Part 1
In part one of our Innovators, Artists & Solutions interview with Kimberly C. Gaines, the Executive Director of the East of the River Steelband, we discuss the organization’s founding and its mission. Kim explains the steel band as an educational institution and how the young people who have worked with the band participate in many programs.
In part two, we discuss with Kim the organization’s work on creative youth development, from introducing young people to new experiences and skills to leadership development.
Elizabeth: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Innovators, Artists & Solutions series of Creativists in Dialogue, a podcast embracing the creative life. I’m Elizabeth Bruce.
Michael: And I am Michael Oliver.
Elizabeth: And our guest today is Kimberly C. Gaines, a professional photographer, graphic designer, lifelong educator, and Executive Director of the East of the River Steelband in Washington, DC, a music education, youth development, and cultural exploration non-profit serving youth ages seven and up in DC’s Wards 7 and 8. Kimberly is also a visual artist, producer, and former radio host for Sophie’s Parlor and an arts management professional passionate about the community.
Her footing in the arts began with Kamilah Forbes’ HipHop Theatre Junction, where she served as designer and in public relations. The former 202Creates Resident has served as lead designer on the African American Civil War Museum’s [00:01:00] traveling exhibition. She has produced PSAs for NBC4 and the National Education Association and designed promotional campaigns for artists. She has led multiple community engagement initiatives in the Deanwood community of DC and elsewhere. Welcome, Kimberly.
Kimberly: Thank you kindly.
Elizabeth: Miss Kimberly, steel band, steel music is unique. For our listeners who have never heard the East of the River Steelband in concert, or who’ve never been to Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, what is steel band music? And in particular, what is the origin story?
Kimberly: It’s funny, I was actually just watching a documentary myself that talked more about steelpan, but it originated in Trinidad and Tobago. It’s what was considered then a rebellious music. It’s synonymous to our Go here in DC. Musically the steelpan is created from a 50 gallon oil [00:02:00] drum. It’s one of those things where it’s your trash is our treasure type of situation. The youth in Trinidad took these steelpans and said, “Hey, let’s create something for ourselves since they’re here.” There’s so much more to the origin story but it’s essentially this oil can that has been created as a musical instrument. It’s melodic. It’s based in Calypso and Soca for us, we play everything from Calypso, Soca, gospel, hip hop, R&B. Origin story-wise, it is a rebellious instrument.
Michael: You’ve mentioned all these different genres of music and so when you do it with the steel drum band, how does it change the music? What is unique about the quality of the music?
Kimberly: So the way I understand it and look at it is when you see a steel orchestra, it is, there are multiple instruments, right? So, you have the front line, which is tenor. The tenor pan, and those are, like, more airy [00:03:00] notes, more light. They play more melody. Then you have the double seconds pan, which also plays melody, but they can cover more ground with it, ‘cause, so a tenor pan is one pan, one solo pan, and a double second is two. Two pans. Then you have a guitar pan which kind of holds down your rhythm along with your bass pans. But your guitar pan is also two sets of pans. And then you have, so there’s a cello—we don’t have cellos in our particular organization, but having visited Trinidad, I’m like, “I want to get a cello pan so the kids can play cello.” But then they have four-pan tenor and then a six-pan bass, which is baritone. So all of those combined create an arrangement, what you hear with a regular quote-unquote “regular band.” Because steelpan is used in those quote-unquote “regular bands,” right?
[00:04:00] So when you hear like Earth, Wind & Fire, Earth, Wind & Fire has all these instruments. Steelpan can be added to that. And it has been, but there are, where you think it’s comprised of a guitar, we build the sound. So when you think of a whole steelpan orchestra, it’s a built sound if that makes sense.
Michael: It’s all just the drum, the percussions.
Kimberly: Predominantly, yeah, and then rhythms, we do have the, we have, for us, we added conga because we’re in DC and that’s, we’ve got to keep it in the pocket. And then we also have a drum, like a standard drum set.
Elizabeth: Yeah, so just to clarify, like the guitar and the cello are not actual guitars or cellos, they’re steel drums.
Kimberly: Correct. They’re steel drums.
