WORTHINGTON -- Artist-in-residence Soli Hughes returns to Worthington schools every other year bringing students music interwoven with history, geography and math -- along with a dose of the reality of the music industry for star-struck kids.
This year, Hughes' two-week residency began March 3 and will culminate in an ethnic celebration at 2 p.m. March 14 in the Prairie Elementary gym, featuring Hughes and the fourth- and fifth-graders he has been working with.
"I love what I do," Hughes said of his musical career and his work with students. "... I have an interest in every student."
In the half-hour Hughes typically has with classes at Prairie, he helps them practice drum rhythms and teaches them songs that run the gamut of the African-American experience in America.
In Hughes' "Africa to America" elementary-level residency, students learn about the slave trade and how it influenced music while learning the words to "Follow the Drinking Gourd," a song giving directions to a house where escaping slaves would be safe. A traditional African song provides the framework for the rhythms and music the slaves brought to America. While learning to sing "Mustang Sally," kids find out how rhythm and blues developed.
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Hughes also teaches students about how the music industry really works, and that there is a major difference between having a hit song and having a career in the music business.
"Students need to know at the mega-success level, there's only a very small percentage (of musicians) that make it to mega-stardom," Hughes explained. "Most people need to work in between."
Diversity is another major theme in Hughes' work.
"Diversity starts with knowing who you are yourself. And you never know (about people) by looking at them," Hughes explained.
Hughes has done residencies for schools for 13 years and has visited Worthington Middle School in 2004, 2006 and 2008, and Prairie Elementary in 2006 and 2008.
His music background includes studying music at the Madrid Conservatory in Spain, classical music at Roosevelt University, Chicago, Ill., and jazz in Evanston, Chicago. For a year, Hughes studied black music at Macalester College, St. Paul, and then studied composition and theory in Moorhead.
He plays guitar, bass, drums and piano, but Hughes' favorite instrument is the acoustic guitar, with no electronic augmentation.
As a child, it took Hughes three years of begging to get his parents to buy him a guitar -- a $19.85 oak Kingston made in Japan that he still owns.
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"Prior to that, I used to stand in front of the mirror with a broomstick," Hughes said, laughing.
His first guitar lesson featured no playing, but did contain a life lesson about music Hughes has always carried with him. The following months were spent trying to learn a chord so difficult that "for a while, (Hughes) went back to the broom."
The broom days didn't last long. Hughes became a professional musician and started touring. While touring, he started talking to kids, who generally had some odd ideas about the music industry, becoming a musician and becoming a rock star.
Hughes decided to help schools supplement their traditional technical programs and put together two programs -- "Africa to America" for fourth- through 12th-grade students and "Music and the Media: Magic or Madness" for sixth- through 12th-grade students.
Many of Hughes' lessons are life lessons.
"What defines you? It should always be your deeds and who you are that defines you," Hughes said, contrasting deeds with wealth and success.
