By Diane Petryk
SUNBURY — Oaklyn Elementary School students have constructed their own mountain dulcimer and written an original folk song to go with it.
They’ll perform on their instrument, and others, with some folk dancing they learned, for each other at the school Thursday.
It will be the culmination of another successful artist-in-residence program at the school.
Principal Paul Renn said the school has hosted artists for about seven years now, under the auspices of the Perry County Council for the Arts. The council provides eclectic arts education services for six counties, including Northumberland, Snyder and Union. Costs are met jointly by the council and the hosting education system.
This year’s visiting artist at Oaklyn is Thomas Jolin, a specialist in folk music from Orrtanna. “I teach the old traditions of folk music,” he said.
He met in small group sessions with every student in the school, showing them folk instruments and how they are built, giving them hands-on experience in crafting instruments from scratch and teaching them folk dances. The students also wrote their own folk song with the theme of “kindness and caring.”
The students all had an enjoyable time, he said, and it was good experience for them, Renn said.
Some took to making the music. “We learned the dulcimer is similar to a guitar,” said Madison Buck, 10.
Samantha Cashdollar, also 10, said, although she’s taken some piano lessons, she’s now more interested in the old guitar her grandmother might let her have.
But Ethan Oakes, 11, although he likes playing music, said he loves the woodworking.
Making the tear-drop-shaped dulcimer involved learning how to use tools like a hand sander, wood glue and clamps. “And a good bit of math, including tape-measure reading,” Jolin said.
“I do a lot of woodworking with my dad,” Ethan said. “We make trim, bookcases and bird houses.” But he never made a musical instrument before.
Jolin taught how dulcimers came to be made in various shapes, like the tear-drop, but also hour glass and trapezoid, for instance. They learned that a bowed psaltery is a type of musical instrument that originated in the Middle East.
He also said craftsmen would sign their instruments with their names and when and where they were made, leaving a legacy for the future.
So, the students who worked on the dulcimer all signed it.
Dakota Steingrabe, 10, said he liked the sanding part. When he thinks of music, he thinks of an electric bass guitar ... and rock stars like James Hetfield and Metallica.
But that’s OK. Jolin teaches the history of music and how it evolved, Renn said.
“Why it’s part of our culture.”
