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Talkin' Music - Episode 3: Beginnings: Instructional Program for Youth

When: June 13, 2025

In the 1960’s Dr. Patterson noticed a lack of participation from students of color in Ann Arbor’s public school music programs, an issue that still persists today. He founded the Our Own Thing Instructional Program to provide free instruments, instruction, and support for local youth. In this episode, we hear a lively discussion between Dr. Patterson and Sylvia Harmon, one of his earliest students.

Transcript

  • [00:00:02] INTRO: [MUSIC]
  • [00:00:27] JEFFREY PICKELL: Welcome to Talking Music, celebrating 50 plus years of the Willis C. Patterson Our Own Thing Chorale. I'm your host Jeffrey Pickell. In this episode, we're continuing our interview with Dr. Willis C. Patterson, founder of both Our Own Thing Chorale and the instructional program. And we're honored to have as our guest Sylvia Harmon, one of the original students of the instructional program, also an instructor later on. The instructional program geared to children was free, and the parents saw the opportunity to have an outlet, too, when Willis Patterson developed the Our Own Thing Chorale. Now we had a program for both parents and children, a remarkable success that continues to this day. Today, we are proud to share a conversation between a student and a teacher. Dr. Patterson has instructed thousands of students during his remarkable career as a renowned vocal performer, civil rights and social justice activist, conductor, teacher, professor, and academic administrator, some of whom even went on to professional careers in various fields of music. Along the way, many of these students have come to call him not only mentor but friend. Sylvia Harmon personifies the way in which Dr. Patterson has impacted a life, a philosophy, and a career. We welcome you with open arms, Sylvia Harmon, to share with us your personal journey and your connection with Dr. Patterson. To start off maybe, Sylvia, you could give us a little teeny background on how you met this fabulous human being that we love, Willis Patterson.
  • [00:02:37] SYLVIA HARMON: Now, I have to pull myself together. Something overcame me during your intro, and I'm actually dropping a couple of tears. I wasn't expecting this, but I'm pulling myself back together because Dr. Patterson truly has been a very strong figure in my life. It's really important day today for me to be able to express this. But the image that keeps going through my mind while I was waiting for this podcast to start was in the basement of the church. I took two classes there. I worked with the crafting teacher, which is a college student that came and taught us crafts, and I also worked with a cello teacher. But when I worked with the cello teacher, we worked quite intensely and Dr. Patterson would peek his nose in to make sure everything was okay. But when I worked with the crafting teacher, I got to see him in the hallways walking up and down. I tell you, to me, as an 11-year-old girl, Dr. Patterson was the king of Ann Arbor, Michigan. I remember he used to wear this long black coat to his calves and just glide through the hallways and the booming voice and checking in on everybody and I would just watch him. I even questioned if maybe he was even more handsome than my own father, then one day he showed up in a camel hair jacket, same length, big lapel, wavy hair, caramel color skin, and he took the baton from my father. Look, I just was so impressed by this man's energy, let alone the impact that he had on my life through the Our Own Thing program. People always talk about my confidence. Where do I get all my confidence from? I believe it started way back then. One memory I have is when we were on the corner doing a bucket drive. Well, we were up here with my sister. We had our buckets, and we were raising money to go to Interlochen National Music Camp. A lady walked up and she says, you're one of Dr. Patterson's kids. She said, I've been meaning to make a donation. She pulled out a checkbook. Now, this was way back in 1971 or 1972 around then. She pulled out her checkbook, and she wrote a $50 check, which to me, as a young girl back then was a huge amount of money. She gave me this check and asked me to make sure that I carried it directly to the church, and I did. I held onto it for dear life and the wind was blowing and the leaves were circulating, and I held that check and took it down and laid it on the table, and everyone was, wow, such a big donation. Well, I believe from that point on, that's when I realized that this little Black girl had some value in the community. That something was so valuable about me learning music that this woman would write such an extraordinary amount of money to donate towards this--not knowing that Interlochen was thousands of dollars [LAUGHTER]. I didn't know how expensive it was. It's even more now. Now, interesting enough. Fast forward 50 years, and just this summer, I think it was in July. I had some young boys doing a bucket drive at a festival to raise money, to go to a scholarship fund for them to go to an academy I started for teaching young people how to sell at fairs and festivals, Pop-Up Vendor Academy. I took a bunch of kids out from group homes. There were foster children that were in group homes, and I took them to this festival to give them a similar experience, and sure enough it happened, somebody walked up the boy gave the little spiel about what they were doing raising money for, and this lady pulled out, it wasn't 50, it was only $20. She put $20 in the fish bowl as her contribution. The boy who spoke to her was blown away. He didn't get over it for two weeks. He maybe still hasn't gotten over it. But every time I went back, I would give them lessons and then take them to festivals, and we would put them up in front of everybody, and he would tell the story what he said and how she gave him the money. It's so interesting how these scenarios just go on repeat one generation after another. Those are my first two little stories.