Elizabeth: And I’ve seen them, some them are like—
Michael: Oh, the cello, you’re not talking about a cello?
Kimberly: Not a cello, not a string instrument, but it’s called a cello because those, it [00:05:00] plays notes synonymous with which you would hear on a cello
Elizabeth: In the quality and the range and all that. And then I’ve seen some of them are, you know, a full steel drum, which is if you’re an adult—
Kimberly: Standing.
Elizabeth: —it comes up to about your waist.
Kimberly: Yeah, waist high.
Elizabeth: And then some of them are one quarter steel drum, so it’s been sliced into these more like a large cake size.
Kimberly: Right. So when you look at a the baritone is the full 50 gallon drum, and then when you look at the—some of the drums have like different ridges on them, but the skirt of the drum is what determines the sound that it’ll play. So the full baritone is like the full bass. The full skirt, the whole thing. When you cut off—I don’t know how many inches it would be—but you cut off the first round, that’s a tenor. And then you go maybe two more, two or three more down and that’s a double second. And [00:06:00] then they have guitar pans and bass pans that are probably the same width, and I can show you guys later. I don’t know if you can put pictures on your site that way?
Elizabeth: We can, we can.
Michael: Yeah, definitely. You could send us some pictures.
Kimberly: Yeah, for sure. I can send you a picture.
Elizabeth: And then the interior. It’s concave.
Kimberly: Yeah, it’s concave.
Elizabeth: And the initiators of this back in Trinidad and Tobago would press it down, hammered it down or something. And then I’ve seen it has, there are different parts of that indented, concave area—
Kimberly: Those are the notes.
Elizabeth: —that have different notes.
Michael: Because I’m assuming the original music, they were actually using real, what you said, oil steel drums.
Kimberly: But they did, they hammered—
Michael: They hammered it out. But today, are they manufactured, are they still grabbing up the steel drums?
Kimberly: So it’s still a steel drum. They still have the 50-gallon oil drums. There’s actually a place in Trinidad, it’s a new location, called MITCO. [00:07:00] I’m not going to remember what MITCO stands for right now, but it’s a new manufacturer of the steel drums. When we were, we took the kids in August to actually go visit. And we were able—
Elizabeth: You went to Trinidad?
Kimberly: We took them to Trinidad August 22, I think. And we were able to visit MITCO. We were supposed to go to the National Steel Symphony Orchestra, but unfortunately due to COVID, they had some difficulties, but I guess on the other end, fortunately, one of the performers is one of the investors and founders of this company. So, we were able to tour it. It’s a process. It is definitely a process. They, it’s hammered, the pan is hammered so it’s made concave, then they fire it. Then they carve the notes out. And it’s math and all kinds of science related to it.
Michael: I would [00:08:00] imagine there are different sizes of steel drums that they’re using.
Kimberly: It’s all the 50 gallon.
Michael: They’re all 50 gallon.
Kimberly: So they’re all the 50 gallon. So all the, I guess the mouth of it is all the same size. But it’s just the level of how deep you go down, the deeper you go down—
Michael: So what they do to the drums is what makes the difference. Okay.
Kimberly: —the tone change.
Michael: Interesting.
Elizabeth: I mean that’s similar to other regular drums. You have a snare drum, it’s little and it’s very high sound. Bass drum.
Michael: But they’re different sizes.
Elizabeth: That’s true. These are all the same.
Kimberly: Their sizes and width.
Elizabeth: And when you say skirt, just for our listeners, that’s the part that goes around, the sort of rim, it’s not the rim, but it’s the—skirt is a good term for it—but it’s the sort of rounded metal piece.
Kimberly: Yeah, the round piece.
Elizabeth: And is it hollow, or do they put a bottom on it?
Kimberly: So there’s no bottom to it. You can, if you flip it over, you can see the actual pan. There’s some pans over there, too. If you flip it over, you can actually see, like, where it was hollowed, not hollowed out, but created concave, so you can see the underside. [00:09:00] And it’s we’ve had our pans tuned several times there’s a gentleman who sometimes comes from Trinidad and when he’s here he’ll tune our pans for us, thankfully.
Elizabeth: So is that like re-hammering it?
