IN THE POCKET
BY VINCE SANTORO
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Local 257's booth at the annual public school career fair
very autumn we coordinate with Metro Nashville Public Schools to take part in the annual Career Exploration Fair held at the Music City Center. Dave and I recruit some available players who want to lend a hand in putting together a combo to act as representatives of Local 257 in front of thousands of highschoolers from across the city. We were lucky to have AFM Local 257 members Will Barrow on keys and Lee Worden on guitar the past couple years and their involvement has been tremendous — we thank them for their help. We meet at the ungodly hour of 7 a.m., set up and play music in the huge convention hall to demonstrate that music as a career is a worthy choice. We do this alongside more than a hundred other career representatives, from doctors and lawyers to emergency medical technicians and police officers, each commandeering their own booths. Each entity readies themselves and the hall looks and feels like any other convention — NAMM for instance — and at 7:30 a.m. the doors open and busloads of kids stream in for the start of Career Exploration Fair. They go from booth to booth asking questions about the nuts and bolts of each career choice and our combo admittedly draws quite a crowd. Live music will tend to do that. We play for a bit, then answer student questions. We let some kids play our instruments and jam with us or with their friends. It all adds to the spectacle and draws more and more to our booth. Near the end of the day we get a visit from Judge Sheila Calloway who takes time out from her legal
services booth and sings “I Will Survive” with us in full judge regalia — and she absolutely kills it every year. Nothing like a little discoera flashback to be the showstopper! This type of youth outreach is something we’d love to build on because Nashville youth need to know what opportunities exist beyond what they study in class. This being Music City our presence at functions like the career fair helps immeasurably. Every year we do this I come away with mixed feelings – on one hand, our outreach feels important, but on the other, I feel like we lose the thread until the next career fair comes around. If only we could keep the connection going so we don’t lose steam.
Nashville youth need to know what opportunities exist beyond what they study in class. When Shannon Williford left Nashville to return to his Louisiana home, he remained a Local 257 member, but we did lose his project, Bayou and The Degradables, an outreach band that traveled to Metro schools under the aegis of Blues in the Schools. Using the shared funding accessed through the Music Performance Trust Fund to help offset expenses to schools and to pay the players, Shannon created a wonderful program that demonstrated how the blues began and how it is uniquely American to young people all across the Nashville school system. In the wake of his departure I can see that we somehow need to keep that momentum going.
In Symphony Notes this quarter [page 28] Kevin Jablonski talks about NSO educational initiatives that reach out to Nashville youth with their Ensembles in the Schools program, where they send trios, quartets and quintets to area schools in an effort to show these same kids how broad a spectrum exists in the musical opportunities available to them. It got me thinking that our local could generate more connections of this ilk if we created a hub, or committee, that could coordinate possible events that add to that array of outreach. We could call it the Community Engagement Committee, or CEC, and it would hook up the musicians and venues using all the aid available to them and the connections with MNPS to make things operate smoothly. This committee would be made up of Local 257 members who want to give back to the student community whom we believe will inevitably be the future music leaders here in Nashville. I know there are a lot of our members who fit this bill so I’d ask you to contact me if you’d like to be put on the list to form the committee as we create this group. It will be important for this committee to brainstorm ways to continue to grow our music community from the ground up. Every year at the career fair it is clear that our city’s youth are an untapped source that is ready and waiting to make the music of their future. TNM
Next General Membership Meeting Monday, 2 p.m. March 2, 2020 JAN – MAR 2020 7
