Winnipeg jazz guru Steve Kirby and friends deliver joy to children in inner-city neighbourhoods

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This article was published 04/08/2015 (4026 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A horde of kids gathers in front of a makeshift stage at Sinclair Park Community Centre last Thursday to listen to a group of musicians play some well-known tunes.

In the middle of that group is Steve Kirby, a huge smile plastered across his face as he doles out tambourines, shakers, drumsticks and cowbells into little hands raised up towards him. The kids are clearly thrilled, jumping around as they make some sounds. Suddenly they’re playing in a band. They’re musicians.

The event is staged by Jazz on Wheels, a mobile musical outreach program that is Kirby’s brainchild and is produced by Jazz Winnipeg. It brings music to neighbourhoods that ordinarily have little access to live music.

Kirby, who is the University of Manitoba’s director of jazz studies and is regularly seen performing at the bass during the Winnipeg International Jazz Festival and myriad local gigs during the year, knows about life in a musically underserved environment, having grown up in the inner city of St. Louis.

“When I was a kid, I moved through gangs a lot and I got friends that I grew up with that are still in prison,” he says. “One time, a band came through the neighbourhood on a flatbed truck and I latched on to that idea; it pulled me out of there, and I look back and am so glad it did. So I thought I should have something like that here; something that goes into the inner city, into the neighbourhoods.”

Kirby put together a band for Jazz on Wheels in 2005 and recruited some top Winnipeg musicians to take live music where it needed to go.

This year, there are even youngsters on the bandstand — members of the new Jazz on Wheels Performance Academy, who are helping to lead the musical party.

But the real magic happens when the kids in the crowd get the chance to join the fun. Early in the proceedings Kirby takes one of his conga drums into the grass, and with drumsticks he distributes, several kids bang away.

Children are encouraged to participate; all of the instruments are to be seen — and touched. The first song of the day is, appropriately, Happy by Pharrell.

The infectious, collective joy is just part of what the Jazz on Wheels program is all about. Kirby says he hopes some of the kids at these events catch the music bug.

“Musical performance and learning incorporates the whole brain. A kid with a musical experience in their life is going to be able to attack any subject with much more of their intelligence than a kid who hasn’t had any of that,” he says. “With music you have math, you have art, you have to deal with your ego…. Everybody learns a different way, but for me, I find all those different ways react to music. I think it’s pretty universal.”

The Performance Academy students come from the CanU Canada after-school education program and The Bridge: Music Learning for Life, a music-education pilot project launched in 2011 by the U of M’s Desautels Faculty of Music.

They work with mentors and perform what they’ve learned as members of the Jazz on Wheels band.

On the bandstand, mentors sit next to their students, offering guidance and support.

The young musicians learn to play stuff they like. Their setlist features tracks by pop superstars Bruno Mars, Adele and Rihanna, to name a few.

At the start, most of them have little to no musical experience, but Kirby says it doesn’t take long for them to start picking things up. He’s enlisted help from his students at the university, as well as some alumni, to help teach. Building confidence is a priority.

“If you buy into what the kids are into and teach them how to achieve it, and don’t tell them what to expect and don’t tell them what they can’t do, only talk about what they can do, then they learn positive reinforcement,” he says.

“The program is structured so that kids can’t fail — they are supported by their mentors and are surrounded by that positivity,” adds Charlene Diehl, one of Jazz on Wheels’ co-ordinators. “And it’s also great because the community gets to hear its own voice — not the music that is pushed onto them, but the voice of their own environment through these kids.”

One of the mentors is 20-year-old Micaylee Rodyniuk, one of Kirby’s students at the U of M. She is a vocalist in the Jazz on Wheels band, and says the best part about being involved in the program is “everything.”

“It’s a great opportunity for the (university) students as well as the kids,” she says. “It’s absolutely amazing to see the kids come alive on stage and really flourish.”

Even though the band members are young — most are between the ages of 10-14, Rodyniuk says the group’s rehearsal time is similar to any other band. The kids are vocal about what songs they want to play and are eager to get on stage. And there is an abundance of snacks, she says, laughing.

Kirby says the goal of Jazz on Wheels is promoting collaboration, creativity and self-expression, not necessarily creating brilliant musicians.

“This is a program to help people from different cultural backgrounds and age demographics to want to work together, to respect each other enough to do a common thing well in public,” he says. “And some of them actually stick around and become musicians.”

 

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @NireRabel