Cheryl Reid: A Life in Percussion

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.)

 

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!

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.

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.

On tour with Ember Swift (second from left; 

Cheryl at right) (photo: Desdemona Burgin)

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.

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

For more information or to register, go to www.opendooratstds.ca or email opendooratstds@gmail.com