The improvised kid

by Janis Hashe

Music for the ages: For more than 20 years, Chattanooga’s Shaking Ray Levi Society, founded by Bob Stagner (second from left) and Dennis Palmer (wearing cap), have sponsored and led arts workshops open to students of all ages. Here, the SRLS leads a free improvisational drum circle at the Chattanooga Parent Back to School Boogie event at Loose Cannon Studio. Photo by Cameron Adams

Chattanooga’s Shaking Ray Levi Society frees kids’ creativity

If you have never heard of the Shaking Ray Levi Society—despite its more-than-20-year history here in Chattanooga—you are not alone. The SRLS is a prime example of the old proverb: “A prophet is a stranger in his own land.” Though the society was founded by native Chattanoogans Bob Stagner and Dennis Palmer, its free improvisational music, and the art/dance/film events the society creates and sponsors, are far better known internationally than locally.
And one aspect of SRLS’s mission is especially underreported: The work it does with children. Helping cultivate creativity in students, including children, is part of the society’s mission statement:
“The Shaking Ray Levi Society is dedicated to the creative possibilities inherent within each student. The programs offered expose students to multicultural music and ideas. At the same time, programs emphasize the importance and necessity of the individual personalities, skills and environments of each student while achieving an exciting end result.”
The Shaking Rays offer several workshops on a regular basis, a three-day marimba workshop in which students build marimbas and create African music, and a three-day hand drum workshop in which they learn to play a hand drum and find out about sound as a means of communication. The society also offers a “Design Your Own Workshop” program, whose students create musical instruments from everyday objects.
Percussionist Stagner is also an active participant in The Rhythmic Arts Project (TRAP), a national program created in 1997 to help disabled youth and adults build life skills.
In May, the Shaking Rays co-sponsored the WHO-Fest in Renaissance Park. As part of their programming, they partnered with Very Special Arts of Tennessee to present the Blair School Dulcimer Choir, composed of teenagers with autism, dance and movement workshops for disabled kids, and a drum workshop with Eddie Tuduri, founder of TRAP.
Chattanooga Parent managed to corral the very busy Dennis Palmer to ask him about SRLS’s work with kids and the arts, and how the society’s commitment to improvisation is adapted in its children’s programs. Here are his answers, provided by e-mail:

Chattanooga Parent: Was working with kids part of the mission when the SRLS was founded?

Dennis Palmer: Yes. We always had the idea that we wanted to share with the community what free improvisation has to offer—and we didn’t want to limit our enthusiasm to a select age group. Our mission has always considered everyone a creative being, capable of expression at any point in their lives, so we want to work with children and adults at any stage.
There has always been relatively diverse visual arts education, but it seems musical education has always been limited in scope by standard Western music structures. And yet, improvisation is at the core of every form of musical expression and really touches the core of what unites us, across times and across cultures. It is important to take the emphasis off of one orthodox form of musical expression, and open children and adults to explore other sonic possibilities.

How was this work first incorporated into what you do?

Our first official education program took place through the Allied Arts’ Artist in Residence Program in the late 1980s through the early 1990s. In a way, the Allied Arts program gave us the opportunity to take our lesson plans for adults and adapt them for children.

What are the current programs, and who are you working with?

As our website (ShakingRay.com) explains in more detail, our current programs include TRAP (The Rhythmic Arts Project), Chattanooga Hospice, TC Thompson Children’s Hospital, the Signal Centers, and via Allied Arts, the Hamilton County School System, particularly the Dawn School with VSA (Very Special Artists). We also received part of an NEA grant to work with Chattanooga Parks and Recreation.
The programs we use vary, depending on the needs of the particular population, but some of the basic ones are what we call the Shaking Ray Drum Work-out, the three-day Marimba Workshop, the Hand Drum Workshop, and those interested can also work collaboratively with us with us to design a workshop crafted to specific curricular needs.

What do you think SRLS offers that is unique in working with kids?

Hopefully, folks are becoming more aware that our 20-plus year community involvement is not limited to performance, documentation and production, but that it also offers educational programs in area schools. Many of the society’s guest artists hold workshops for students on jazz instrumentation, composition and improvisation. In the classroom, we directly involve the students in designing, discovering and playing musical instruments. Our curriculum is multi-disciplinary in nature, created with the goal of helping students to develop valuable skills such as problem solving, group cooperation, active listening, and effective use of available resources.
We started realizing through our interaction with the community that improvisation as a mode of communication provides a critical model for not only creative self-expression, but also ethical and cultural dialogue. We offer a unique perspective in working with kids because our background as both performers and educators has given us sensitivity to not only alternative modes of expression but also new ways of listening to the potentials that inhere any time we open up to creativity.

What are a couple of your favorite stories about working with kids?

One frequent experience we encounter with our workshops is that the students who normally do not communicate openly, end up sharing and creating with one another during the sessions, using non-discursive forms of communication such as sound, motion, feeling. They become freer and less inhibited, not so worried about peer criticism and judgment since we are all in the creative moment together.

What directions are you looking to go in the future?

We would really like to see our programs incorporated into the curriculum in some pretty foundational ways, particularly because of our commitment to the ethical possibilities of this mode of communication.
We believe that improvisation asks us as both audience members and as creators to participate in and celebrate risk, diversity, and often unorthodox practices of communication. So, we found that an open sensibility or modality such as improvisation provides really lends itself to working with diverse populations—by that I mean populations that aren’t schooled.
Given our current cultural climate of intolerance, improvisation as a mode of communication asks us open to what is diverse and is a radically communicative moment that can serve as a model for global ethical relations. And we are not the only organization arguing that free improvisation has the potential to help us in the quest for social justice and cultural openness, rather than prejudice and exclusion.
These may seem like they are pretty large claims, but we would encourage you to participate in a workshop, come to a show, or ask our students about their experience to provide first-hand accounts of just how transformative the experience can be.

Music for the ages:

For more than 20 years, Chattanooga’s Shaking Ray Levi Society, founded by Bob Stagner (second from left) and Dennis Palmer (wearing cap), have sponsored and led arts workshops open to students of all ages. Here, the SRLS leads a free improvisational drum circle at the Chattanooga Parent Back to School Boogie event at Loose Cannon Studio. Photo by Cameron Adams

“Children become freer and less inhibited, since we are all in the creative moment together.”
“Our mission has always considered everyone a creative being, capable of expression at any point in their lives, so we want to work with children and adults at any stage.”

“Improvisation asks us as both audience members and as creators to participate in and celebrate risk, diversity, and often unorthodox practices of communication.”

To learn more about the Shaking Rays

For more information about the Shaking Ray Levi Society, visit ShakingRay.com. For information about booking a workshop for your school, contact Rodney Van Valkenburg at Allied Arts, 756-2787, ext. 13.