Kimberly: Yeah, they have to re hammer it to make sure, because when you move it, it can throw it out of tune. We work with young people, they’re not always careful. Our bass pans go out of tune a lot. But we get them to come re hammer it and make the sounds what they’re supposed to be.
Elizabeth: Let me, let’s pivot to DC and this this organization, the East of the River Steelband. Can you talk about the genesis story of the East of the River Steelband? I understand that the late Gladys, Dr. Gladys Whitworth Bray, a former biology teacher at DC’s Duke Ellington School of the Arts, was the founder. So, can you tell us about her decision to create the organization and also what is its founding mission?
Kimberly: So the organization was [00:10:00] created in 1993, which is oddly enough when I got to DC, because I was starting school at Howard. But during that time in the city, they were talking a lot about kiddie car theft and like a lot of the things that we’re hearing about now with the city and what’s going on with our youth. And this side of town, Ward 7 and Ward 8, didn’t have as many arts programming. We actually celebrated 30 years last September and so for that amount of time we’ve been in the community working to have arts enrichment programming and that’s what the basis was.
Dr. Bray was an educator, like you said, and she had gone to Trinidad and saw what they were doing musically and how they were gathering young people and getting them focused on something that was more positive as opposed to being in the street [00:11:00] causing trouble or in the street being harmed in some way, shape, or form. And so, she said, “Let’s bring that back.” And she brought it back to DC started at the Boys and Girls Club. She was the founder of the organization, but it does have some founding fathers. Baba Lumumba is one of those founding fathers—he just celebrated his 80th birthday just this year.
And they saw just the excitement that comes from playing this instrument because it is a unique musical experience. And they wanted something for our young people to be engaged in that created discipline and focus and allowed them to be creative. And safe, keep them safe.
Michael: And where do your participants come from or how do you get those participants?
Kimberly: I think we are definitely a familial organization. So, a lot of our participants come from families. So we’ve [00:12:00] had generations. Our current drummer, Rita Dozier, is actually a band mom and a band grandma. So her three children participated in band. And now, she has her grandson, who’s also participated as well. Then her uncle, who we call Uncle Rudi, is our percussionist. His, I believe it was his nephew played, his niece played, so her whole family has been incorporated in some way, shape, or form. And then we have other families that have participated. So we had Dennis and Zandra Chestnut, they are environmentalists and community leaders, and their grandchildren have participated. And so we get a lot from families first.
And then this, Wards 7 and 8, we have this location, which is Atonement, and then we have another location in Congress Park [00:13:00] that we’ve just recently started. So the Congress Park neighborhood kids participate in the programming on that side. We’re like one of the best kept secrets, I think, in our neighborhood, but we’re slowly getting more attention and so more people are starting to say, “Oh, I didn’t even know there was a steel band.” I’m like, “Wow, we’ve been here for 30 years! We gotta fix that!”
So it’s been slow and sure. We participate in the DOES Summer Youth Employment Program, so kids learn about us from there. I’ve been doing work in the youth arena since, I don’t even know how long ago. I started off at Payne Elementary School. And then it grew to CentroNía and like other places. So like, any of my kids—that’s what I call them—that are still around who may have kids or know kids or their cousins or—I let them know that we have this amazing program because it really is amazing and these kids are [00:14:00] actually like quite talented, even though, you wouldn’t think that they realize that.
Elizabeth: Oh, that they realize they’re really talented.
Kimberly: I don’t think they realize how talented they really are.
Elizabeth: That they have a kind of musical intelligence.
Let me back up and just explore a little bit for listeners who are not from DC, you mentioned Congress Heights, which is a neighborhood in DC. You mentioned Atonement, which is the Episcopal Church of the Atonement.
Kimberly: Yes. Yes. Yes.
Elizabeth: Which is your home base, but for other listeners I just want to clarify that the city of DC, as anybody who’s ever been here knows, is divided into four geographic sections that radiate out from the US Capitol building. There’s Northwest, Northeast, Southwest, and Southeast quadrants. There are those quadrants.
