Musician Joe Craven believes music lives inside of everyone.
To prove his point, the Dixon, Calif., man asked everyone who hadn't played an instrument to raise their hands during a performance Saturday morning for more than 100 children and adults at the Fayetteville Public Library. He grabbed his fiddle and handed it to Amy Matthews, who had raised her hand, for an impromptu music lesson.
The free Saturday concert was the second performance for Craven during the four-day Fayetteville Roots Festival, an urban music festival that celebrates music, food and culture.
Festivities continue today at a variety of locations, including Fayetteville Town Center, the library and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville. Activities also are scheduled Monday at Crystal Bridges.
On Saturday, Matthews took the bow and fiddle and followed Craven's instructions. He then asked her to walk in a circle and continue playing to the rhythm of her feet, a coordinated effort that took a few minutes to master. As Matthews grew more comfortable walking and playing, Craven on mandolin harmonized with the sounds Matthews drew from the violin.
The duet was upbeat and drew applause at the end.
"I was embarrassed," said Matthews, an English teacher at Fayetteville High School, after the performance. "As a teacher, I do the same thing, putting my students on the spot, encouraging my students to take risks. I had to step forward even though it was scary for me."
Matthews took piano lessons when she was 6, but remembers the rhythms caused her to struggle. Finding a rhythm of walking and playing a fiddle Saturday was difficult but grew easier once she could hear Craven playing the mandolin, she said.
Matthews attended the concert with her husband, Mark Duncan, and their children, Jack, 8, and Cade, 4, and other families with children enrolled in the Fayetteville Montessori Academy, a festival sponsor.
Matthews likes to tell high school students who are hesitant to write that everyone has something to say, a message that echoed what Craven said to the audience Saturday. Matthews' husband plays guitar, and her children take piano lessons.
"It was nice for me to get a chance to find some of my own music," Matthews said.
Folk music is a social and informal style of music that develops from imitating sounds, Craven said. Music encompasses vibrations, rhythms, sounds, pitches and beats that develop into a pattern, like a heartbeat or the ticks of a lawn sprinkler.
An artful life is about creativity and having the freedom to wonder and explore, he said.
"It's about learning to see the potential in things," Craven said. "All kinds of things I hear in the world could be music."
On Saturday, Craven made music with ordinary objects, including a Bundt pan, an electronic toy cordless telephone made for toddlers, and a piece of exhaust pipe enhanced with a bell like a trumpet and a piece of screen.
He performed with a "canjo," a banjo-like instrument Craven made for about $4 with a large, industrial food can, string and a recycled piece of wood for the neck. He added components so that the instrument can be played through an amplifier.
At one point, he asked Ella Nelms, age 6 1/2, to come on stage and say into the microphone, "Hi, I'm Ella, and I'm really glad to be here today."
"It was weird," Ella of Fayetteville said afterward.
Craven recorded her voice, put her greeting on a loop and began singing in harmony with Ella's voice.
"It's the first line of Ella's big single," Craven quipped.
Ella's father David Nelms plays guitar and thinks music shouldn't be intimidating.
"Just grab something and play music," he said.
Craven is an informally trained musician, he said. He worked in art museums putting together exhibitions, an exercise that required him to communicate art with audiences.
That training led him to develop analogies to help people understand how music can develop naturally, similar to the way babies learn to walk and talk. He wants to demystify the art form so everyone can participate.
"Speaking precedes literacy," Craven told his audience. "Creativity is more important than literacy. Literacy is a skill. It's what you do with it that ignites its potential."
Metro on 08/31/2014