Singin' the blues

It's not always easy to be a kid.

Sometimes you have a fight with your brother. Sometimes your dog runs away. Sometimes your best friend gets mad at you, or you have to eat squash for supper or you break your collarbone. Sometimes even worse things happen, like your parents get divorced, or your grandma dies or you have to move away from home.

"I wish I could tell you that bad stuff goes away," Brad Wheeler tells a fourth-grade class at Layton Elementary School. "But the truth is, the older you get the more bad stuff happens."

And that, he says, is enough to give you the blues. "The blues are when you feel really sad. Everyone has experienced the blues sometime."

He quotes musician Willie Dixon: "If you haven't got the blues, you've got a hole in your soul. The blues are about the facts of life."

But the key, said Wheeler, is to find ways to deal with those sad feelings. And that's where the blues music comes in.

"Remember," he asked the kids, "when you went to lunch at the cafeteria, and the food was so bad that the only way you could eat it was to smother it in ketchup? Well, blues music is ketchup for life. The blues help you turn bad things into a celebration of joy."

Wheeler is visiting this classroom as part of a Blues in the Schools program, sponsored by the Utah and Davis Arts Councils, and funded with donations from Boeing, PacifiCorp Foundation for Learning, Target and Citigroup.

He and fellow musician Danny Weldon have come to talk about the blues, to sing the blues, to give each of the kids their own harmonicas and teach them how to play the blues.

"I'm really excited about it," says Teresa Sanderson, who has coordinated this day's outing. "It's such a neat program. We've only been doing this a couple of years, but this year, we are able to take it to 20 different classrooms."

Charlene Nelson, executive director of the Davis Arts Council, is also enthusiastic about Blues in the Schools. "I like the idea that it helps kids deal with difficulties, that it teaches them a way other than violence, a peaceful way. I like the way Brad and Danny bring in all aspects of education. They talk about how math and reading and science are all part of music, and they show how the past relates to the present. Music is so important to the humanities, and I like the way they get to the root of our music." The arts are there to uplift, she says, "and that's what this program does."