The city is also divided into eight, quote, “wards” or sections that sometimes cross the boundaries of these four quadrants. There’s political representation according to [00:15:00] the wards. And this is all very important if you’re a local Washingtonian. But each of these each of these eight wards has its own complex identity. There are multiple neighborhoods within each ward.
But tell our listeners a little bit more about DC’s Wards 7 and 8 that are the ones that your organization serves. So, give us a little geography and sociology lesson.
Kimberly: Now I’m biased because I am a Ward 7 resident. So we have the largest green space probably in DC—not contending with Rock Creek Park, right? Our green space over here is like we’re like a nature hub, but we are also in the 100- and 500-year floodplain, so we have some issues home wise with flooding and that kind of thing. But Ward 7 in particular is more of a food desert than Ward 8 is. We do have a number of [00:16:00] high schools and middle and elementary schools in this area. There are a lot of young people who reside on this side of town between Ward 7 and Ward 8. Ward 7 is larger than Ward 8, but we have more of that green space. So, we don’t have the kind of like landscape where it’s not—it’s walkable for nature trails, but it’s not walkable for boutiques or restaurants or that kind of thing. So, the landscape on this side is, it’s beautiful but it’s… our amenities are few. And especially when it comes to our young people. There are quite a few nonprofit organizations now. I do think we are like the oldest that serves the community in arts enrichment. But there’s Life Pieces and Masterpieces.
Elizabeth: Which is a visual art program.
Kimberly: Yeah. And then there’s [00:17:00] Math Speaks. There are, like, some other organizations that are focused in helping our young people. But I would say that there are not as many as there, like there are satellite programs from like Levine and Washington Ballet and all of that, and The Arc, which is based in Ward 8.
Elizabeth: Yeah, this is a big performance space and workshop space, it’s a huge community institution.
Kimberly: But we have a lot of families here, definitely a lot of young people and in some cases a lot of idle hands. And so, like, we’re working to serve those idle hands so that we can make a better space for our community.
Michael: Right so the organization, as you said, has been around about 30 years. It started off, I guess, as one band, now it’s where you mentioned two locations, so I guess it’s got two bands. Can you just tell our listeners some of the [00:18:00] milestones and the program development over those 30 years?
Kimberly: So I’ve been with the organization for three of those 30 years. And so, I started just after the pandemic, which we were like one of the only organizations to continue through. We tried to figure out our best way to use steelpan and Zoom. From what I understand ‘cause I wasn’t here then, it was a challenge especially when you consider WiFi and the digital divide and everyone not having the same equipment—
Michael: Well, and just doing music on Zoom…
Kimberly: Yes. I think they’ve made, because of the pandemic—
Michael: Doing anything on Zoom!
Kimberly: Right. But I think they’ve made some great strides with creating better ways of doing it. But, so that was, it was a milestone for us to continue programming. We allowed our young people to take their pans home. I don’t know how their [00:19:00] parents necessarily felt about that part, or their neighbors—because our neighbors here, in our band room, they just know on Mondays and Wednesdays, they’re gonna hear steelpan music over and over again.
But let’s see. Milestones. I would definitely say that the expansion has been a milestone.
Michael: So when was, when was the second band?
Kimberly: This year!
Michael: Oh!
Kimberly: This year. So it’s new. It’s very new. And we’re working to recruit more young people for it and really tell them, explain what it’s all about. Because when you bring a steelpan and Caribbean music to a community that’s immersed in Go or whatever’s on the radio, they’re like, “What is this? I don’t even understand.” So we’re trying to translate, basically, to our Congress Heights young folks, how it connects to what it is that they, to our culture overall.
Elizabeth: Once again, not all of our listeners are locals, and not to put you on the spot, but a couple of times you’ve mentioned [00:20:00] Go, and I know what Go is, and Michael knows what go is, but people who are not—Go is the official music of DC. It’s an original form that originated here. So, give us a little, you know, 30 second description of Go.
Kimberly: I’m not in any way, shape, or form a connoisseur. I’m a lover of the music ‘cause I love live music. It’s very percussive. It has roots in Caribbean and African music as well, especially when you add the congas, timbales, and just the—
Elizabeth: Right. Even though it originated with these paint buckets and upside down, these yellow or orange buckets that kids would play on the street.
Kimberly: On the street.
