Here's a great story about how one school is keeping Bluegrass in front of the younger generation! from: The IndependentMail.com
PICKENS — The sound of a mandolin — it’s tinny, twangy melody — drifts through the hallway at Holly Springs Elementary School. There is no sound of children for the moment, just the melody of the music.
The song being played is “Blue Ridge Cabin Home.”
In the room are Lewis Crowe and Bobby Trotter. They are here, on a Thursday at 3 p.m., waiting for their classes to start. They are here for an elementary-age after-school program. Trotter teaches students how to play the guitar. And Crowe is teaching mandolin.
They are not part of the faculty. There are no state benefits attached to this job or vacation time. There is some compensation – maybe enough to pay for their gas, and other expenses to get here.
They choose to come.
“I knew this was going to be a job,” said Crowe. “But I’ve been teaching out of my home for years.”
For three years, Crowe has been coming here, passing on what he knows of this musical tradition called bluegrass. He learned on his own more than 65 years ago. He does this because he wants to nurture students’ interest in the music.
Trotter and Crowe are teaching the children how to play bluegrass instruments – not at in their homes this day – but through the Young Appalachian Musicians program offered at Pickens County schools.
Started in January 2008, the program had four instructors and 32 students. Now, it has 22 instructors and 320 students.
Crowe is one of those four teachers who has stayed with the program. He’s here on this day, sitting in the middle of four children, teaching them the melody of “Little Liza Jane.” He’ll spend a couple of hours in this class, working with these four beginning students.
He confesses that just the day before he worked with another group of children for four hours, at his home, passing on his knowledge to them.
It sounds impressive, enough, to know that he’s passing on a culture onto a new generation. But then, Betty McDaniels, the program’s director, shares that Crowe is also dealing with pancreatic cancer.
He has been since earlier this year. Yet he is here.
In fact, he is here, knowing that all the while, the cancer inside him may be growing and spreading more by the day.
“I just went to the doctor today and my blood work was OK,” Crowe said. “But the tumor was still there. I guess it’ll keep growing until it takes me out.”
“Takes me out,” he said, without much pause.
It’s because he knows that earlier this year he asked doctors to allow him to stop taking chemotherapy treatments. He’d had enough, he said. Not because he felt that his body would heal itself.
But because the chemotherapy was robbing him of his strength. By the end of the school year — earlier this year — he couldn’t muster the energy to teach, to come to this classroom.
“I was in a wheelchair,” he said. “I took seven of the 14 treatments and it just about killed me.”
So he stopped.
Now, he is here. The day before this class, he taught children for hours at his home – for free. “I’ve never charged for a lesson,” he admits. “God gave me this talent. So I just want to pass it on.”
It can be seen in another classroom, in another school just minutes from this one.
On this same Thursday afternoon, another group is practicing at the Pickens Middle School. In that group is 10-year-old Elisabeth Dickerson. She plays the mandolin in the group of more advanced bluegrass musicians, known as Sweet Potato Pie.
They play at festivals, competitions and recently played at the 75th anniversary celebration of the opening of the Blue Ridge Parkway in Galax, Va., just a couple of months ago.
Elisabeth was in that group. And she’s familiar with Crowe’s name.
It was Crowe who gave her a “first” lesson at the Oolenoy Community Center one Friday evening, not long after her parents bought her a mandolin and her brother a guitar.
That was more than a year ago. Crowe didn’t know Elisabeth, but his teacher instinct kicked in.
“I was struck by how he took the time to teach her,” Elisabeth’s mother, Regina Dickerson, said. “You can tell he really has a heart for kids. He takes the time out to teach them a culture that otherwise might be lost.”
Now, Elisabeth — the girl who didn’t even know what a mandolin was two years ago — can now hear just a few words to a song, tap her feet on the floor to find the song’s rhythm and then play that song almost instantly.
And this 10-year-old plays her mandolin with joy. In fact, she calls this music “cool.”
“I grew up listening to Johnny Cash,” Elisabeth said. “I like that I can play some of his songs now.”
As Betty McDaniels listens to the group play, talk of bluegrass music and share stories of their teachers like Crowe, she smiles. McDaniels is not a musician, but she loves music and she loves children. She worked as the media specialist at Holly Springs Elementary for 31 years.
She had this vision for the Young Appalachian Musicians in 2007 because she wanted to give the children — many of whom live in remote areas — something they could do after-school.
They started first in Holly Springs Elementary School, and now the program has expanded to seven schools. And what is McDaniels smiling about as she hears these children talk about the program?
Not just their excitement about bluegrass music, but the camaraderie they are showing between each other and the respect they have for their teachers.
“The relationships they build with their instructors is wonderful,” McDaniels said. “They are finding something they can do that they are good at, and it is building their confidence in everything they do.”
And, just maybe Crowe hopes, those he’s taught will one day pass on to others what he’s been able to give to them.
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