  • [00:07:36] WILLIS C. PATTERSON: Well, it's important for me to insert here, you were one of the most outstanding potential talents in the program. You were a natural for the cello. I was very impressed with your potential and your talent and your sister as well. I began to wonder whether you had had previous exposure to playing the cello. Had you?
  • [00:08:07] SYLVIA HARMON: Yes, I started in the sixth grade at Angel Elementary School. I didn't come to Our Own Thing until, I think the beginning of seventh grade, if I'm right, or the end of sixth grade, I'm not quite sure what year that was.
  • [00:08:25] WILLIS C. PATTERSON: Now, you had a sister who was a violinist, I believe.
  • [00:08:29] SYLVIA HARMON: She played the viola.
  • [00:08:30] WILLIS C. PATTERSON: She played viola. Now, your father and mother brought you to the initial Our Own Thing classes. I was impressed with that because I had not had that kind of parental support in my exposure to music. But I was very impressed and come to find out that your father was a very unusual man for the day and age.
  • [00:09:00] SYLVIA HARMON: Oh, yes.
  • [00:09:02] WILLIS C. PATTERSON: He was an inventor?
  • [00:09:04] SYLVIA HARMON: Yes, he was also the, what do we call it?
  • [00:09:07] WILLIS C. PATTERSON: First chairman of the board of Washtenaw Community College.
  • [00:09:13] SYLVIA HARMON: And the CEO.
  • [00:09:15] WILLIS C. PATTERSON: Didn't your mother play piano?
  • [00:09:17] SYLVIA HARMON: Yes, she did. Sight read at 98% accuracy.
  • [00:09:22] WILLIS C. PATTERSON: Yes.
  • [00:09:22] JEFFREY PICKELL: Dr. Patterson, give us a little feeling of what the instructional program was like and what your intention was for it.
  • [00:09:31] WILLIS C. PATTERSON: Well, the intention was to introduce the miracle, I would call it a miracle of music, and its impact or its potential impact on living to a group of youngsters who may not have had that opportunity before, particularly with stringed instruments, but with instruments in general. The cost for them, let alone the cost for instruction, was well beyond their family's means. Without music and its activity in my growth, I'm not sure I would have developed into anything other than an ill-suited youngster. But I couldn't have any lessons because my family couldn't afford them. I wanted to play the piano, and every now and then I'd sit down at a court at the piano in the church and figure out chords. But I had no success with it. When I advanced up to several decades later, it occurred to me that there were an awful lot of youngsters who were not quite as ill-suited as I to living a successful life, but who did not have the advantage of music. I said, hey, they've got to have this kind of experience just in case some of them had some of the same problems that I had. That was the whole idea behind the creation of the instructional program. The first place that I was assigned as a member of the faculty was my first summer was to teach university students and high school students at the National Music Camp at Interlochen, which is a program that was run by the University of Michigan. In fact, the University of Michigan's summer school was split between North Campus--well, it wasn't North Campus at that time--it was the main campus and Interlochen. I was able to observe and very much feed off what I saw the youngsters being so far advanced in their study of music. I felt, well, geez, if these kids in Ann Arbor, some of them who were really very advanced in study of music, could have that opportunity, they would be well on their way. My idea was, and I started with the bucket drive to see if I couldn't raise enough money to send a couple of kids or three or four or five or six or seven or eight to Interlochen and take advantage of that and have the magic of music play some of the important role that it played in my life.
  • [00:12:39] SYLVIA HARMON: Not only just the magic of music at Interlochen and for me, it was also being put in an international community.
  • [00:12:48] WILLIS C. PATTERSON: Yeah.
