Charities join musical forces
Bringing music to underserved kids is still the goal as Little Kids Rock, a national non-profit provider of free music lessons, instruments and teacher training, merges with Tempe’s Ear Candy charity, which refurbishes instruments for low-income kids.
For six years, Tempe charity Ear Candy brought the joy of music to mostly low-income children in Arizona by giving them refurbished instruments that had been donated.
Now, Ear Candy has been absorbed by Little Kids Rock, a leading nationwide non-profit provider of free music lessons, brand-new instruments and teacher training to underserved public schools.
Ear Candy’s founder, Nate Anderson, moved to the San Francisco area as Little Kids Rock’s West Coast director so he can promote the charity in California and Arizona.
Little Kids Rock facilitates the Modern Band music classes, which focus on teaching children to perform, improvise and compose songs in popular genres such as rock, pop, reggae, country, rhythm and blues and hip-hop.
“Kids are engaged because they’re learning modern music that they love to listen to already,” said Little Kids Rock spokesman Keith Hejna.
New instruments, including guitars, keyboards, drums, basses and microphones, will be donated by Little Kids Rock.
“My vision for Ear Candy always was to take what we’ve built nationally,” said Anderson, who
describes himself as a social entrepreneur and who emphasized that he is not deserting Arizona.
“Part of the merger, a sacred cow for me, without a doubt, was that we had to make sure we were still serving Arizona because that’s where I got started,” he said.
“I didn’t want to leave without continuing some sort of offering in Arizona.”
He plans to launch a Little Kids Rock chapter in Arizona in 2014.
Lynn Tuttle, director of arts and education for the Arizona Department of Education, said that the recession almost eliminated capital funding for musical instruments as well as the budget for sheet music and other supplies.
“Charities ... play a pivotal role providing support for these items,” she said. “As supply funds have dwindled, schools have worked hard to maintain their instructional staff, making this need greater in many schools.”
Funding available for professional development for music educators has also been scarce.
A 2010 arts-education census found that almost 87 percent of Arizona students have access at least weekly to arts courses taught by highly qualified instructors, Tuttle said.
“This holds true mainly for music education, so while we do have schools without music educators, it’s only about15 percent of our schools.”
The majority of the schools that do not offer music education are small schools, most of them rural or charter schools, she said.
“It is important to note that music educators are still present and teaching in a majority of settings. ... Providing support for both music students and teachers is an important and useful role that the two charities have been providing,” she said.
Little Kids Rock was founded11 years ago by Executive Director David Wish, who was a first-grade teacher in the Bay Area.
The charity, based in New Jersey, grew from a single after-school music class to a program that has served nearly 250,000 children in more than 25 public-school districts throughout the country.
The charity is now serving more than 115,000 students nationwide.
“We are definitely growing big-time,” Hejna said.
He said Little Kids Rock is transforming the way music education is offered in public schools not only by providing more but also by serving schools that lack music teachers.