Band Students Take Part in Percussion Workshops

Tom Teasley leads a percussion workshop for students at Bassett High School.

Piedmont Arts brings master percussionist

Tom Teasley to area high schools

As part of Piedmont Arts’ educational outreach program, about 150 area high school students at Martinsville High School and Bassett High School were introduced to Tom Weasley, world percussionist, on Friday, Dec. 16.

Tom, who works as a percussionist and also a cultural envoy, presented a workshop at each high school with some of the band students and taught them with different techniques and hand drums from all over the world. Tom also showed the students digital looping – a way to combine very old traditional hand drums with modern technology and record beats to layer sounds. After the workshops, there was a performance at Bassett High School. 

In all three events, Tom taught the students in the Indian tradition of solkattu, which is a spoken rhythm that Indian master percussionists learn and pass down. Those quick syllables stick, and suddenly play silently in the mind while walking down the street. Most striking about the art of solkattu, it is percussion with no drum, only the voice, and anyone can work at it.  

Piedmont Arts will be working with Tom Teasley in the future, and hopefully in the meantime, students will be keeping the beat ta ta ti ki ta—the beat goes on.