The
Open Door talks to Cheryl Reid, who will be teaching this summer’s ARTbeat
camps at the Open Door.
OD: Did you always want to play percussion?
CR: No, actually I wanted to play everything — percussion just ended up being
the best way to do that!
Because I grew up in the 70s and 80s in the amazing Halifax music program that
Chalmers Doane
built, which included Ukulele in the Classroom, I began my musical education with the ukulele. Then I
studied piano, then took up the violin.
What I really wanted to play, though, was trumpet, but initially I wasn’t old
enough — and then in grade 5 when I was old enough to start trumpet, because I
was already advancing on the violin and playing ukulele, my parents said I was
doing too much already and I wasn’t allowed to start trumpet. (If I’d known
this would happen, I don’t think I ever would have started playing the violin!
— Well, actually… I probably still would have. I wouldn’t have wanted to wait that
long.)
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Cheryl
playing drums with Ember Swift’s band (photo: Michele
Kiersey) |
OD:
So you never got to play trumpet?
CR: Oh, no. Like I said, I wanted to play everything! I have played trumpet and
still play it sometimes. But just because of the timing of things it never
became my “main” instrument.
Also,
as you know, I grew up with the Doanes — Chalmers’ kids, Suzanne and Melanie and Creighton — and they all played “everything” too.
They
lived closer to school than I did (my house was too far to walk home for
lunch), so I was over there all the time — at lunch time, after school, after
rehearsals in the evenings. I was in and out of their house constantly. And
they were always making music.
They had two pianos in the living room, and there was always
a standup bass, a trumpet, a violin… they were surrounded by musical
instruments. And we used to play together all the time. We’d play a kind of “musical
chairs” game where everyone would have an instrument and we’d play music together
and just kind of try to find where we fit — then everyone would switch
instruments and we would keep going. Sometimes it went on for hours. It was
kind of scary trying to keep up with them — they were all so talented — but it
was a lot of fun!
OD: It sounds like a pretty rich experience!
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| A ukulele group in the Halifax school system, led by Chalmers Doane |
CR:
Yes, it was. Looking back, we had incredible lives. With the ukulele “A Group,”
we got to do so many cool things: We played lots of great concerts every year
and went on lots of great trips. We travelled all across Canada, we went to
England, we played on cruise ships that would come into Halifax Harbour. We
played with Danny Kaye — at the time, he was the spokesperson for UNICEF; he conducted
us — it was just an amazing thing to do. I loved those opportunities. We had
groups come and stay with us (exchange programs). There was so much fun and
excitement in the music program. I loved the social interaction of it, I loved
the performance aspect. There were so many cool and diverse opportunities — we
played for premiers conferences — it was a neat upbringing. I was very aware
that I was experiencing things that other people just weren’t.
By the time I was in high school it wasn’t necessarily “cool” to be playing
ukulele still. I wouldn’t necessarily come back and tell everybody else about
it. But the people you were doing it with… it was like we were in this secret
club; we knew that what we were part of was really cool. The others were
missing out on it — and had no idea what they were missing out on.
OD:
So how did you end up playing percussion?
CR: I switched to percussion in my last year of high school because I really
loved uke but there wasn’t a way that I knew of to do uke in university. I could
have done violin. But the violin world was so competitive and so classically
oriented. And I was attracted to so many different musical genres. I didn’t
like the idea of having to work in just one. The culture of the folks I found
myself hanging out with was that if you were in violin you had to be really
serious about it — and what was this ridiculous ukulele thing? really? —
whereas with percussion, there were way fewer rules and there was a lot more
genre crossing. Lots of players (percussionists) at university played in a rock
band on the weekend, for instance. But the violinists just did one thing.
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| Cheryl in the classroom |
Percussion ended up being a great choice. It’s still the
best way I know to have permission to play a billion different instruments! And
we got exposure to a lot of different genres. We’d have master classes with
percussionists and some of the stuff was straight up west African drumming
workshops, and other stuff would be very classical percussion-y stuff — a huge
variety. We started doing African call-and-response drumming, and that is
something that really took fire for me.
OD:
How did you come to teaching?
CR:
I always wanted to be a teacher. Because the program I was in at school was so
amazing, I knew I wanted to do that, be involved in that, and give that
experience to other kids. The whole idea of doing a music degree was that I
knew I wanted to be a teacher. I had only really switched to percussion in a
last-ditch attempt to get a music degree, but that wasn’t necessarily about
performing, it was mostly about wanting to teach. But then I loved the African
music and other stuff that I was getting into at university so much that it
made me want to play. So I didn’t actually teach right out of university
because I loved the playing so much.
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On tour with Ember Swift (second from left;
Cheryl at right) (photo: Desdemona Burgin)
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OD:
You’ve done a lot of performing as a professional musician.
CR:
It’s true! And I love it and it’s given me some great experiences. I played
with Ember Swift for quite a few years and we got to tour all over Canada, the
US, and Australia. I’ve also performed and recorded with people like Garnett
Rogers. I still really love to perform; it feeds an important part of me as a
musician.
OD:
So to get back to the Open Door and this summer’s programs. You obviously have
a huge breadth of experience. Presumably you can’t teach all of it in a week!
What will you be sharing with the kids in the ARTbeat camps this summer?
CR:
Oh, we’re going to cram a lot in! We’ll just see how much we can do.
I know we’ll be doing some of the African call-and-response drumming. That is
really close to my heart. Of course, I am very aware that I am a white Canadian
girl who didn’t grow up in an African context — and neither did the kids we
will be working with — so it’s impossible to bring full authenticity of that
experience to Canadian kids. However, it’s important to me that we stay very
authentic with the sounds of the instruments and how they are designed to be
played. Then, taking off from that, I like to work with things the kids will be
familiar with — like TV commercials or nursery rhymes. Sort of adapting the
African technique to a new cultural context, using material that is familiar to
Canadian children rather than entirely African material — to capture the same
feeling of familiarity and recognition, of something that is deeply ingrained,
that someone who grew up in the African tradition would experience with the
drumming.
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Participants
in the 2012 Open Door summer arts program
|
I also want to show a lot of different instruments to the
kids. In any music classroom I go into there’s always some bin of usually
horribly abused percussion instruments and nobody knows what they are or how to
use them. I would like to show them how to use a number of Latin instruments
properly — teach them the names and show them what each one does, build a
respect for the tradition; get a sense of what type of rhythm/texture each
instrument adds to an overall soundscape.
Of course, we’re integrating the percussion work with drama.
We’ll explore movement and speech rhythms as well as percussion. And they’ll be
working with visual art the other half of each day. Just as the visual art will
be looking for how to express “beat” and rhythm, we’ll be exploring with music
and drama how to find different textures and colours. We want there to be
imagery in the soundscapes we’re making.
OD: It sounds like an amazing program.
CR: I hope so. We can’t wait to get started!
2014 update: A few spaces are still available in ARTbeat through this summer’s Open Door Arts programs:
- July 14–18 (ages 7–12), 9 am–4 pm
- July 28–Aug. 1 (ages 7–12), 9 am–4 pm
- Aug. 5–3 (ages 5–7), 9 am–4 pm
