♪ Opening theme music ♪
Hello, and welcome to this episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
My name is Diane Kolin.
This series presents artists, academics, and project leaders who dedicate their
time and energy to a better accessibility for people with disabilities in the arts.
You can find more of these conversations on our website, artsably.com,
which is spelled A-R-T-S-A-B-L-Y dot com.
♪ Theme music ♪
Today, ArtsAbly is in conversation with Heather White Luckow,
aka Heather Feather, a children's performer and educator
and a musicologist based in Montreal, in Canada.
You can find the resources mentioned by Heather Feather during this episode
on ArtsAbly's website in the blog section.
[Heather counts in rhythm.] One, two,
One, two, three, four.
♪ Guitar and battery playing the intro of Fill Your Bucket ♪
[Heather sings] I have a happiness bucket inside me,
and you have one as well.
When the buckets are full, we're really happy.
But when they are empty, we don't feel so swell.
When we are down, we can do things that feel good,
like ride a bike or joke with a friend.
We each have the power to choose to do happy things, to fill our bucket,
to feel better again.
Fill up your bucket, fill up your bucket.
There's a bucket for you, a bucket for me,
for all of your friends and your whole family.
[The band plays.]
[End of the excerpt.]
Welcome to this new episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
Today, I am with Heather White Luckow aka Heather Feather
who is a children's performer and educator and also musicologist
based in Montreal, in Canada. Welcome, Heather.
Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here.
Well, you have an impressive
field of activities in what you call
'Kindie' music, which is kids and indie music combined.
I love this term, by the way.
When did that all start?
What led you to that work with children?
As a musician yourself, yourself,
where did it start?
My name is Heather.
I have multiple sclerosis.
Today actually is the first day of Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month in Canada.
Orange is one of my theme colors when I perform because it's an important aspect
of who I am and who I present to children.
How did I start in music?
I think in the province of Newfoundland, we are born singing, and
it's a very musical place.
All my relatives are very musical.
My dad is a very, very good amateur guitarist.
He was an English professor and then an English teacher.
My mother has a beautiful voice, and my whole family sang,
and like many other families, whenever we were together, we didn't watch TV,
we didn't play a board game, we sang.
This was how culture is handed down, how lessons are learned,
how entertainment is had.
Music was always important to me growing up in my family and in my culture.
I wanted to be a classical musician,
and I focused on classical music all the way through.
I think I first heard my first atonal, so 20th century, not tonal,
not with scales, but more mathematically oriented music when I was 12,
and I was instantly drawn to it, which is a little bit odd, I think.
But at least my piano teacher told me it was very odd.
But I loved it, and I wanted to know how it worked.
I started to play the French horn,
as a joke, because I was bored playing
clarinet, and my band director said, Well, why don't you take this the supply closet
over the summer and I'll give you a record,
so you know how it sounds, like a 33, and a book to learn the notes.
I taught myself to play over the summer, and that became
my primary instrument along with singing.
I started my undergraduate and started writing music then.
My interest was fiddle music.
I wanted to compose for a film, and for now, the equivalent
of writing for prompts for Netflix.
I got a scholarship to go to Bowling Green State University
in Ohio, so I continued on there as a composer and then a music theorist.
In French, we say it's "musicologie," it's kind of the same field,
but I'm a little bit more on the numbers side in theory.
I came back to Canada to live in Montreal to do my PhD in that field.
Up until then, I had always performed professionally
or semi-professionally on the side, either on my call, on my horn, or
singing, and talk everywhere I was.
So teaching also runs in the family.
And then I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and everything changed.
And it was as I was finishing the PhD.
I took I took a few years off to figure out what I was going to do next.
I started family with my husband, and I just loved being a mother.
And I had worked with children a lot when I was younger,
and I went back to working with children.
I was asked, Could you do a class at our for the preschoolers.
And that's how I started.
I hadn't worked with children for about 20 years.
And it was really, really rewarding.
And then I decided, This keeps me feeling healthy.
I feel happy. I don't feel stressed.
This is a really great way to spend my time.
I'm enjoying this, and I find it rewarding.
And the children and the families like it, too.
So that's how I started on that path in maybe 2012, 2013.
And then I started doing it full-time in 2017.
