"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
— Red Auerbach, legendary NBA coach of the Boston Celtics
When thinking of great cultural institutions in Chicago, some of the obvious ones come to mind — the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Field Museum, the Art Institute. But in the last ten years or so a new group of not-for-profits including the Children’s Museum, the Mexican Fine Arts Center, and the Old Town School of Folk Music have emerged. These institutions have raised their profile and begun to serve broader audiences, bringing something new, fresh, and relevant to the community.
"Why people flock to the Old Town School may say something about the state of culture in the city," says Jim Hirsch, executive director of the Old Town School of Folk Music. "They certainly come for the music, but there’s something else going on. It could be because we need something real in our lives to keep us grounded and balanced."
Steve Levitt is a forty-seven-year-old Chicagoan who is unquestionably a veteran of the Old Town School. His relationship with the school dates back thirty-five years to the summer of 1965, when at thirteen he began taking guitar lessons. During the seventies he hung out and performed there. In 1992 he returned as a teacher and continues to teach classes at the school today. He also has a theory on why people come to the Old Town School.
"There’s something special about the school itself that seems to allow people to invest in themselves in the place," says Levitt. "You can see people come into the school and shake off the day, shake off the here and now, and enter a different place in themselves."
The fundamental mission of the Old Town School is to give people access to musical instruction in a supportive environment where the stress is on having fun with music.
"The Old Town School is a place that has very consciously chosen not to be a conservatory," says Hirsch. "You can still get the highest caliber professional quality instruction, but our view is that music is something for everybody to enjoy."
Brittany Larsen is a nineteen-year-old Chicagoan who has been taking violin classes at the Old Town School off and on for the past five years. She appreciates the school’s laid-back attitude and feels the instruction is first-rate.
"The atmosphere is genuinely relaxed, and they have an outstanding staff who really provide encouragement while also helping the students learn to teach themselves," says Larsen.
Community and tradition
A unique component of the Old Town School is the social aspect. The average class size is ten to twelve students, which allows everyone to get to know one another and creates a strong social environment.
"In the old days community used to be defined by where you live," says Hirsch. "Today nobody even knows their neighbors anymore — so the Old Town School has become a place where people can discover community." The students at the school share music as a basic common interest. It’s this passion for music that Hirsch identifies as the school’s secret weapon.
Levitt agrees that this sharing of passion for music between the students is an important aspect of the school and creates an unspoken bond between its students.
"I think for most of us, music is a solitary journey, and after a journey alone, there’s something about coming to a place where you can look around and see others that are also on that journey," says Levitt. "There’s something you understand about each other that nobody ever needs to verbalize."
Larsen feels that the security of being a part of this close-knit community plays an important role in the learning process.
"It’s great to learn in a collective environment," says Larsen. "It’s so much easier to deal with the frustrations of learning an instrument when there are others having the same struggles."
The Old Town School is also about tradition. An example is the "second half," which started in the late 1950s when the school first opened. Each night, all classes in session gather in the performance hall for a half-hour sing along. Hirsch says people have described it as America’s last hootenanny.
"The core values of the school have not changed since its opening," says Hirsch. "The magic of this place is when a student sits down across from a teacher and those sparks begin to fly, the creativity flows, and a connection is made — that hasn’t changed a bit in forty-three years."
According to Levitt, there always seems to be some element of the school that connects it in a direct way all the way back to its roots. "Each time I’ve come back to the school it was in many ways a different place, and yet there was still that continuity," says Levitt.
The idea for a school of folk music began in 1957 when singer, labor activist, and TV and radio star Win Stracke attended a folk music class taught by Frank Hamilton. At the time the class was being taught in the dining room of housewife and folk music lover Dawn Greening. Upon driving Hamilton home one night shortly after the class began, Stracke proposed his idea of starting a school around him. Hamilton agreed and the Old Town School of Folk Music was born.
"Win was a visionary who saw the possibilities when very few other people did, and he acted on them," says Hirsch. The school’s opening ceremonies and registration took place on December 1, 1957, and drew several hundred prospective students.
"Win, Dawn, and Frank each brought something very special to the school, and their imprint is absolutely still present today in this organization," says Hirsch.
Branching out
Financial matters were the first order of business, according to Hirsch, when he started as the director in 1982. Once those issues were under control, the organization began to look at the music they were presenting and the people they were attracting. At the time only a very small percentage of the school’s audience was people of color. As a result of looking inward, the organization proposed to diversify the school and began consolidating efforts to do so.
The School’s first endeavor in attracting a more diverse audience was a festival of Latin music that took place over three weekends in 1984 and evoked an amazing response. According to Hirsch, their hope was that 15 to 20 percent of the audience would be Latino. It turned out to be 60 percent.
"What’s happened since 1984 is we’ve gone from less than 2 percent people of color in our audience to almost 20 percent in our classes alone," says Hirsch. "We really in a very fundamental sense changed the nature of the audience and we’re very proud of what we’ve accomplished."
Part of the problem turned out to be the name of the school itself. Focus groups with Latinos and African Americans tested consumers reaction to the school’s name, and found that to some the word "folk" had negative associations. This was a concern that needed to be addressed for the financial survival of the school.
