Image
Image Caption
By Shari Narine
Sweetgrass Contributing Editor
EDMONTON
December 1, 2016.
Garry Lee is used to the applause of the crowds. But what he’s still not used to is the way the applause effects the young fiddlers from Prince Charles School.
“Taking the kids out on the road, experiencing the applause. It does something inside of you when the place goes crazy at the end of a tune. Even though I’m a burnt out bar musician, I share the kids’ excitement,” he said.
Lee has been teaching the fiddle for the past 16 years, ever since he stopped being a travelling musician. He got his start in the schools through the Metis Children and Family Services.
For the past 13 years, Lee has been joining teacher Judy Gatto at least twice a week teaching about 50 students from Grades 4 to 6 at Prince Charles School how to play the fiddle. Almost all the children who attend the Edmonton kindergarten to Grade 6 school are Indigenous.
“I consider myself a very lucky man to be busy at this (hard economic) time and doing something I love,” he said.
Lee, who is Metis, says back in the day, the Metis would hunt buffalo or fight battles, return to their camps and communities and fiddle and jig in the evenings.
“Fiddling in Aboriginal communities is dying out,” he said. “A lot of communities don’t have fiddle players.”
Lee says the way he teaches fiddle would make most conventional fiddle teachers cringe. Most of the students don’t have musical background or any musical training.
“We’re not teaching them classical music or to play in an orchestra. We’re teaching them to fiddle,” he said.
He says most of the kids are thrilled to have a skill that allows them to perform.
The instruments are provided through the school, most paid for through corporate donations. The students also attend numerous community events and have both their bussing and their performances paid for. That money goes into replenishing the instruments, says Lee.
The fiddling is offered as an alternative program for the upper elementary students, says Gatto.
She says she “just walked in one day” when Lee was teaching “loved it and he allowed me to join.” Gatto, who is non-Indigenous, adopted the fiddle as part of her Grade 4 curriculum.
“They learn amazing skills in addition to what they learn on an instrument,” she said.
Over the three years, Gatto says their playing ability improves but so does their success in academics, social skills and confidence.
“Both Garry and I grew up in family where music was important and we wanted the kids to have that,” said Gatto. “But I didn’t expect (our program) to get to this point.”
Teachers Judy Gatto (second from left) and Garry Lee (third from left) play guitar to accompany Prince Charles School fiddlers at a performance at Enterprise Square in Edmonton on Nov. 30. The concert was hosted by the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Extension’s Metis Life Journey Skills Program. (Photo: Shari Narine)
Garry Lee tunes a fiddle as player Alexa Maccallum, 11, looks on. (Photo: Shari Narine)
Pheonyx Cardinal, 10, tunes her instrument before a performance. (Photo: Shari Narine)