Elizabeth: The junkyard band.
Kimberly: It is a worldwide recognized music even when you start listening to people like Questlove in Philadelphia, the drummer for The Roots, he has like an extensive knowledge of Go-Go music. But there, it is a [00:21:00] music that is community-oriented and pride filled. Is a music that is representational in that, “Tell me where y’all from” and you call out. It’s a call and response music. It’s worth research, for sure.
Elizabeth: Well, and it has similar roots in the sense that young people took what they had. But you didn’t have to have a lot of stuff. You could just start making music.
Kimberly: Definitely. With what you had.
Michael: So both of them originated with found objects.
Elizabeth: Yeah. And they’re both percussive. And they have this, I mean Gogo has this kind of, continuous, exhausting beat if you’re a Go-Go dancer.
Michael: But going back to the evolution of the organization. So when you created this second steel band, did you have to have another band leader or was it—?
Kimberly: So no, so we just split our week. So Monday and Wednesday, we’re here at Atonement in this part of Southeast. And then [00:22:00] on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Mr. Roger Greenidge, he’s our musical director, he goes over to that site, so he teaches at both sites. And then he also teaches our summer program. He loves what he does. He’s an arranger, he’s an accomplished musician. He gigs internationally still. He was just out of town last week for another Carnival event, I believe in like Miami. So anything steelpan related, he is, his family is actually one of the like foremost leaders in steelpan.
Elizabeth: So he is your music director, and he’s also a master pianist, as I understand it.
Kimberly: Panist. Master panist.
Elizabeth: Oh. Master panist.
Michael: Well, that would make sense!
Kimberly: “He does piano, too?” No. He used to do drum here with his hands and piano. Yeah, he’s panist. Master panist.
Elizabeth: Panist, of course. The difference an I makes.
Kimberly: Exactly. [00:23:00] Exactly.
Elizabeth: So anyway, could you share a little bit about what some of his innovative instructional and leadership practices are?
Kimberly: So he teaches the traditional Trinidadian way. When you see our young people on stage, they’ve memorized all those songs. So we have about, collectively, with our young people that just went off to college and the current band members now, we have about 30 songs that those young people just memorize.
And he is traditional and he’s patient. He is patient for sure. Because our young people, they get sugar in them and they go wild. But so he teaches and he arranges. Recently we received a grant for an original composition and that, he is the composer of that new song. We’re doing, we’re still in process with it. But the music is done. He created the music, created and arranged the original [00:24:00] piece. And then Raheem DeVaughn is supposed to do our lyrics. It was as a collaboration.
Michael: I would just imagine that the, to memorize the songs, ‘cause you’re memorizing, all the participants, sort of members of the band, and you have to really listen to what they’re doing or maybe watching what they’re doing so that you know when to come in with—because it’s orchestration. And so in terms of just working together as a group, I, particularly with young people, getting them to—even older people—getting them to work as a group, and to teach them listening skills—I think we’re terrible at listening to other people. And so it sounds like that would be like a very invaluable skill they learn by participating in the band. ‘Cause I would assume that the program is primarily rehearsing, learning the music, and then performing. Or are there other dimensions of the program?
Kimberly: So as far as it pertains to the music, yes. Monday, like we, [00:25:00] I was at, we performed for the National Cherry Blossom Festival one year and the first question a gentleman asked me was, “Wow, how did they get so good?” I’m like, “Practice.” We practice every week, whether we have a show or not, Mondays and Wednesdays, that’s what they’re doing from five to about eight in the evenings after school. They practice. And it is sometimes a challenge in that listening, because if they didn’t listen in their classroom earlier in the day, they’re not listening to us. But what I like about it is our young people help each other. And if someone’s having a challenge with a part, they work on their timing and they work on the tone because if everybody’s playing loud, you can’t hear certain parts. So, it’s a juggle, and it’s a back and forth that they’re learning to give a little to get a little. So I’m saying all the wrong words in that, but it’s… [00:26:00] it’s a dance. They’re doing a dance and they’re really learning in the process. Yeah.
Elizabeth: It’s such a physical form. You have to move your whole body.
