About eight years ago, Bau Graves, the former executive director of the Old Town School of Folk Music, expanded the school’s community ventures with Music Moves.
Through grant-funded programming, Music Moves offers arts and wellness programs to roughly 30 community partners and schools across 10 Chicago neighborhoods, including Austin.
Graves “was really interested in challenging the popular narrative of the school, which is that it primarily serves affluent white families on the North Side,” said Arif Smith, Music Moves’ manager.
Music Moves started in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, offering workshops on hip-hop lyricism, beat making and yoga. But its educational and concert programming quickly expanded to other neighborhoods, including those on the West Side, that have experienced historic economic disinvestment.
“What are the ways that we can invest in our communities through arts and education?” Smith said about Music Moves’ mission. “And then using that as a way to provide healing, to uplift the cultural efforts that are already happening and introduce new cultural initiatives.”
In Austin, Music Moves puts on its Global Music Series at the Kehrien Center for the Arts and Catalyst Circle Rock, both on West Washington Boulevard. Last year, the music series included two school performances and community concerts in May and October. Last September, Music Moves put on the Shrines of Brass West, a brass band parade that started at Columbus Park and ended at Austin Town Hall.
To offer programming specific to age and interest, Music Moves created its Folk Arts Laboratory model. This model has three phases of sorts: exposure, exploration and endowment.
While exposure includes offering workshops and concerts across neighborhoods, exploration takes that to the next step.
“Once you’ve been introduced to the idea, here’s an opportunity for you to deepen your understanding and connection to this particular artistic discipline or cultural tradition,” Smith said of the exploration portion of the model. This might take the form of a 10-week class, which Music Moves offers once a season, or a 72-hour intensive deep dive on a topic like Afro-Cuban dance or Capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art. This phase can last anywhere from a few weeks to a few years.
Finally, endowment is for those dedicated to a specific area of the arts. They have the opportunity for paid arts training so that they can become teachers or professionals.
“If it’s West African dance, I’m training with some of the best West African dance instructors in the city or I’m being contracted to come in to develop choreography for a theater production,” Smith said of the goal of the endowment portion of the model.
While Music Moves’ five-year plan is more focused on exposure and exploration, endowment experiences are often woven into those two phases.
“It’s not like exposure, exploration and endowment are in silos,” Smith said. For example, some apprentices in the endowment phase are teachers at exposure or exploration dance classes.
For those in the exposure phase, Music Moves offers a handful of upcoming programming at Dorchester Arts + Housing Collaborative on the South Side.
- West African Dance with Maila Sylla on Tuesdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
- Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba with Lauren Brooks on March 7 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
- Second Line workshop with the Windy City Ramblers on March 14 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. “It’s really focused on New Orleans-style, second line footwork, buckjumping and understanding the relationship between movement and the dance,” Smith said of second line.
- Haitian Folkloric Dance Workshop with Daniel Desir on March 21 from 6:30-8:00 p.m.
- Rueda de Casino Workshop with Denita Inez on February 22 and March 28 from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. “This is a Cuban dance tradition that’s deeply informed by Afro-Cuban song and rumba,” Smith said about Rueda de Casino. “It’s kind of like salsa-square dancing.”
- Saturdays through April 6, from 11 a.m. to noon, Music Moves hosts South Side Fireflies, its early childhood music program for toddlers and preschoolers.
- Also, on Saturdays through April 6, from 12:30 to 2 p.m., Gingarte Capoeira will host Capoeira
All programming includes music performed by live bands and is free to the public.
“We really wanted to make it accessible and remove any disincentives,” Smith said. “It’s also one of the greatest ways that we can invest in our communities.”