  • [00:12:49] SYLVIA HARMON: I shared bonds with people from all over the world. And also to learn alongside of prodigies. It forced me into a standard of excellence. Even the mentors that you assigned to me, they talk to me seriously, like, what are you going to do with this? You've got a talent. How are you going to make sure you make use of it? How are you going to serve with this talent? Well, I don't think I would have ever been spoken to that way if I hadn't been in Our Own Thing because before, okay, I was like, second chair in the All City Orchestra. I won't say nobody cared, but I wasn't Dr. Patterson's kid. [LAUGHTER] Until I became one of Dr. Patterson's kids, that's what put me on the map. [MUSIC]
  • [00:14:13] JEFFREY PICKELL: Welcome back to Talkin' Music. You've been listening to a composition performed by the chorale. We hope you've enjoyed it. Now back to the podcast.
  • [00:14:24] WILLIS C. PATTERSON: Well, now what caused you to begin a program modeled on Our Own Thing first in Africa?
  • [00:14:34] SYLVIA HARMON: Yes, my father moved us to Africa in 1977, when I was 16 years old. And it was very interesting the impact we had. The music scene was dominated by colonial rule. Basically, only British and Europeans were allowed, I guess, to play in the symphony orchestras until my sister and I showed up. They needed us. They needed somebody to play the solos for Saint-Saëns. My sister played in some quartet, I can't remember, but we were very competitive thanks to Interlochen. Interlochen teaches you to compete, right? Well, we were into it. [LAUGHTER] Actually what's interesting, though, is that in Africa, in Nairobi, Kenya, the people who broke the color bar at the National Kenyan Theater were two African American teenagers, myself and my sister. I became a professional cellist at age 16, playing in the music studios, playing at the National Theater, and playing for musicals, and they paid me. Later on, I went to university in the south of France in Aix-en-Provence. But when I came back to Nairobi, they were in desperate need of strings teachers. Normally, at that time, Americans wouldn't be allowed to have work permits, but because I could play and teach cello, I got a work permit to work in a boys school. That was a really nice thing. I taught as a music teacher for a few years, and that allowed me to start my business called In Spirit Arts. Eventually I became a singer for what do you call it, commercials. In fact, not too long ago, well, in my terms, maybe about 15 years ago, somebody said that still, you couldn't turn on the radio in Nairobi without hearing my voice at least once. [LAUGHTER] 'Cause they just kept playing those commercials for decades. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:16:57] WILLIS C. PATTERSON: Now, how did you manage to keep your vocal talent hidden from me?
  • [00:17:02] SYLVIA HARMON: Well, I'll tell you it's because my sisters could sing so much better. I always thought I was the worst singer in the family. [LAUGHTER] I didn't even try. But then I got some vocal lessons. I had a teacher, and apparently I got a little better. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:17:21] WILLIS C. PATTERSON: Yeah, well, that's marvelous. Do you remember any of the persons who were in the same time frame? I'm thinking of those two sisters that come to my mind are the Rush sisters.
  • [00:17:39] SYLVIA HARMON: That's what they were called. Yes, of course now.
  • [00:17:43] WILLIS C. PATTERSON: These were daughters of Johnnie Rush, the barber. The one went into a curriculum in musical theater in a school in North Carolina. And the other, it seems like to me, she went to Xavier University in New Orleans, a historically Black college. Rhonda.
  • [00:18:06] SYLVIA HARMON: Rhonda. Yes, that was her name.
  • [00:18:08] WILLIS C. PATTERSON: Yes.
  • [00:18:10] SYLVIA HARMON: When we went to Africa, I lost touch. That was before the Internet, before social media. [LAUGHTER] I lost touch with a lot of people.
  • [00:18:19] WILLIS C. PATTERSON: Well, I'm just very impressed with how you were able to expand the impact in your life of your experiences in the Our Own Thing instructional program.
  • [00:18:36] SYLVIA HARMON: Thank you.
  • [00:18:37] WILLIS C. PATTERSON: You taught for a while. [OVERLAPPING]
  • [00:18:42] SYLVIA HARMON: Yes, I taught cello. I taught strings at an all-boys school in Nairobi, a very prestigious boys school. I got to teach the president's children and the vice president's children. It was a same-age boys school, and I did wonderful things there. We started a cadet orchestra. Of course, in line with your philosophy, I just wanted all the kids to have that experience, whether they were going to become musicians or not. But it's interesting because I got a message, I'm in touch with about six or seven of my former students till today on social media. Almost every week, one of them pops up, and one of the guys sent me a letter. He's a famous musician in Kenya now, and he wrote me a letter, if I can remember how he wrote, he wrote saying that, he remembers it like it was Monday. That's what he said. "I remember like it was Monday when you showed me all the strings and the names of the strings and the difference between metallic and the parts of the guitar." That really made me feel good. [LAUGHTER] He remembered it like it was Monday, how I started him off playing the guitar. I can imagine you have a lot of those testimonials, don't you?