Kimberly: I’ve tried it. I was like, “Wait a minute. This hand won’t lift. This hand—oh, I’m confused.” So, I’m still trying.
Elizabeth: Kimberly, who are some other leaders within the company? We’ve talked about Roger Greenidge, and your founder, of course, but—?
Kimberly: Roger is our Musical Director. He’s been with us for, the organization is 30, he’s probably been with us 26, 27 years of that. There’s Rita Dozier, she’s our band manager. And again, our drummer as well.
There’s Anisha Newbill, she’s our Program Coordinator. So she manages—76and she’s also patient because I’ve worked to expand and do more programmatically. So she manages the band, she manages our ELLA program, which is our Leadership & Life Skills Academy. And then she manages our littles, I [00:27:00] call them the littles, that’s not what they’re really called, but our junior corps. That’s the 7- to 11-year-olds. And then she’s also a liaison when it comes to the far Southeast, like the Congress Heights location.
And then we have Qiana Johnson, she’s our Logistics Coordinator. So, anything when it pertains to booking or getting the kids and instruments to and from locations. Because when as I named the instruments the tenor and a double second all those things, it’s about 32 pieces that need to transport from one location to another location and be set up. We need a truck for sure.
And then you all met Mr. Clyde. He’s like our maintenance person here. And then Uncle Rudi last but definitely not least, he’s our percussionist. [00:28:00] We also have Atiya—so it’s not last but not least—Atiya Artis. She is our Teaching Assistant, and she also teaches the young people Music Theory. So while Mr. Roger teaches them the traditional way of you memorize, do abb cdd, whatever, Atiya, you know, does “every good boy does fine.” That’s what I remember from music theory. I know they have a different sentence now. Something about a cow and I was like what? But she teaches, especially our littles right now, music theory on how to read the notes and everything.
Michael: So you’ve mentioned, so the rehearsal process, the performance, but now you’ve mentioned what the littles, and then somebody’s teaching music theory as well. And I’m assuming that’s done outside of rehearsals and so it sounds like the organization has been innovating these other aspects of the music. Can you just talk a little bit about those innovative aspect of the organization?
Kimberly: When it comes to [00:29:00] the kind of like the music theory or anything Life Skills & Leadership, we do that on Saturdays. So Saturdays between 10 and probably about 2:30 in the afternoon, we have other programming. We’ve had, in particular, the littles, right? Our littles practice from 1 to 2:30 on Saturdays. And that’s when she teaches them music theory. So, they’re like, some of them are not even tall enough for the pans. We got to get step stools, but they’re also learning, like, how to play the pan. They learn about the skirt. They learn about the different parts of the pan. They learn about the history of steelpan and why we’re playing this music, all of those things. Their first song was “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley and it’s so adorable to watch. It’s so cute. I try not to be, “Oh, littles!” Because I know they want their own autonomy and, but they’re so cute.
And then we also have our ELLA program. And so [00:30:00] that ELLA program does everything from yoga to music production to book club, that kind of thing on Saturdays. And that normally happens between 10 and 12:30 or so. And we’ve had Grammy nominated and Grammy award winning artists come in to do classes with them. Raheem DeVaughn did a songwriting class with them. Dante’ Pope, he’s an amazing musician and drummer and Grammy—I think he won a Grammy. But he did like a whole class with them where they took the song “Hot Hot” and remixed it and did a track, like, actually created a track with software to produce it.
We’ve done so many other things when it comes to them. We have, during the summer, we have our summer program. Our Saturday [00:31:00] program kind of takes a break in the summer because they get it throughout the week. So that includes musical theater, art, steelpan music theory and we’re working to get a sound theory to really talk about what sound does to us as humans and what it does to our thought process and our focus. And I’m working to get that for this summer as well.
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Part 2
In part two of our conversation with Kimberly C. Gaines, who is the Executive Director of the East of the River Steelband, we discuss the organization’s work on creative youth development, from introducing the young people to new experiences and skills, to leadership development.
