“No, it’s not super loud,” says Ruth Felix. “It’s in the garage.”

She’s talking about the drum set her son Fidelis, a sixth grader at Northwest Middle School, is happily pounding away on.

Fidelis is a student at the Joy of Music School and found out late last year that he’d get to bring a drum set home with him. Until then, as a beginner, he’d been using sticks and a practice pad to work on drumming hand exercises.

“He was doing really well in lessons and it was time for him to get a set,” says Mike Allen, his volunteer teacher at the School.

The Joy of Music School makes drum sets and other instruments available to our students much like libraries lend out books. Students promise to take care of them while getting lessons at the School and return them when they’re done.

Fidelis says he was excited about getting to take a set to his home. His favorite types of music are gospel and hip hop.

Fidelis has already made great strides since setting up the drums in his garage, says his teacher. “He’s gone from ‘I don’t know how to do this’ to sitting down and playing some very nice rhythmic patterns and exercises incorporating not just his hands but his feet.”

Mike imagines a happy future for Fidelis in drumming. “Every time I show him something he can’t do,” he says, “he can do it by the end of the lesson.”

 

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