That's how I found children's music.
It was a big career shift, but in a way, a return to my roots because it's making
music within families, which is what I did growing up.
What made you record your first songs for children?
That's another good question.
I always write for the children that I have because children
are always exploring and growing and from an educational perspective
and from psychology of a whole child, you have all these different ways
in which children grow as they develop.
I wanted to make sure that to each program that I went to see,
because I started visiting preschools and schools,
that I was addressing the children's needs.
So specific songs were written at the request of the schools.
Like one school asked me to write a song about what's known in Quebec as
the construction holiday, when all the trucks stopped working for two weeks.
So I could teach them what that was.
Or another one wanted to teach about migration, the fall migration
of Canadian wildlife and where they go.
So that was a really packed song.
So all of these were in a little sketchbook.
When 2020 happened and the world stayed home,
all of a sudden, I wasn't going out anymore to work with children.
I thought, I should record some of these.
I started then refining my work and which ones I thought would be most
beneficial to a wide variety of children and not just the specific,
just some specific classes.
That's how that started.
It was a side project.
What's funny is that you have a classical training, but all these songs,
they have jazz, they have rock, they have guitar, they have
bounce arounds that change style.
All these collaborators you met to create these songs,
how did you meet them and what was the collaboration like?
That was really exciting.
I had an idea of what I wanted each song to sound like.
Part of being a music theorist and a composition teacher is knowing
how to write colors of instruments and in different styles to
make it sound like it's in a style.
I knew I did want jazz musicians because I wanted everything to be
united through jazz and swing.
I started looking for jazz musicians in Montreal.
I started with my friend Stratsimir Dimitrov,
who is one of the co-owners of Alchemist Studios in Montreal North.
He said, Well, I have some fellows that I usually play with.
Let's start with Jim Doxas.
He's a fabulous jazz drummer, and he's high in demand internationally,
and especially between the Montreal to New York quarter.
Then Jim said, Well, I've got this, my best friend, Adrian Vedady, plays bass,
so let's take him along.
As the band got recruited, we recorded that first album together.
It was a wonderful experience.
Going on to the second album, people had changed what they were doing.
At the time, we were still a little bit in lockdown, so they had more time
to record, and now everybody's everywhere.
The only person who was able to return was the pianist,
but we also then recruited still people from within the jazz community
and I also decided to work with a man named Dean Jones, who has won Grammy Awards
for producing children's music.
He's done writing for Nickelodeon, for Disney.
I think he's done Sesame Street.
I thought, I want to bring this second album
to somebody who knows the commercial market because I know what I like,
but would other people like it, too?
Because there is that commercial aspect.
You want your music heard, but it needs to be accessible.
We also do want people to stream it and try to be interested in listening to it.
Working with Dean was really, really fun.
I went to about an hour and a half north of New York City in September
and took, again, my teaching sketchbook.
I had 15, 20 songs, and I opened it up and I said, This is what I have.
Let's pick up the 10 and make an album out of it.
He said, This is going to be a lot of fun.
We jammed and then we picked eight to start with, and then the rest was
done between Montreal and New York.
He also has a circle of musicians, professional special musicians,
primarily that play in New York City, and they came out to record as well.
It was neat. It was two studios, two countries, and the tracks were being emailed back and forth.
It was super fun.
There is also a strong education component in these songs.
When you teach children these songs, how do you work with them?
What's the process of explaining what immigration is or what fruits are
or what the dinosaur is, all that?
That's fun.
Children are like sponges and they love to learn.
They're the songs that are very much the learning about the natural world,
learning about science.
When children have music to attach facts onto,
it sinks in a lot better.
Music is used in collaboration with other things when we teach in all subjects.
There's going to be your math teacher in school.
My son's math teacher in grade five brought in a lot of music
about math to help them remember how to do order operations or something.
I just did the same thing.
Very, very fun.
Then there's different types of music that I write to make sure
that it's not just cognitive.
For instance, grows to fine motor.
I work with a lot of children that might have cerebral palsy.
They might have other differences or some challenges.
Then you have your children with no challenges, but they are all
trying to achieve milestones.
As we grow, the normal progression of a healthy child from
crawling to bouncing, to be able to stand, to bounce, and then to jump.
