A Sound Reason For A Hands-On Workshop

By Shannon Hicks

John Clancy has been devoting his life to music — its creation and performance — for as long as he can remember. A Newtown native, John graduated from Hartt School of Music three years ago and has been forging his path in the business ever since. He has spent time touring with the singer Lisa St Ann and her Fabulous Band for a while, and worked at Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam for two seasons.

Now he is offering something to the next generation of musicians in Newtown, by leading a free workshop that is being sponsored by Newtown Youth Services. For a few more weeks, Mr Clancy’s African percussion workshop will continue to meet each Thursday afternoon at the NYS building at 41-A Main Street in Newtown.

The workshop is for middle school-age students, and about a half-dozen have accepted the challenge of learning something new. Being a professional musician, Mr Clancy has a trove of instruments he allows the students to use, under careful guidance. There are bongo drums, woodblocks, a talking drum, and djembe drums for the students to perform on.

Each week’s workshop meets for just over an hour. During that time, the students listen as Mr Clancy explains what they are going to attempt to perform. Being a percussion workshop, of course the learning is completely hands-on, and so after a short explanation from their teacher, the students are encouraged to try everything themselves.

“There is usually dance accompaniment to each of these songs,” Mr Clancy told his students last Thursday afternoon. Three students were listening as Mr Clancy various rhythms which would then be echoed by one of the boys — a little less confidently than Mr Clancy’s surehanded performance, perhaps, but with definite effort. Stephen Lamb, Erik Bagger and Ben Snyder worked with Mr Clancy on an African song piece by piece.

The group would try playing the song, critique themselves, and then play again. After a few run-throughs, the boys would switch the instruments they were playing on and would try the song again, this time from a different perspective. Each instrument not only makes a different sound, but in African circles, each drum is like a voice. The different voices combine to perform the song’s lyrics.

Mr Clancy explained to the boys how important percussion is in Africa.

“Music is constant,” he said. “You just wake up over there and you can hear the drumming.” He encouraged the students to concentrate on their own rhythms at first, and then to “just close your eyes and listen to each other.”

While the group was working on learning traditional rhythms, there was also room for improvisation. In fact, before the workshop concludes, Mr Clancy and his students are hoping to have put together an original composition.

“I love music,” Ben Snyder said at the end of last week’s class. “It’s one of my favorite things to do.” A sixth grade student at Newtown Middle School, Ben has been studying music for five years.

“The percussion songs are a little easier than I expected,” he said. “But it’s like everything — it gets easier after you practice.

“I like how everybody sounds together,” he continued. “It helps with your cooperation skills quite a bit, but it’s a lot of fun, too.”