During our 2023 spring music camps, musician Ricky Frank offers a fiddle lesson to enthusiastic students at Arctic Village School.
Since we were able to get back to traveling at the end of March 2022—we have spent 40 weeks in villages leading Music and Culture School Camps that bring so much happiness and joy to students, elders, and communities. We’ve hired many more Native staff from the villages so we can spend additional time on culture, language and healthy living.
There are now many more young musicians and 1000’s of additional musical instruments in the villages thanks to support from schools, tribes, and individuals—along with some grants. Our curriculum (Volume 1, Volume 2 and Holiday videos, songbooks, fiddle tab) is available free for downloading on our webpage. We’ve also loaded our curriculum on jump drives so students, teachers, families, and musicians in villages without high speed internet can have access to these songs. And we’ve recorded songs in Gwich’in, Han Gwich’in, Deg Xinag, Koyukon, Inupiaq, and Tlingit.
We are looking for solid funding and hope to have good news soon on setting up an endowment fund and campaign along with funding to hire several full-time staff so our program can continue long into the future!