Then first it's going to be one foot, and then it's going to be two feet.
To write songs that challenge the child to achieve the milestone.
Then the latest album is more social emotional growth.
It has to do with how to create community.
Disability plays a large part in this one, as well as racism,
standing up against - saying diversity is a good thing, and encouraging children
to not judge a book by its cover and to to listen to these little stories
that can be taken at face value, but you can also think,
Wait, I can ask them later.
Do you think that the shark was really a mean guy in that song,
or did he just want to play?
But you were afraid when he came out because he was a shark, right?
He didn't want to eat his friends.
In this song, he had a birthday cake, and he liked to bake,
and he wanted to share his birthday cake.
Can you tell us more about this album?
This album is super exciting.
It's called "Together," and it's probably the best word I could think of.
Short to the point about everyone has a role in society.
Everyone has importance.
Everyone has value.
Everyone has something to bring to the table.
As human beings in the same world, we are better when we work together,
when we're helping one another, when we're supporting one another.
The first song in the album is called Party, and it starts out
The first verse is, If you walk or if you roll, if you use a walker or
a cane or a chair, just come in the door.
It don't matter how you move, it only matters that you came.
Because everyone in the world is unique, but we're all the same.
We're all the same in that. In an ideal world, we're all welcome to the party.
Everyone is welcome. We make space for everyone.
Some songs about how we can...
Children, as they're growing, they depend on their parents when they
fall down to say, It's okay, it's going to be all right.
Around the age of four, they start to self-regulate,
so they are able to pull themselves together and tell themselves, Oh,
that's okay, I'll be fine, and to calm themselves.
So even starting at three, and then at four,
they're moving away from the parents and they're doing more
interpersonal relationships.
And so a song, Fill Your Bucket, is about that.
So when I'm sad, I can choose to I fill up my own
happiness bucket that's inside of me.
I carry it wherever I go.
The only purpose of it is to hold my happy feelings about myself.
But when I'm sad, I can do something for myself.
I don't need it from the outside.
It's not extrinsic, it's intrinsic.
For me, I ride a bicycle, and that's the lyrics I used,
or joke with a friend, that fills my happiness bucket.
Now, did you know that you can fill somebody else's happiness bucket at the same time?
I can say that: My friend, would you like to play together?
Would you like to play a game?
Would you like to go to a movie?
All of a sudden, I'm happy, so I'm with my friend, but they're happy
because I made them happy at the same time.
Or you give a friend a compliment, and when they're happy,
it in turn makes you happy.
You can also protect your bucket from other people being mean,
put a lid on your bucket.
We still lead with kindness.
We try to give good examples so that that person will not be a bucket
dipper and will be able to fill up their own bucket someday.
Then there are other songs about inclusion from all different perspectives of
everybody needs someone to cheer for them.
Everybody needs a great big hug.
Everybody needs someone to know their name.
Find someone sitting on their own and give them some love.
Then the chorus is from the perspective of the child.
I only want to be part of your game, so please include me.
Don't look past me.
I need some friends who know my name, so please include me and love me who I am.
These are songs for children that are starting at four, but an older
set than the last album.
This new one is more, I'm going to say K to 6, up to grade 6 to grade 7.
And yeah, trying to make the world a more kind, mutually supportive place
where we cheer on our friends because the reference.
This one song, If we are in a race and you win, I don't need to be sad.
Even though I lost, you're my friend, so I should
celebrate you because you're my friend.
And when I celebrate you, that makes me happy, too.
This is the last album that you released, right?
This is the one that's coming out in June, and that single is out.
The three songs we just chatted about, The Bucket Song, Party, and Happy For You,
have all been released as singles.
They're out now. They've been out for a few months.
What's the plan with this album launch?
Are you going to tour?
I hope so.
There are some things in the works, but it hasn't been finalized.
I'm hoping to do a lot of school shows.
To do them in blocks where I can take it.
Then to have songs from my last album, I already have them in French.
When I go elsewhere in Canada, I can do a bilingual show.
When we're talking about healthy eating, because you were talking about the one
with the "why do we eat healthy?"
I'm saying, I can eat a rainbow.
Why I eat the rainbow?
Because it helps me grow up to be big and strong.
That one's easily translated.
