Louisville Leopard Percussionists Founder Diane Downs with former student now musician/teacher Dani Markham
I arrived on Dani Markham’s doorstep in Louisville with armloads of instruments and stuff. My rental car had broken down on the highway about an hour outside Louisville, stopping suddenly as I hurtled along between semis going 80 mph. I’d called 911 and a young Kentucky State Police Officer—Taylor Callis—pulled up behind me and waited with me on the narrow shoulder I’d pulled on to for the tow truck. I told him about my project, my Search for Harmony, and asked him about his experience with people and community in the areas he canvassed in his patrol car, if gathering around music was something that happened.
He shook his head. “With all these drugs, opiods, these rural communities are like ghost towns,” he said sadly. “It’s the closest thing to a Zombie Apocalypse.”
I’d noticed signs along the highway warning people not to drive high, and offering up an emergency number for “drug activity impaired drivers.” There had been one billboard for a big concert coming up, but mostly there were signs for Gentlemen’s Clubs, fireworks, guns and gambling.
In downtown Pittsburgh, men and women had been gathered in doorways, huddled against the snow and wind. I saw a man get arrested, his stolen groceries tumbling out of a bag as the police pulled up next to him and started toward him. I’d walked to the street where all the theaters and concert halls were, streets mostly empty on this snowy Sunday, and sat amidst chatting diners at the upscale jazz venue, Con Alma, while Maureen Renihan offered up her lyrical vocals. The $10 music fee was added to my bill. It was an expensive meal, delicious, but I thought of all those people on the street outside, how much music might help them if it wasn’t just used as entertainment for people of means.
My friend Dani had started learning percussion in 2nd grade in Louisville. When I met her in New York years back, in my apartment, having offered to host her for a friend she was playing percussion with in Brooklyn, she told me all about the program she’d been a part of in Louisville with her great teacher and longtime mentor Diane Downs. The Louisville Leopard Percussionists had meant everything to her, and made her into the successful musician she is. (Check out the podcast I did with Dani a while back to learn more about her: Podcast with Dani Markham. )
She has beautiful twin baby girls now, whose gurgles and burbles we recorded for the beauty of the sound. We vocalize for pleasure and to comfort ourselves from the beginning:)
I went with Dani to the Louisville Leopards’ new warehouse venue where she is teaching. She wanted me to meet Diane Downs, and to talk with her about the amazing program she has been running since 1993 for students 2-12 from around Louisville. It is the kind of program that should be available to all kids everywhere, the kind of education that helps kids build confidence and collaboration skills so that individuals and communities might prosper.
Young Lucy, a fifth grader, had run into the back music room excitedly, seeing it for the first time. I asked her what her favorite instrument was and she gravitated toward a vibraphone in the front.
“Diane knew I wanted to play in the back, so she made me play in the front,” she said, smiling shyly, proudly. “I really did want to play in the front,” she admitted, “but I was afraid.” She happily gave me a demo of her skills, her stuffed animal sitting on the instrument as she played.
I watched Lucy during practice and thought how amazing it was that she had this kind of help becoming who it is she really wants to be, how all kids should be offered this. Watching the Leopards’ rehearsal warmed my heart.
Diane has gotten lots of attention for her program, people coming all the time to ask how she does it. But it needs —in my opinion — to be a national mandate. Music is a necessary thing for us to help our communities out of this terrible cycle of drugs and depression and mental illness that is obvious as one moves around the country.
“When you’re teaching kids,” Diane Downs says, “you got to do it in a way that’s fun, or they’re not gonna remember, they’re not gonna retain it, they’re not gonna care. You can make it so much fun!”
Listen up to my chat with Diane, above. She’s amazing.
Next up: my night in Nashville, driving the Natchez Trace Parkway, “Gold Record Road” from Nashville to New Orleans.
Thanks for listening up!!
XX
Steph
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