SEPTEMBER 2000

CHILDREN IN LOS ANGELES ARE LEARNING THE SIR CHARLES BLUES

By Bettijane Levine
Condensed from the Los Angeles Times

Dane Gille-brand knew zilch about the blues and philanthropy when he left South Africa for college in America in 1993, when his life plan seemed so simple: He would graduate from film school at Florida State University, move to Holly-wood and make great movies to entertain humanity.

Real life intervened. The lanky young man couldn't have known he'd be lonely at Florida State. Or that a blind blues musician would become a kind of surrogate father. Or that he would come to love the blues. Or that his greatest goals would be fulfilled - graduation magna cum laude, a job in L.A. helping produce films - and he would suddenly find it all meaningless.

He had no idea, he says, that the tumult and gloss of movies would seem dull compared with helping kids find meaningful lives through the music that inspired the likes of Elvis and the Rolling Stones. And the thought certainly never occurred to him, he says, that by the age of 25, he would be the founding father of the Sir Charles Blues Lab - and would qualify as one of America's new-wave volunteers.

Gillebrand doesn't want to be a millionaire. Not this year, anyway. His mission is to "enrich the lives and minds of young people by providing them with musical instruments and helping them participate in the great cultural tradition of blues."

"You can jam with professionals, with any blues group anywhere. Imagine sitting up there and being a part of that." It makes kids want to practice, he says. "They find talent they never knew they had. It changes lives."

Gillebrand ought to know. He experienced it all, firsthand, under the tutelage of "Sir Charles" Atkins at FSU. The experience changed his life, his goals and his feelings of competence, he says. So he's trying to pass it on.

At Locke High School, you can see what Gillebrand is really all about. Locke is in the heart of L.A.'s "inner city." Wander down the dingy hall to the cavernous music room (actually four bare walls and a floor, until gleaming new instruments emerge from a locked closet), and you are suddenly in blues heaven.

On this day, DeShawn Edmond, 15, is on drums; Norman Jackson, 18, expertly tickles the ivories; Moises Rosales, 15, plays bass guitar - all of them backing a Locke senior, Safiya Baidi, who sings of lost love like some kind of earthbound angel. The atmosphere is electric.

Soon, you notice others in the room, practicing on the sidelines, sharing techniques and taking turns in the ensemble. This loose collaboration turns out to be what the Blues Lab is all about. A place where kids who never thought they had musical talent can discover that they do. Where kids who can't read music can learn to make it anyway. A place where master musicians drop in to show kids the basics of the blues.

The lab has been open at Locke since September, and bassist Harvey Estrada sees it "changing lives."
"When the kids realize they can play, they start to identify with the music. They go home and practice so they can perform well."

Gillebrand gets them gigs. "You know what a great feeling that is? Being good enough to perform?" Gillebrand asks.

So far, Gillebrand has provided some top-flight new equipment (donated by musician Jackson Browne and such music firms as Sam Ash, Roland, Pignose and Samick) to three other schools as well as Locke.

He plans to open full-fledged labs there soon.
How did a white South African film student get so hooked on American blues - and what does Sir Charles have to do with it?

Gillebrand was a rich little boy in Johannesburg. His father owned property and businesses, designed race cars and dabbled in music. His mother is a direct descendant of Johannes Pretorius, for whom the cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria were named. Gillebrand made friends easily but didn't "belong" in any group.

Growing up under apartheid, he worried about the neighbors who had no plumbing or heat, "who basically lived in shacks." His father tried to invent a kind of low-cost housing that would afford South African blacks some of the same amenities as whites. His father then declared bankruptcy when Gillebrand was 13.

Still, his family managed to send him off to college in America, to follow his movie-making dream.
He was still a loner, he says, making friends but searching for something he couldn't define.

"Then I heard about Sir Charles Atkins. He is a blind blues artist, who plays piano, sings, writes his own songs - kind of a living legend around Tallahassee and northern Florida. He's an FSU graduate with a doctorate and is a music professor at the school. An amazing man who created something called the Blues Lab to which everyone is welcome."

Gillebrand checked it out.

"I stumbled in, and it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. Five guitar players, all teaching each other how to play. Piano players, drummers, bass players . . . everybody trading off, showing each other licks, giving each other space. The music wasn't too loud, anyone could play or sing. Sir Charles taught how to discover the music for ourselves, to listen and try to emulate. He'd play records and say, 'Now listen for that note,' or, 'Can you hear that chord? It's a G flat major 7.' "

Atkins was blinded at age 4 in an accident, and Gillebrand thinks his teaching method is a refinement of the way he taught himself to play - by listening and duplicating what he heard. Gillebrand recalls the rapture of learning to play, of four college years in which he stayed with the lab ("even though it was only a one-credit course") and became the musician's disciple and good friend.

When Gillebrand arrived in L.A. he took a job with "a very dynamic, independent producer. I learned about the film business in the year I was an apprentice. In the back of my mind, I was always thinking about the Blues Lab, how this kind of lab should be in every school."

Gillebrand says he saved money all that year, developed a business plan and applied for status as a nonprofit organization.

He named his music program for the man who'd invented it and who earned the moniker "Sir" from Florida State students who used it as a mark of respect.

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