|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
" Scooby Dooby Dooby, the colors talkin' to me. Now I see the color green. "
|
By Heather Flood
Little Janishia sits politely in her assigned chair listening to Mr. Jackson's directions. He's visiting Grahamwood Elementary School today and teaching Janishia and nine other students in Brenda McGlown's K-3 special education classroom about the blues. "Can you watch me make a fold, so maybe you can do it next time," Kenneth Jackson says to one of Janishia's classmates. Jackson folds a sheet of paper into four rectangular sections, while giving directions aloud to other students. "I'm going to put four different selections of blues music on and you draw in each section - starting with the first one - how that music makes you feel." Just before he joins his young friends in the exercise, he realizes he doesn't have a pencil. "Does anyone have a pencil?" he asks the youngsters. A chorus of "I do's" bursts forth and Jackson laughs, clearly appreciating the adoration of his mini-fan club. McClown notices too and says to the deep-voiced Jackson, "You're the star." Jackson, 43, is a traveling blues musician cum teacher. He plays acoustic guitar, piano, trumpet and percussion and has toured with such elites as B.B. King and Ray Charles. But this day, Jackson's talents have brought him to Grahamwood, to teach students basic curriculum such as alphabet letters and numbers, through blues music. Jackson, who's been involved with Memphis-area schools for nine years, also spends time detailing the history and technical components of the blues. His lesson is funded by the Arts in the School program of the Memphis Arts Council. Arts in the Schools began in 1983 to introduce and educate students about various art forms, including blues music. Call Jackson a local version of the Pied Piper because the students he meets - like Janishia - don't just listen to him. They absorb his words and eagerly follow his directions. During a song about colors, Jackson strums his acoustic guitar, which prompts Janishia to bop back and forth in her chair. She can barely stay in her seat. Jackson sings: "Scooby Dooby Dooby, the colors talkin' to me. Now I see the color green." The sprightly 6-year-old suddenly jumps onto her feet, which are protected from the tiled floor by dirty-white socks with holes in the toes. She sticks out her hip and starts strumming her own pretend guitar. Jackson continues to sing about yellow, red and blue. Janishia strums along. With each new verse, her hip sticks out a little further and her pretend guitar gets bigger. Although Jackson has performed for large crowds with blues legendaries, it's the small-statured audiences that delight him most. "Some of them really hear the music," Jackson said. "(The key) is to make sure everything is fun. It gets their inhibitions off." The key Jackson says is to "channel" those new-found artistic energies. That sometimes translates into censorship, especially when older students compose blues tunes. "Sometimes I have to censor the older kids, but usually they come up with something that's acceptable," Jackson said. He added that adolescent music artists usually compose such one-hit wonders as "The Cafeteria Blues," "The Homework Blues" and "The Nike Blues." When Jackson isn't playing the blues in a local school, he's performing with his quartet, The World Class Band. Or he's singing "The Goblins Got The Blues" on Mr. Chuck's show (the Memphis-area public television's answer to Mister Rogers). Maybe he's writing songs for a blues opera. Then too, he could be working on the puppet show he's developing with a Nashville-based puppet troupe (featuring songs written by Jackson such as "Fish Sammich" and "You Gotta Raise the Babies"). "I had no idea it would snowball like this," Jackson said of his busy schedule. A mission keeps Jackson focused: "We've got a different group of kids coming up. They're more sophisticated. But they've got to have a groove. In the next couple of years, we've got to get the music out to them."
|