"Je peux manger une banane," instead of "I can eat a banana."
I've been working on that so that, yeah, it'll be a bilingual will show,
with bilingual question and answer periods.
I hope it will - These songs are meant
to spark conversation, to make you think.
There's often a lot of different layers in there.
It's accessible for a kindergarten or it's accessible for a three-year-old.
But a kid in grade six is going to read a lot more into it,
and they're going to get the much bigger picture, probably at the adult level.
We could do those with the songs.
It's the questions that get asked even within the family.
Oh, well, I really thought that ending was surprising.
I wasn't expecting that to happen.
Why did that happen? What does that mean?
One thing that is interesting is you created your music company
with the idea to put the children and the parents together
in a room and to make them work together on these songs or
have fun together on these songs.
What was the idea behind the company?
Am I correct by assuming that?
Yeah. That's the other part of what I do is called WeeJam.
Before I was a performer, I created a parent
and child music company that's what was then hired up to go into preschools
with the educators of the children in place of the parents of the children.
The idea is that when I was growing up in New Finland, I wasn't just
observing and listening to music.
I was actively making the music with my family.
It was a collaborative activity that meant a lot more
because there are prosocial bonds that can be formed when we make music together.
There are things that we create.
It's like it's bigger than the sum of its parts.
I wanted to bring that to families.
Some families, the parents don't know how to play any instruments.
I have 10-12 ukuleles on the wall,
and I have them painted with nail polish for the fingerings.
Children are working on their fine motor skills and their pincer grip
by learning to play a C-chord.
Then eventually, they get to the right fingering.
But the parents are doing it too.
The parents go out and buy the ukulele, and then they go home,
and now all of a sudden they have two, and daddy and child are playing together.
Yeah, that's very nice.
It's really, really rewarding, honestly, to see
parents interacting with your children at their level and to see them growing together.
The parents actually modeling, it's okay, I'm learning, too.
That's very special.
Children can go back at home and say...
You remember the part where...
Who are you when you're teaching these songs? You're Heather Feather?
Sometimes. Sometimes I'm not.
It depends on where I am.
The oldest classes that I have at the preschools and in
my home studio, I can be. Absolutely.
The children are able to understand.
I also take babies, so that's very much more on developmental milestones.
You have your spheres of language, cognitive development,
physical development, finding gross motor skills in your language.
So getting those in there and just encouraging the parents to have
fun with the children so that as they grow, they can grow through my program.
Some of them go off, they do other things.
Some go for a year and then come back.
So they pop in and out of the program.
And as long as the children come back into an age-appropriate class,
it's like they never left.
Because those children are also collaborative and they
work with one another.
One child can go up to the other and say, Try using this finger instead of this one
because they interact like a family.
They've internalized the social lessons of helping.
Then in other school, you're Ms. Heather?
In some schools, they call me Heather Feather.
The name actually came because I am in Quebec and the children
couldn't say Heather at all.
I got "Eder," which was okay, but it's not a common name in Montreal.
It's an English name.
They knew, though, what a feather is.
Children, English or French, knew the word feather.
I guess they use them in arts and crafts.
In the preschool, they started calling me Ms. Fedda or Ms. Feather.
I thought, Well, I should call myself that because they can say that.
That's where Heather Feather came from.
Some call me Ms. Heather, some will say Heather Feather.
Whatever they call me, as long as we're learning and having fun.
But I'm thinking of these conversations at home where the child comes back
and says, Well, I don't understand exactly what...
I mean, I saw a song about accessibility and diversity and inclusion but
I don't understand really what it is.
Then it's up to parents to have this conversation with them.
But it's a fantastic starter to have these conversations.
Also, the parents sometimes don't have that - never had that conversation
before, whatever it is about
immigration or about human rights.
But that explained to children through songs.
I have a question that is related to that.
It's about the role of accessibility
in culture in general or in disability
culture, as we can sometimes call it in disability studies.
What is it for you to be in a world where you promote accessibility in the arts?
I like it. I only stepped into that part of the role in the last maybe two or three years.
Three years. Before that, I just didn't bring up that I had multiple sclerosis.
On the days that I wasn't feeling well, I didn't go into work.
Nobody really saw it, and nobody sees chronic fatigue.
