East of River Boys and Girls Steelband

 Albert Strong success story…

 Being a statistic was a term often heard as a young boy growing up in DC public school system. It almost seemed that no matter what walk of life you came from, you were still some type of statistic, and that your main focus as a young black male was to ensure that you come out on the statistical side that didn’t involve you getting shot or arrested. Yet growing up in Washington, DC was still quite a unique experience, and one that I highly value to this day. If nothing else you learned what to do, and what not to do. It seemed that many of my early peers were no so much looking for a way out, but merely surviving the day-to-day life situations. One way that we did this was through music. Myself, and many of the kids in the neighborhood would jam on old buckets, and mimic many of the rhythms and songs we heard on the radio. For us this was just entertainment and a way to temporarily disappear from our current environment. For me however, this interest for drumming would prove useful some years later when I joined The East of The River Boys and Girls Steelband, a group like no other that I had seen before.

 Drum set was actually my first instrument, purchased by my father one Christmas when I was too young to understand the importance of having a good teacher. It didn’t’ last very long, maybe a week or two after I had been playing on it, it had disintegrated into many little pieces that I had no idea where they were originally located on the drums. My second, instrument and love would be the trumpet, which I began playing in elementary school, and still no teacher. Right around the time I was fourteen years or so I began taking trumpet lessons and then found my new love, the steelpan. Many aspects of playing the steeldrum came very easily, as did occasionally rehearsing the band when our director wasn’t there. Most importantly, when many of my friends were possibly getting into trouble in the neighborhood, I was at band practice, and loving the experience. The band and the East of The River organization was more like a family than a band, and for most of the children in the group, this was exactly what we needed. Many of us coming from broken homes, and so in need of quality guidance and the occasional disciplining when we acted less that responsible.

 East of the River’s rigorous performance and rehearsal schedule was also a deterrent from getting into trouble for the children involved. Being able to perform and travel both nationally and abroad, would all equate to experiences that would serve me well in the future when I would become a professional musician/educator. Shortly after joining the Steelband I was accepted into the Duke Ellington School of The Performing Arts as a trumpet major, and when these two worlds met, I knew then that I wanted to be a professional musician. Life became so much more meaningful and exciting as a member of the band, and to see how our approach to performing the music of the Caribbean would affect average people was really rewarding.

 Through the hard work and discipline that I learned while a member of The East of The River program, I have been able to completely fund my college education by being awarded full scholarships to North Carolina Central University’s Jazz Studies Program as well as Northern Illinois University’s Jazz Studies program where I received my Master’s degree in Jazz Performance/Pedagogy. Because of my Steelpan experience, I was asked to record on one NCCU's jazz band recordings as a featured soloist on the steelpan. And during my time at NIU, joined one of the Steelband ensembles. It seemed as if steelpan had spread over night; when I first began playing, it was not a well-known instrument in the USA, but by the time I had gotten to graduate school many programs offered it as a major. Just proof that quality; innovation, and music can prevail through many obstacles.

 I am forever grateful for the opportunities that I have been afforded as a result of my study of the steelpan and music, and most importantly for the leaders at The East of The River Boys and Girls Steelband for believing in me, and all of my band mates.

 Currently, I live in Raleigh, NC and serve as a full-time music instructor at St. Augustine’s College, as well as being an adjunct instructor of trumpet at both NCCU, and Shaw University. In these roles, I consistently share many of the lessons that I learned as a young music student with the East of The River Program, and am constantly reminded to continue to believe in my students, the way my mentors believed in me.

#give2max