The Sound of Steel: A Conversation with Julian Champion of West Point School of Music
Growing up in Trinidad, West Point School of Music (WPSOM) founder Julian Champion longed to play a musical instrument. His family, however, lacked the resources to acquire one, much less also pay for lessons. As Champion remembered when we spoke by video chat, “I decided that part of my life's work would be to make sure that wherever I am if there were kids who would like to play an instrument but the circumstances of their birth or their zip code or their family construct wasn't going to make it permissible for them to do so because of resources that I would be a part of being that answer.”
For more than a decade, the Chicago-based WPSOM has brought music education to the city’s under-resourced neighborhoods. The centerpiece of the school’s mission is the Epic Steel Orchestra, which highlights the steelpan, the percussion instrument that is the national instrument of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Not only can students learn to play the World Heritage instrument, but older students have the opportunity to learn how to manufacture the instrument. WPSOM recently received its first grant from the Arts Endowment in support of the Epic Steel Orchestra and the steel pan shop. Here’s our conversation with Champion about the lasting power of music education and why under-resourced neighborhoods are the ones that need the arts most of all.
NEA: What’s the origin story of the West Point School of Music?
JULIAN CHAMPION: I remember at about seven years old I really wanted to play an instrument. [It wasn’t] a conversation I could have with my mother because from a very young age I was sensitive to what was happening with her in terms of resources. So I harbored that desire to play an instrument from about the age of seven, and the very first time I held an instrument in my hand I was 17, and it was a trombone. It's not what I wanted to play but it's what was available. After that I decided that part of my life's work would be to make sure that wherever I am if there were kids who would like to play an instrument but the circumstances of their birth or their zip code or their family construct wasn't going to make it permissible for them to do so because of resources that I would be a part of being that answer. In moving to Chicago and working in the city, this is the unfolding of that promise to myself and promise to kids who live in poverty. So in 2011, after years of working with kids, I incorporated West Point School of Music, and we've been off to the races ever since.
NEA: The project for which the school receives NEA support is Epic Steel. Can you tell us about that project?
CHAMPION: Epic Steel is still part vision and it's part reality. We want to offer music education opportunities to young people living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. I am drawing on my historicity as a Trinidadian and the existence of the steel drum, which is an instrument invented by formerly oppressed people in Trinidad, and using that as part of the redemption of formerly enslaved people in a different part of the world. We've introduced the steel drums to kids here living in Chicago, and it's an instrument that's very loved. You can get on a steel drum and almost immediately play something, right? The students love that. It's encouraging to them, and you get to make really beautiful music on something that's extremely unique for them.
We teach all of the instruments in the concert band family, so we have trumpets and saxophones and tubas and trumpets, but the steel drum is the anchor instrument. The steel drum is primarily manufactured in Trinidad, and the challenge is it can take a very long time to get an instrument out of Trinidad. When I first started, it took a full year before I could get them, so in that time whatever interest there was among students could dwindle away. I started very early thinking about the need to manufacture our own instruments here in the city, and that's a big part of what we're doing. We want to introduce hundreds of kids across the city to the steel drum, but we're also conscious of the fact that if we are going to do that effectively we will need to make the instruments that we then teach on. We have a steel drum shop, and we have students who grew up in our program who are interning with us, learning [how to manufacture steel drums]. So we are teaching a skill and a trade.
NEA: Given that not all of the students who work with Epic Steel or are part of the music school will go on to be professional musicians, what are the other things that having access to arts education does for them?
CHAMPION: I do not think that there is any activity better for training a young person, training their minds and their bodies, than learning to play an instrument. The first thing I hope it gives them is tenacity. There are times when you're learning to play your instrument, whether it's the steel drum or a wind instrument, and you get to a piece or a portion of the music that's just extremely difficult. You can see the young people get exasperated. I've seen a lot of kids over my years want to quit, want to give up. Then you get to teach tenacity, and that's an important life lesson. Music also teaches the value of the team. It's a fact that kids who play an instrument, who played in band, are better members of teams later in life. If you've been part of a band at all, you understand very quickly that if I'm playing flute [in a] march I need the tuba. I need that oompah, oompah, oompah, oompah [as] a base for my music to sit on. Music education really reinforces that lesson [that] you need the team.
The other thing I think is music offers a sense of beauty, right? There's a lot of ugliness in the world, and a lot of ugliness in some of the neighborhoods we're in. There is anger and violence and pain. I think it's probably the greatest deficiency in disadvantaged neighborhoods, this absence of beauty. A young person learning to play music develops that appreciation for the beautiful, for making the beautiful, and I think that's important. I would say finally that we need another generation of people across socioeconomic and racial lines who value the arts. Even if a young person does not go on to be a musician, which many don't, for the others that do they will have customers, patrons, they will have people who come to the show, who go to the theater.
NEA: I’d like to follow up on what you said about beauty being necessary for the community. When people without resources are struggling, why is it important to have that beauty, to have the arts? Why are the arts a necessity and not a luxury?
CHAMPION: A good concert in a disinvested neighborhood might be the equivalent of a good Florida vacation to a middle-class or upper-class family. Good art, art wonderfully done, allows the patrons who are experiencing it an escape, an out, a relief, a breather. You have people who are living in communities that are just under so much pressure. There is a challenge to put food on the table, a challenge to keep the lights on, a challenge to keep gas in the car, a challenge to walk from your house to the bus stop and not worry about catching a stray bullet. On top of all this pressure that just goes into living your daily lives, we're not talking about anything extra, you can't find a sense of relief. You can't escape to a concert, escape to a show, enjoy good comedy, good poetry, beautiful art, and I just think it's too much. Arts education and the subsequent development of artists in disinvested communities offer those neighborhoods curators who can bring to their community that relief that we seek, that we get from beauty.
NEA: For my final question, I’d like to ask what Arts Endowment funding makes possible for the West Point School of Music and the Epic Steel program.
CHAMPION: It makes our continued work possible. To build the orchestra we want to build in Chicago we don't have the luxury of going out in the street and saying, "Hey, I need 20 of you guys to come and play steel drums." No, we have to sail the sea and build a ship while we are sailing. We have to make the musicians that we want [and the NEA supports] our program to teach young people to play the steel drums. It makes possible the young interns [who are learning the] different aspects of the steel drum manufacturing process. We are very grateful to the NEA for the recognition, and we hope it's a recognition of the valuable work that continues for many, many years to come.