If I have a problem with my hand and I can't finger-pick,
I could always bring the ukulele, and no one would know
that my fingers weren't working.
If I don't tell you, you won't know because I have my own coping mechanisms.
Stepping into that has been empowering and I really enjoy it.
I like the idea that being more open about it now and now moving to the other end
of actually promoting these rights, it gives others the courage to ask
for what they need, to not be afraid to disclose themselves,
to see themselves in you, and to say, Wow, okay, you figured out how you
can still work in this career.
Can we brainstorm?
How do I do it?
It's really, really rewarding.
I feel the same way as I do working with the children.
It's a privilege and an honor when somebody takes you into their
confidence in that way.
As for me being the one that's just sending it out there,
I find it's easy with children because they're understanding,
they want to understand, and they want to ask questions.
There's nothing wrong with letting them ask early.
Now, when I have a bad day, I can I remember times in the past couple
of years, I've taken my walker because I was so dizzy, I needed it.
A cane wasn't enough.
So I came in with my four wheeled walker with the seat so I could take
a break to sit, and I have my breaks.
And the children said, What is that, Heather Feather?
One of the Jewish schools I teach at, my bubs got one, but why do you have one?
You don't have white hair.
So it was a great discussion.
I explain why I use one, how it's a positive thing,
how it helps me to do what I want to do, just like you wear glasses and it
helps you to see further, right?
I can use this and I can go places
that I wouldn't be able to go to and I can go further.
What is adaptive equipment? Why do we use it?
What's a hearing aid? Why would you use that?
Does this make you any less pinnable? Well, no.
You're always going to find a child in each class that has some difference,
and the children have already accepted this one child.
Now it's me and I have a difference, and these couple of children have
a difference, and it just becomes a wonderful It's a whole thing.
It's funny because I'm also a voice teacher and I use a wheelchair.
I teach older kids.
I teach nine plus, until - not 18, but not far.
It was always interesting to see how
students react
to being in a room with someone in a wheelchair and not really asking
questions because my parents told me it's not really polite, right?
But at a certain point it was like, Can I ask a question?
Ah! Finally, go for it.
Ask any question.
Which is the mark of a true teacher.
You want the questions asked. Good for you.
Yes. [Laughs.]
With children, as you say, I also did ECM,
so Early Childhood Music,
and that's no problem.
I always had someone on my knees and someone like, Can I push you?
Or, Can I run after you?
Never had an issue with these children this age, four to maybe six.
They're very understanding, and they don't see anything as...
They don't see any differences as negative.
They just say it's a difference, but so what?
We know each other from an organization
called RAMPD, Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities.
First of all, you are a Pro Member of RAMPD,
meaning you're really embracing now this strength of you.
Also, we are not a lot of musicologists,
but I think you're the only
music professional who works with children.
I'm not sure, but I think you are in the whole pack of professionals,
and we have a lot right now. It's 80.
So thank you.
It's been a really great group to join.
It's fabulous. I'm really happy I did.
I know some teach younger children, but I don't think any teach -
any do songs for children themselves.
I'm so happy when I see our conversations in these groups that you can represent that.
I really like being able to do it, too,
because I only found out about RAMPD
through Andrew & Polly when they were nominated for a Grammy for
Best Children's Album of the Year.
Not last year, but the year before. Andrew is blind.
I saw him standing next to Lachi and thought,
Wait, what's this group called?
It's because I was following them on Instagram and I'm saying,
I'm so proud of you. Congratulations.
Then they said something about RAMPD.
Then I said, Well, what is RAMPD?
There's one other member that I know that does children's music.
Who's that?
They're Pro members, but they're lovely.
Andrew & Polly, and they're so talented.
Oh, yeah.
They live in California.
Yes, true.
I remember now.
Sorry, Andrew.
But I remember because that's the way I found out about the group.
Yes.
Yeah, it's a fantastic group.
They transformed the way the Grammy Awards are held.
They transformed discussions in the Recording Academy.
Lachi is really such a great motor of this group, really.
Absolutely.
When I was at Folk Alliance International representing RAMPD,
it was just wonderful to be able to have so many people that had come.
It's a similar thing.
They're either programming for festivals, they're venue owners,
and they want to know how to make sure that the spaces are more accessible.
