By S. Tiees Morgan
A group of Grade 8 students at Featherson Public School, Ottawa south, stand in a music room singing into microphones directly across from another group of students who are playing trumpets, flutes, clarinets, and saxophones. They are singing the blues at their usual Tuesday rehearsal.
Centretown students will also be singing the blues in December when the Blues for Kids program goes to Elgin Street Public School.
Blues for Kids is voluntarily put on by local blues singer, Maria Hawkins, with the help of retired music teachers and other musicians.
Michelle Armstrong, a teacher at Elgin Street Public School, approached Hawkins about doing a few music sessions with her Grade 2/3 class.
“There are specific curriculum requirments for music, drama, and visual arts to be met this year. This is a way to get kids interested in music,” says Armstrong. “I have told other teachers (at Elgin) about her and they are like, ‘send her to me.’”
If the first sessions go well, Hawkins says she may do more.
“What I will be doing at Elgin will be three one-hour sessions and basically get them into the rhythm.”
Hawkins will also bring in percussion instruments, a guitar, and shakers and sing songs like Bo-diddle.
Blues for Kids started when the music students of Featherston teacher Cathy Wilcox expressed an interest to continue singing the blues after taking part in a two-week program in April called Blues in the Schools.
The program was started this year by the Ottawa Bluesfest to promote blues music, and has expanded from two to eight schools in April 2000.
“I think it’s really cool because we can express our feelings. It just really flows, it’s really cool,” says one of Wilcox’s students, Amanda Armstrong.
Hawkins volunteered to work with the students and continue the blues lessons taught by T.J. Wheeler, a musician brought in from New Hampshire, U.S.A. by Bluesfest. Wheeler not only taught them the music, but the history of blues and its roots in slavery.
At the Featherston rehearsal, the students sing Follow the Drinking Gourd, one of the songs used to guide slaves through the underground railroad and to freedom.
“Music traditionally has been Eurocentric, very western and so I’m able to find another tradition and incorporate that,” says Wilcox. “The enthusiasm is so high that it’s sometimes hard to get them to all work together.”
Hawkins has been working with the students since September and will continue until June.
In June, the students will produce a five-song CD, four songs which they will write, and Follow the Drinking Gourd.The students will use the CD to fund-raise to continue the program next year.
The school pays for instruments that get broken or need to be replaced, says Wilcox. As a result, many students rent their instruments either from the school or outside of it.
The students don’t seem to mind. “It’s a lot of fun. We get to learn how to use our instruments better and we learn more notes,” says Luke Waite, another music student at Featherston.