Elizabeth: I wanna just go back a little bit. You and I, Kimberly, have known each other—I think it’s at least 20 years, I’m not sure, maybe longer—both through your photography and your graphic design work and through your lifelong work and youth development at CentroNía, where I was affiliated for many years, and other organizations. So you’ve worked with hundreds of young people across DC and other parts of the country, but for our listeners, again, this is a little instructional, but for listeners who are not familiar with the term and the whole concept of, quote, “youth development,” [00:32:00] could you talk a little bit about what the guiding principles are of youth development? Why is it such a vital and affirming focus?
Kimberly: So recently I learned a new term which is “creative youth development” which is really focused on expression and making sure our young people have a voice, right? So my—ever since I’ve been doing, like, youth work as a youth artist or a teaching artist, I’ve always known that our young people are going to develop, regardless of whether or not they have positive influences or negative influences. And I really learned that at CentroNía. So making sure that our young people are safe, making sure that they have membership and belonging, making sure that they have their needs, making sure that they’re educated in a way that they understand what [00:33:00] their focus is—are you a kinesthetic learner, do you have to move? So, I’m a visual learner, so everything visual helps me learn and understand. Some people are just auditory learners.
But youth development at its core is taking our young people and really helping them navigate into adulthood. That’s how I really look at it. Like I said, they’re going to develop either way. We want them to have the positive influences and positive development when they do it.
Michael: Sure. And you’ve been with the organization for three years. Clearly, there are students that have been here for three years and maybe you’ve gotten to know those students and maybe been able to see them develop over those three—can you maybe pick just one example of sort of the kinds of development that might [00:34:00] occur in a student that’s been here for three years or longer in terms of the positive development?
Kimberly: In that positive development, the changes that I see are normally more confidence. Especially when you’re, you have to perform on a stage. Like we, so we did the Emancipation Day at Freedom Plaza here in DC. Which is the day DC was emancipated and we celebrate it every year. And there were at least, I could be wrong, I’m not the best with numbers of people when it’s big crowds of people, but it had to be like 20,000 people there. Or, there were hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people! But that was, to this day, I really believe that was our biggest—in size—audience.
When they’re on stage performing, any butterflies they have—I’m like, I never [00:35:00] ask them if they’re, are you nervous or anything? I just say, “Hey, the music, are you good with this song?” I help them focus on what it is that they already know more than anything. And I’ve never heard anyone say, “Oh my God, I’m nervous. I don’t want to go out there.” It’s always been this level of, we’re going to go out there and we’re going to play. Okay, good. So they have this overall confidence in themselves.
And then that shifts into their academics that also shifts into their extracurricular activities. So some people who start off in our program will wind up being more assertive at school as it pertains to like social things. Like they’ll join soccer, or they’ll join some kind of extracurricular club and they’ll be leaders in that. That’s the development that I’ve seen. I’ve definitely seen them excel in those areas. and some of that, we might do our [00:36:00] job a little too well and then we lose our students because they have decided, I want to do this and they’re firm in it, and it’s “Yes, okay, you go do that.” I don’t, I never want to be like, “No, we need band members.” We do need band members, but I get excited. Like the things that we expose them to here are the things that they take interest in.
Michael: Generally, I just think adults and teachers both don’t appreciate just how much development, how important performing is, how important it is to assert yourself as having mastered something, or at least mastered it enough to actually show it to a crowd. And that could be in either the arts, the sports, the academic, whatever realm.
Kimberly: I think I have three different scenarios. So, Topgolf. We took our young people to play Topgolf. After that, one came back and said, “I want to join the golf club at [00:37:00] school.” I was like, oh! That’s because of us! We did that. Yeah. “Go ahead and join that golf club.” That was one. The other one there was a young person who excelled at purchasing stocks.
Elizabeth: Oh, wow.
Kimberly: So we had a, over the summer we had a, we partnered with a organization called Because I Can and they had financial literacy and they did stocks and options. And at school, when there was an opportunity for him to join the finance club, or some kind of club—I was like, “They have a finance club at school?” I would miss that boat. But joined that. And then, our littlest one. We do a cultural trip every year somewhere and last year we went to New York, but we went to Broadway. So we took them to see MJ on Broadway and afterwards we hung around and we were able to meet some of the actors that were on stage and one of our littles, he [00:38:00] wasn’t a little then ‘cause we hadn’t started the program, but one of our littles loved everything about the musical and went into musical theater in his school. I was like, what? Are you my little? I was like, wow, that’s really great that we’re exposing them to something that they wouldn’t have ordinarily been exposed to and now they’re, like, incorporating that into their life and their growth.
