When Michael Wingfield comes to Aroostook County, people of all ages feel the pulse and learn the history of ancient cultural traditions they may not otherwise experience.
Wingfield of Portland is a performer and educator dedicated to honoring his ancestors by engaging others in African and Caribbean percussive arts.
On April 11, the auditorium at Wieden Hall of the University of Maine at Presque Isle resounded with the rhythms of Africa and Latin America.
The drummers were students and teachers from Presque Isle schools.
The performance was the centerpiece of a three-day visit by Wingfield, starting with a workshop for adults in Houlton and including sessions with Presque Isle students at all levels — from an elementary school special education class to middle and high school band and percussion classes to college students studying the arts.
Wingfield has been traveling to the county since 2004, leading workshops in schools from southern Aroostook to Fort Kent and giving public performances, typically calling students from the audience to perform with him.
Currently teaching Afro-Latin music as a guest lecturer at Bowdoin College, his visit was funded in part by the School Administrative District 1 Gifted and Talented Program and the UMPI Distinguished Lecture Series.
Billed as “The Rhythm and Song of the African New World,” Wingfield’s work is dedicated to the African ancestors who maintained their culture through music and dance, often communicating in secret beats and rhythms.
Clustered on the Wieden stage, Presque Isle High School students from classes Wingfield had visited that morning demonstrated what they had learned playing conga drums, the cowbell, flute, shekere (a hollow gourd clothed in strings of beads) and claves (a pair of sticks to hit together).
“It’s a whole different vibe, a whole different feel,” said the students’ teacher Dan Schneider, SAD 1 music director, who joined them on the stage. “It’s hard for kids to grasp. It’s not a regular rhythm. It opens up a whole different realm of playing.”
But Wingfield’s “you can do it” approach gives them confidence. His genuine respect for and interest in the students puts them at ease, Schneider said, recalling one student’s exclamation: “How could something so simple be so hard?”
Their ability to learn three different Afro-Cuban rhythms was evident on the stage as they provided the background for Wingfield’s solos. They concluded the performance by bowing twice to the audience, a ritual practiced in the classroom as well, where they bow to each other as an expression of respect.
“It’s a beautiful thing,” Schneider said, noting that several students remembered working with Wingfield when they were middle schoolers.
“He personally engages with each individual student, as he learns their names to call out for their solos while the group plays the grounding rhythm,” said Carol Ayoob, who teaches Experience of the Arts at UMPI and first met Wingfield when she was cultural affairs director at the college in the early 2000s.
“He is a curious man,” Ayoob said. “He always asks, ‘Who are you?’ deepening an appreciation of your own culture. He sees an openness here — and need.”
Wingfield confirmed her observation when I asked him during an interview before his performance what draws him to Aroostook County.
“Sociability and a curiosity factor,” he said, describing a willingness to participate among people he meets. He also appreciates the “sense of space” in Aroostook.
“He treats the people of our community just as he does famous artists around the world,” Ayoob said in introducing Wingfield to the Wieden audience. “When he is working one on one, he can see the spark in a child.”
Her words described his effect on a group of nine children ages 5 to 8 in a special education class at Pine Street School. Their teacher, Paula Weinstein, attended the April 11 performance and invited Wingfield to make an unscheduled visit to her class the next day. He gave up his free time to do so and said he would do it again.
“The children took to the African tunes more than anything,” Weinstein said. “Children without language tried to imitate the guttural sounds [of the African songs]. They got excited to make their own beautiful tones with their voices.”
He also led a workshop for Ayoob’s Experience of the Arts class.
“The students had never done anything like this before,” she said. “They came alive with their hands on the drum, the cowbell, the shekere. They sang.”
Wingfield attributes his appreciation of music to his parents, who played everything from Miles Davis to Broadway musicals and classics as a rhythmic incentive for him to wash dishes while he was growing up in Worcester, Massachusetts. He acquired a sense of harmony and sound singing in the church choir and was introduced to the drums as a teenager.
“Once I started hitting those skins, that was it,” he told me.
Wingfield discovered his appetite for teaching when he took his talents on the road with the “In-sound-out-mobile,” a van reminiscent of an ice cream truck that traveled to different places in Worcester during the summer to involve kids ages 6 to 14 in learning traditional African rhythms.
“Sometimes we learn best by teaching,” he said. Competing with swimming, basketball and a host of other activities that fill kids’ summers, Wingfield was challenged to “hone the message of our ancestors in a way that was fun and attractive.”
He was inspired to experiment with different styles, from disco and jazz to reggae and rock ’n’ roll, working with musician Richie “Pablo” Landrum. And he was invited to spend two years on tour throughout New England and into the Midwest with artists he calls masters: Brazilian jazz singer Flora Purim and percussionist Airto Moreira.
Wingfield did not hesitate when I asked him about the greatest rewards of his work. He expressed pride that his daughter, at age 4, could play the cowbell perfectly. But the first thing that came to mind was an encounter with a young Puerto Rican man he had instructed 12 years earlier.
“You inspired me to be a musician,” the man told him. “Now I play in a Latin band, and I have you to thank.”
Kathryn Olmstead is a former University of Maine associate dean and associate professor of journalism living in Aroostook County, where she publishes the quarterly magazine Echoes. Her column appears in this space every other Friday. She can be reached at olmstead@maine.edu or P.O. Box 626, Caribou, ME 04736.