Processes of application is including everybody, that there's
nobody that can't apply.
How do you make sure you're getting really representative?
Are you scaring people away that are part of the disabled community before they even
get a chance to think about going in the door?
Yeah, some really great discussions there.
Okay, so I have a last question for you.
It's about people who might have counted in your career or might have
motivated you, might have launched you to a certain path.
If you had to think of one or maybe two people who really were there in your
career for you, who would it be and why?
There are many for many of us.
I think the most impactful two were
the ones that saw that I was disabled
before I knew I was disabled and encouraged me to keep going.
They knew that I was finding it hard and said, But don't give up.
No, we don't know what's wrong with you, but keep going.
That was special.
In my undergraduate, I was having a lot of health problems,
and I was having problems walking and with numbness in one leg.
My French Horn teacher, who was also the head of theory,
and she taught musicology, said, I don't know what this is, but take
the day, go get a CAT scan or whatever.
I would be told, I worked with this lady for four years, and every time I went in,
I was, Oh, this is a migraine that's just showing
up as part of your motor problems, even if you don't have a headache,
or all kinds of strange things they are saying, We don't know what this is.
She always encouraged me to keep going.
Then also a lady that was the head of my department, she was my department
chair during the PhD, and we became good friends,
firstly because I answered her call for a library assistant
to go get her books to the library, because at the point,
she couldn't get her motorized wheelchair into the library.
There were renovations going on.
She introduced herself.
Her name is Eleanor Stubley, and she is also a musicologist,
conductor, and she taught music education courses at McGill [University].
She was a triple threat.
She was also a French horn player.
She had been in a chair for very long time, she had a rather
progressive form of multiple sclerosis.
Funny!
Dark sense of humor, soft-spoken, and just so capable.
She figured out I had multiple sclerosis before I knew what it was.
I remember once being upset in her office after we'd become friends, and I said,
I don't know what to do.
I saw a neurologist who can't diagnose me and said, I don't meet all the criteria.
She said, You should go to my neurologist.
She picked up her office phone, called her neurologist, and said,
I have an appointment next week. I have a student here.
I need you to give her that appointment.
And she passed over the phone. Because it's hard to get a specialist
in a Canadian healthcare system.
I went to see this specialist, her doctor, who diagnosed me right away.
Within a month, I was on some disease modification therapy.
She's also the one who encouraged me to take some time away
from teaching at McGill, from studying, to take a year of leave,
to take a maternity leave once I got married, to start a family,
that I could do it, and eventually to encourage me once we
figured out that it was stress of being in academia to step away.
I wouldn't be where I am if it wasn't for her.
I say, I don't owe someone my life, but I owe her my legs.
I would also in a chair by now if it was not for her and that diagnosis.
It was just an incredible gift.
Yes. People, I think, don't know, don't realize or don't really see what is happening.
When we are engaging ourselves with an academic career,
it's very stressful.
We try to do our best with the students.
But also,
what happened to you is that you didn't
have this role model before meeting her
who was like, Everything's going to be all right.
What's the name of your first teacher who you mentioned?
Her name was Kjellrun Hestekin.
She was a Norwegian lady. She was wonderful.
You have people who don't know what's happening, but who are just
cheering you up and saying everything's going to be all right.
But still, until you meet this person who's like, I know what's happening.
I went through that.
Then you can see things differently and saying, Okay, so I might be okay then.
Exactly.
That's why I'm happy to do what I do now with RAMPD, because now when I go
into a conference, I meet people who are where I was,
and I can be that person to them.
It's just a random encounter, but you never know how you affect
the lives of others and how a few kind words and then a quiet
conversation over coffee can help somebody get new perspective,
and they won't give up either.
They'll find a way to work around, because when you're disabled, as you know,
we have so many compensatory mechanisms, so many backup plans,
because we want to get where we're going or we just want to get
that job done that day.
Well, thank you so much for sharing these stories with us and
your testimonies and your songs.
We're going to share that with our listeners.
We're going to publish all important dates and links
on our website so that everybody can have a look at your work.
Thank you so much.
Well, have a fantastic day and maybe see you soon in the community.
You too. Hope to see you.
Yeah. Bye.
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