Noteworthy lesson
Musicians treat Inverness Middle students to a show featuring unusual instruments and improvisation.
By PAULETTE LASH RITCHIE
Published March 31, 2005
INVERNESS - The cafeteria was full and lunch was over. Tables had been cleared, but the students remained in their seats. Activity on the cafeteria's stage suggested a show that could be interesting to middle school students.
After all, there were musical instruments and four musicians just about ready to perform. It turns out the group, headed by Fred Johnson, artist in residence at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, was experienced in getting and keeping the attention of teens.
They were at Inverness Middle at the request of band director Barbara Dover. "This," she said, "is in celebration of Music in Our Schools Month. To give our students a broader awareness of music in other cultures and our own."
Not all students are in a music program at school, and this was an opportunity for all students to be exposed to something they might have experienced. "Some of them," she pointed out, "may have never seen a live concert."
Johnson, she announced to the students, "is first and foremost an educator and an excellent performer."
Johnson, 43, brought with him oral historian Amadou Kouyate, 22; Kamau Kenyatta, 49; and Richard Sellers, 38. Johnson had been a student of Kouyate's father.
Kouyate played an instrument called a kora - a 21-string harp from West Africa made from a hollowed gourd. Kenyatta plays both piano and soprano saxophone, the instrument he had with him, and Sellers is a recording engineer who plays percussion.
The foursome created spontaneous music as they went, which impressed eighth-grader Randi Rezutka, 13. "I thought it was really cool how they mixed up all kinds of music and came up with it," she said.
Johnson seemed to arouse particular interest from the students when he played an imaginary flute. His mimicking of the instrument's sound apparently fascinated many of the students.
That was the best part of the show for eighth-grader Trevor Braver, 14. "It was very great, wonderful," he said of the show.
Johnson asked for help from the students for words he could string together for the lyrics of his next song. He got: chicken, childhood, music, sports, life, sugar, goose, cow, dogma, hippo, South Park and cheerleading.
Johnson then skillfully wove the words into a tune that had the students in stitches.
"Sometimes life gets so rough, you feel like a hippo in South Park. You know childhood is a thing you only get once, thinking about all the things you want to do. Feel like a cow in an endless pasture. Don't know what to do, so I just eat a whole lot of sugar. Sometimes life is so crazy I just want to cluck, cluck, cluck like a chicken do."
The show ended with a demonstration of another unusual instrument, the djimo bolon, which looked like a bowl with a crooked branch attached to it, strung with fishing line. It was meant, the students were told, to accompany the kora.
The kora was eighth-grader Liam McCurdy's favorite instrument that afternoon. "I thought it was pretty cool," he said.
Sara Heberling, 15, seemed impressed with everything. "I like the solos and when they played together. It's really great music," she said.
Desir Cooper, 14, agreed. "I thought their music was very nice," she said. "They're all very talented."
Kathy Demsey, 13, thought so too. "I liked it and I like music a lot and love drums and I thought it was pretty cool how they put it together," she said. "They're very good musicians."