SOUND STRATEGY
Resident musician heads north with a kit full of instruments as part of an effort to strengthen community ties through music. Matt Olson explains the project.
A professional musician is bringing music to northern Saskatchewan — armed with a small symphony of donated instruments.
Eliza Doyle, banjo player and multi-talented instrumentalist who has performed with The Dead South for the last couple of years, is taking her talents to the small Saskatchewan community of Stanley Mission for an artist-in-residence program scheduled to last through the month of January.
Organized by the Saskatchewan Cultural Exchange with support through a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, Doyle has prepared an array of music lessons and programming to engage Stanley Mission and the surrounding community through music.
“As the resident musician, my job is to ... be kind of like a music facilitator,” Doyle said. “The way I’m developing it is as a way to strengthen the community, so it’s open to everybody.”
Just northeast of La Ronge, Stanley Mission and the surrounding area holds a population of more than 1,600 people. Doyle said the elementary and high schools each serve a few hundred students, and the principal of the elementary school was a huge help in arranging her stay.
A former teacher, Doyle said she’s been readying music lessons for all ages, including one-on-one lesson plans and group sessions. She said it’s tough to know exactly how things will go since she hasn’t been there yet, and she wants the community to be able to give some insight into what kind of things they learn and work on.
She won’t head up to Stanley Mission empty-handed: instrument donations are being accepted at the Long & Mcquade shop on Eighth Street in Saskatoon and the Saskatchewan Cultural Exchange head office in Regina.
In the back storeroom of the Saskatoon location, donations are starting to pile up. Guitars, electric basses, flutes, trumpets, drums and more have been coming in from local residents. Doyle said Long & Mcquade has refurbished the instruments as necessary to prepare them for the trip.
“They’re really excited when they get new donations,” she said. “It’s really exciting, because I think people are really getting into it ... it makes people feel good about themselves.”
Doyle said this will be the first time she’s been a “musician-in-residence,” and even though she’ll be gone for a month she’s eager for the chance to get into the community and teach some music.
Having made a career out of what she’s been able to do as a musician, this is an opportunity to give back and get people who might normally never get the opportunity “engaged” through music. There aren’t a lot of musicians who travel up north, so she wants to connect with the community as much as possible — and write some of her own music — in the short month she’s there, she said.
“Music is universal. So you might not speak the same language ... but if you can share a song with somebody, it can really break down barriers.”