  • [00:20:02] WILLIS C. PATTERSON: Yeah. That's great. Well, to say the least, it's a very vivid testimony to the riches and the healing power of music. I experienced it in myself, but I'm just very excited to know that you experienced it, and you passed that experience on over the years to so many others.
  • [00:20:33] SYLVIA HARMON: I think also what music does for you is, I have absolutely no stage fright, at all. If anything, I'm overly relaxed on stage, because you prepare, you go out, and you wow the crowd. You practice like crazy. I think as a kid, I practiced 3 to 3 1/2 hours a day in junior high school. Everybody else was running off, getting in trouble, and there I was playing my cello, carrying my cello around, jumping on buses with it, going up to North Campus. Because my teacher from our own thing, he would show me off to his professors, so I would have assignments from both of them. It definitely kept me out of trouble, that's for sure. Just building up that sense of confidence and that long protracted effort, I find that especially nowadays, young people don't know what it takes to develop an excellence, to develop a talent, just little by little, daily getting better and better. My teachers had me playing scales and arpeggios and studies, and very little of the fun stuff, just developing my dexterity and pulling it all together, and I think that served me through life.
  • [00:21:57] WILLIS C. PATTERSON: Tell me now, has your sister continued in a similar fashion with her experiences in Our Own Thing?
  • [00:22:07] SYLVIA HARMON: She kept up. She went to University of San Diego to study music therapy, but then she ended up switching over to computers. I remember she would accompany other musicians in Kenya, but then she left Kenya, so after that, I don't think so. For us, music was, I don't want to say a stepping stone. How can I express it? What's the word? What am I trying to say, Jeffrey? Tell me. Music was a catalyst for us becoming who we are. For one, I can say it was really a shield against racism. It still is a shield against racism, because as soon as I say I was a professional cellist at age 16, I went to Interlochen National Music Academy, it's like, oh. I believe that was by intentional design, and I believe that's why you saw my parents bringing us down to the church with so much enthusiasm, for us to be part of that program. Because I knew, everything I've ever made, all the business income I've ever had, has come from something I started learning after school as a child.
  • [00:23:30] JEFFREY PICKELL: Dr. Patterson, maybe the greatest influence you have on Sylvia is not so much just music, but the ability to help other people to achieve their goals and their ambitions. Maybe that's one of the greatest gifts that you offer all of us who love you and know you.
  • [00:23:56] SYLVIA HARMON: I would say so. Also, just to know that one guy could gather together some students, and some college students went and hooked something up in the basement of a church, that's literally propelled me into a different life. You see? Just knowledge of that, how much impact it had on me, lets me know, like I was just talking to somebody last week about doing a program a makers space, and you're going to have a little event. She said, "It's just a bunch of kids." I said,"Hold on, I take this very seriously. I take this extremely seriously because I know how much just one experience like that over a few months can have on a person's life, because it happened to me."
  • [00:24:43] JEFFREY PICKELL: Willis, music was your vehicle for doing these wonderful things. Sylvia, you're following that lead in your own fashion, in your own special way, being able to give people opportunities that they never had before. I think you are two both amazing people, and I'm proud to know both of you. That's a good conclusion to our podcast, and I enjoyed listening to every bit of the talks you had between the two of you. I hope everybody else who hears this gets the same pleasure. Thank you very much, and hopefully we'll do this some more. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:25:34] WILLIS C. PATTERSON: Thank you, Sylvia, and my word to you is to keep on keeping on.
  • [00:25:40] SYLVIA HARMON: Thank you so much. I might keep on keeping on right up to Ann Arbor, Michigan to pay you a visit and to give you a real nice bear hug because I do appreciate you so much.
  • [00:25:52] JEFFREY PICKELL: You've been listening to Talkin' Music, a podcast series featuring 50 years of the Willis C. Patterson Our Own Thing Chorale. Special thanks goes to the Ann Arbor District Library in partnership with their Fifth Avenue Studios. Stay tuned for upcoming episodes when we will highlight members of the chorale from the 1970s to 2024, including interviews with a number of surprise guests who went on from their OOTC days to national and international prominence. We look forward to your sharing this musical journey with us. I am your host, Jeffrey Pickell. Thank you. [MUSIC]