Dr. Jefferson Grant is the Associate Director of Bands and Director of Percussion at Lowndes High School in Valdosta, Georgia. Having performed in a variety of bands and percussion ensembles over the years, including drum corps and steel bands, Grant decided it was time to start a band of his own. In his own words, Grant describes his journey in making that dream a reality.
Words By Dr. Jefferson Grant
Planting the Seed
“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
The seed of the idea of creating the Lowndes High School steelpan program began upon my arrival as the Director of Percussion in the Fall of 2013. At that time, it was just an idea. It took five long years to see the dream become reality.
In January of 2016, I was lucky enough to travel to Trinidad and perform in Panorama, the world’s largest steelpan competition. This trip, aside from being incredibly educational for me personally, also helped educate our school administrators on the musical and cultural benefits that steelpan could provide our students. It was after I returned that the wheels began to turn in earnest.
Purchase and Arrival of Pans
Our Director of Bands, Jon Bowman, was instrumental in securing funds from the school board to purchase our first set of instruments. $20,000 was approved to purchase a set of pans in the Spring of 2017, and we placed our order that summer with Alan Coyle of Coyle Steel Drums in Pensacola, Fla.
The pans arrived in November 2017 after our competitive marching band season concluded. We purchased five tenor pans, three double seconds and two cello/guitar pans. Combined with my personal set of double seconds and tenor pan, we had enough for 12 players. We chose not to purchase bass pans with the first order, to allow more students the opportunity to play, although we do have plans to purchase bass pans in the future. We also purchased cases and stands for all pans.
The arrival of our pans was a great day filled with excitement. After taking the time to assemble the stands and inventory the instruments, we began the slow process of learning the technique and pan configurations.
Starting the Program: Instrumentation and Music Selection
Prior to the arrival of the pans, I took time to audition the students in order to place them in the different bands by skill level. We are a large band program with over 400 students total and we had 41 percussion students that participated in the steelpan program this past year. I chose to do two bands, which we called Steel Band A, made up of the more advanced students, and Steel Band B, made up of our less experienced players.
Within these two bands I also assigned certain students to drumset, bass guitar, hand drums and engine room percussion. We rehearsed during class each day, as well as one after school rehearsal per group each week. I was very lucky to have help in the form of one of my fellow directors, Mr. Charles Darr, whose knowledge, especially in the area of hand drumming, increased the authenticity of our playing.
Music selection was difficult for me because we had two different skill levels, but none of the students were familiar with the pan configurations. To ease this dilemma, I chose mostly pop tunes in limited keys (mostly F major) that would allow the students to learn more quickly, while also enjoying the music they were playing. I feel that these decisions worked out well and would highly recommend a similar approach for anyone starting a program.
We purchased some music from trusted sources such as Engine Room Publishing and I also did simple arrangements of popular tunes to save money. I tried to select music with diverse styles including calypso, reggae, bossa nova and straight American rock to expose our students, especially in the rhythm section, to different styles.
Community Outreach
As the former director of the Hattiesburg Community Steel Band during my time as a graduate student of Dr. John Wooton at The University of Southern Mississippi, I knew that part of our goal with the steelpan program was to have a community band as a form of community outreach. This group, called the Lowndes Community Steel Band, mostly made up of adult non-musicians, met on Monday evenings.
We had up to 12 people, the most we could accommodate, participating at rehearsals during the semester, and the culmination was joining the scholastic groups for a few tunes at a performance.
Debut and Performances
We debuted our steel bands, dubbed Viking Steel, at the Southeastern Percussion Festival (SEPF), a festival we hosted at Lowndes High School. Our students had the opportunity to perform with, and learn from, Dr. Tony McCutchen from Jacksonville State University. It was a huge success and was received with great appreciation by the parents and the percussion community in our area.
Following that, we traveled to the Auburn University Percussion Day, hosted by Dr. Doug Rosener, and our students got to perform for and receive feedback from Dr. Dave Hall from the University of Nebraska who, coincidentally, was in the middle of starting his own student steel pan program at Nebraska.
One of the purposes of this endeavor was to have a group that could go out and perform for different facets of our community. We accomplished this through performances at the Lowndes Education Improvement Foundation (LEIF) Banquet as well as the ALS Walk charity fundraiser. Our students received so much appreciation for their willingness to support these great causes.
Future Hopes
It is my hope that some of the information presented here can help those starting their own programs. I can honestly say that not only did it help the overall musicianship of our students through what they learned with regards to music theory, playing touch, and sight reading, but it also exposed our students to the music of different cultures.
In one short year I have definitely seen the beneficial forests that have grown from the single acorn we planted.
Note: The Lowndes High School Viking Steel Band has been invited to perform at the 2019 Georgia Music Educator’s (GMEA) Conference.
