First there was a detour away from music. Settling in Boston, he met Sam Clark, a master carpenter and designer, who drew him into a first career as a house carpenter. Sam was Larry’s tutor, and the two of them established a close, productive partnership. I think it was Sam who brought Larry to Vermont. In Plainfield Larry was an original member of the collective that became the “New Hamburger.” I think they meant “hamburger” as a symbol of merging individuals into a cooperative whole (an odd symbol since many of them were vegetarian). Inheriting and perpetuating a long Vermont tradition of rural communes, it grew and prospered. The New Hamburger was by no means just a household or friendship group. Its members shared fundamental social and political principles: democratic decision-making, rejecting commercialism and consumerism, protecting the environment, living modestly, producing what they needed when possible, sharing resources, growing organic food. Begun as a small group of friends, the New Hamburger became a magnet for like-minded people. Its openness prefigured the openness of Village Harmony.

Larry’s charisma and social energy drew people in--not just to him personally but, more importantly, to collective commitments. The fact that Village Harmony could welcome newcomers without auditioning them owed much to his skills as teacher. He could work with experienced and inexperienced singers—the only necessary talent being love of music. The project required patience, of course, and meant devising methods of teaching that grew everyone’s musicality, and this produced high standards of performance. Everyone became a better musician. Behind these skills is Larry’s confidence in people’s potential. In evoking that potential Larry gave participants a priceless gift. Then, once created, Village Harmony became a community in which all learned from each other.

I can’t speak for the Village Harmony group but let me mention, nevertheless, how an outsider sees it. It is an enterprise that simultaneously depends on and builds cooperative values and relationships. In this community people can support each other and enjoy the pleasures—and occasional pain—of connection to others. It has revitalized once esoteric forms of music, like shape note singing, and introduced them to a larger public. Soon the choral groups built connections beyond Marshfield, beyond Vermont, beyond the US. In learning and performing music from all over the world the group honors different cultures, strengthens its members’ awareness of these cultures, and exemplifies learning from other cultures. That the group often performs this “folk” music alongside European classical music expresses that respect. These are vital social/political values, never more needed than now, expressed through music. This is my brother Larry’s legacy.

-- Linda Gordon

In Memory of Larry Gordon, video created by Suzannah Park with song How Can I Keep from Singing, Jan 17, 2022