February 7, 2001
Yo, ho, ho: Schools pen maritime music
Elementary students perform concert of sea songs composed during workshops
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
The Lars Hockstad Auditorium rang with salty sea songs and lilting maritime ballads Thursday evening as students from Willow Hill and Central Grade schools gave a community concert. Sharing the stage with Chicago musicians and sailors Tom and Chris Kastle, the students rendered their original compositions, written during songwriting workshops conducted by the Kastles.
The Kastles spent a day at each school last week, teaching the basics of maritime music and songwriting to fifth graders at Central and sixth graders at Willow Hill. Each group of students collectively wrote a sea shanty and a ballad about some aspect of sailing or the Great Lakes. They performed these works for their respective school before giving the joint concert.
Putting thoughts into verses, couplets and ballads was a new experience for students - one that left them wondering more about life on the Great Lakes. With a trip on the educational schooner Inland Seas scheduled for later this spring, composing the songs gave students a taste of what they would be learning and doing during their day on the Bay.
"I think writing the songs made us realize what it was like back in the early days," said Sara Pfeiffer, a fifth-grade student at Central Grade School. "I had never written a song before and it was pretty interesting to convert what we're going to do on the school ship into song."
The Inland Seas Educational Association hosted the workshop and concert by the Kastles, with the help of grants from the Hudson's Community Giving Program and the Michigan Humanities Council. For the Kastles, there could be no higher calling in their professional lives than getting students excited about sailing and the Great Lakes.
"We make our living doing the two things we love most: singing and sailing," said Tom Kastle, who bills the husband-wife team as singers, sailors, songwriters and musicians. "We're very near and dear to the school ship project because we love the mission of the thing."
Inland Seas has brought the Kastles to the area to work with area schoolchildren for the past nine years. Teachers welcome the opportunity for their students to experience a taste of traditional maritime music and composition while learning math, science and geography at the same time.
"Our students are very musical and they are learning information here through song," said Jody Mars, a fifth-grade teacher at Central Grade School. "In my opinion, the whole schoolship experience goes hand-in-hand with the whole fifth-grade science curriculum; it extends the learning."
During the songwriting workshop, the Kastles led the kids through the basics of maritime songwriting, emphasizing the form, style and voice traditionally used. Arming the students with rhyming dictionaries, they brainstormed a list of relevant terms, though they emphasized that the story was more important than the rhyme.
Students in Mrs. Mars' class were charged with writing a ballad about the Great Lakes ecosystems. They separated into five teams to compose a four-live verse from each team.
"It was hard," said Matt Madion, a student in Mrs. Mars' class. "We worked with razor-sharp teeth and used a rhyming dictionary to find beneath. This morning we wrote a shanty about navigating with a compass."
After collecting the students' work from the session, Tom and Chris Kastle settled into an intense hour of integrating the teams' verses into a coherent whole. A little tweaking here, a little rewriting there, and the Kastles reconvened with their students after lunch to begin rehearsals of the new song.
Despite repeating this process with students week after week, year after year, the Kastles find that the students surprise them with the songs they create.
"Kids always surprise me, their creative abilities are unbounded," said Chris Kastle. "I think students have some of the same insights but all of us have our own world view. They are getting into the spirit of saving the Great Lakes."