"It’s hard to define folk music," says Hirsch. "But if you take what is a legitimately expansive view that all music and all culture in fact starts one place and kind of evolves over time, then it’s really all folk music."
Since 1982, every year has been better than the previous year in terms of revenue and enrollment, and today the school offers classes on a multitude of diverse musical styles including, Polynesian, Near and Far Eastern, African, Afro-Caribbean, Brazilian, and European.
"One of the things we’ve worked really hard on for the last fifteen years — not just in those audience segments of people of color, but in all audience segments — is to try and broaden everyone’s perception of what the word folk means, and I think we’ve had some success doing that," says Hirsch.
A new home
The school had been located at 909 W. Armitage, Chicago, since 1968, but, due to space constraints, moved most of its classes to a new location in the old Hild Library in Lincoln Square at 4544 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, in 1998. The old space is still a part of the school and eventually will be converted into a children’s center.
The new 43,000-square-foot facility is completely unique to Chicago and according to Hirsch, is the largest folk music facility in the world in terms of enrollment. The building had stood vacant for ten years when the city decided to sell it. The city’s Cultural Affairs Department selected the Old Town School as a candidate for the space, and after deliberation, the school accepted the offer and purchased the building for just ten dollars. The new facility provides nearly twice the amount of teaching space as the old building, and also houses a 421-seat performance hall, retail shop, cafe, and resource center.
Levitt explains that moving the school into a new, larger building has also played a role in broadening the curriculum. "There are things that just couldn’t be done in the old place, like some of the drum classes," Levitt says. "The ability of the new building to specialize has allowed the school to expand in some wild ways."
Moving to the school to a new location was not an easy task, nor was it an overnight occurrence. The school began preparing for its move two years prior with a public schools outreach program. It also held a free concert series at the Sulzer Library, then presented the new neighborhood with the first Folk and Roots Festival in the summer of‘98, two months before the official move.
"We had numerous meetings with community groups to talk about what the school would bring to the neighborhood in terms of more traffic, congestion, and parking, and really tried to be as responsible to the people of the community as we could," says Hirsch. "Anytime an institution of this size expands into a neighborhood like this, things are going to change. What you hope to do is make the majority of these changes positive ones, and try to work as hard as you can on whatever negatives that might come with."
Mary Corrado is a neighbor of the Old Town School. She lives just a couple of blocks away and her daughter attends classes there. According to Corrado, parking in the area was immediately more difficult after the school opened, but overall, she feels the school’s presence in her neighborhood has been beneficial.
"Some neighbors seem to resent that they’re here, but they’ve clearly made an attempt to be a positive and friendly place," says Corrado. "I am glad they’re here and am taking advantage of the fact that they are within walking distance."
The January 2000 session at the Old Town School had more than 5,500 students from all walks of life. According to Hirsch, the demographic of the school changes by the hour — in the morning it’s the little kids, in the early afternoon the teenagers come, and in the evening it’s the adult classes. The adult classes generally are made up of people in their early twenties to mid-forties; they are of mixed income levels and tend to be highly educated.
One of the greatest successes of the Old Town School is Wiggleworms, a music program geared to children from age six months through age three. Wiggleworms exposes children to music and rhythm to help with verbal and finemotor skills development by connecting parts of the brain in a way that only music can.
"The concept behind the program is that children start learning almost from the second they leave the womb," says Hirsch. "Research has proven that children who start music very young test on average 30 to 40 percent higher [on standard aptitude tests] as adults." There are close to 2,300 children enrolled in the school on a weekly basis, and approximately 1,800 of those are Wiggleworms. The school maintains almost a hundred classes a week for the Wiggleworms, including classes in Hyde Park, Evanston, Highland Park, and Hinsdale.
The Old Town School of Folk Music has embraced its role as a leader in bringing new cultural opportunities to the city while it continues to blossom into one of Chicago’s extraordinary treasures. The school has come a long way since Jim Hirsch took the reigns, and he is sincerely excited about the future. He feels there are some interesting opportunities to serve people in ways they’ve only started to imagine, and he hopes the school can continue being a leader in terms of bringing different types of music to a wider audience.
"I think we’ve barely scratched the surface of what we can do," Hirsch says. "There’s something happening here that people are connecting with musically and socially. We’ve done a good job of pulling it all together — and haven’t screwed it up too badly yet."
Resources
Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago; 909 W. Armitage Avenue, Chicago
Tuition at the Old Town School is $110 for an eight-week semester, or $100 if preregistered by the cutoff date a week prior to the start of classes. The new session of adult and children’s classes begins April 24.
Wiggleworm classes meet for 45 minutes for 8 weeks during the summer, and for 16 weeks in fall, winter, and spring. Cost is $80 per child for the summer session, and $160 per child for fall, winter, and spring sessions.
The Different Strummer is the school’s music store and is located in the new building. The new store is approximately four times larger than the old one and houses a great selection of instruments, audio CDs, and sheet music.
The resource center is located in the basement of the school’s new location. It is open to the public and contains archives of recordings, photos, books, and videos.
The school also presents special events, concerts, and free workshops in the performance center at the North Lincoln location.
For more information on the Old Town School of Folk Music, classes, or events and concerts, call 773-728-6000 or visit the school’s web site.