Michael: I would imagine just the whole concept of—I experienced this particularly with my daughter—the relationship between practicing something a lot and then feeling confident when you perform it. There is a relationship between practice and confidence and performance.
Elizabeth: Yeah, real consequences if you don’t practice, and then you go the other way, it is not pretty.
Kimberly: And you can see the determination on their faces, because my thing is, if you’re entertaining, you’re supposed to smile. It’s no, they’re focused, and they’re driven, and they’re going to hit all the notes. I’m like, [00:39:00] okay. Yeah.
Elizabeth: When they get on Broadway, they’re going to make ‘em smile.
Kimberly: Yeah, they’ll have more, so we still—
Michael: They just got to practice a little bit more before they start smiling.
Kimberly: We’re still working on the stage presence. Because they don’t care about the audience, they’re just playing the music that they enjoy. It’s they really this song and so they really like to perform it.
Elizabeth: Speaking of things like stage presence and presentations, you also have a Leadership & Life Skills Academy. Which is a really far-reaching term, life skills and leadership. A, what do you mean by life skills? And what does the Academy encompass?
Kimberly: So, life skills are basic functions. Let’s make sure that you turn something in on time. How’s your time management? Did you finish all your homework? That kind of thing. So we encourage them to be responsible and have integrity and be disciplined in the things that they do. So, we work to have workshops that focus on those things. [00:40:00]
And the leadership That’s the life skills. The leadership comes when we talk about who they are as people, and do you want to be a leader? Do you want to be a follower? Do you want to be a consumer? Do you want to be a creator? So those are conversations that we have with them.
We have Princess Best she’s a hip hop, she’s called the “hill assist,” so she does hip hop music and she does mental health programming. She does a lot of work with us. And so she’s taking them through scenarios through theater to work on problems that they have, issues that they may have. How to navigate conversations with your parents that might not be the easiest thing for you. So we do, those are the types of things—and then whatever they come to us with, it’s not, I’m more of a, “What do you need and how can I help facilitate what [00:41:00] it is that you need?” person. So I brought that to this organization. And I don’t want to ever enforce things on them like, Oh, you need to have preventative such-and-such. Yeah, you do need that, what else do you need? Because that might not be what the issue is at hand.
So, it’s a collaborative effort. They tell us, “Oh, we want to do this.” “Oh, we want to go here.” “Oh, I want to try this.” “Does everybody want to try that? Okay. Let’s figure out how we can try it.” That was yoga. Like, yoga came in and mindfulness came in from just having conversations like that. So, we had—
Michael: Really? They suggested the yoga? Times have changed.
Kimberly: Yeah. And like the field trips and stuff that we do, like we’ve been to the Illusion Museum. We’ve done a tour of DC because while they live in Ward Seven and Ward Eight, they may not have explored the rest of the city. So, we’ve done that. And we try to [00:42:00] be accommodating in reasonable requests. “Miss Kim, we want to fly over the—.” Nope, nope. “You raising the money for that? I don’t have the budget. I don’t have the budget.”
Elizabeth: Helicopter trips.
Kimberly: “What? That’s just you! You’re the one person who wants to do that!” But if it’s a consensus or something, we’ll bring it to the table and figure out how to get a instructor for those kinds of things.
And we also have like a life skills book that we give to them to help them navigate. And cooking.
Elizabeth: And cooking.
Kimberly: ‘Cause some of these kids are about to go off to college and they don’t know how to make a dish to save their life. You gonna be hungry! So we do stuff like that.
Elizabeth: That’s definitely a life skill.
Michael: Yeah, so it definitely sounds the musical component is the centerpiece.
Kimberly: Yes.
Michael: But then the organization really does embrace the sort of the whole child and whatever needs that might occur within that. So obviously, and then [00:43:00] you give them chances to take leadership roles in various things. Do they actually have a chance to take leadership roles in certain programs in the organization?
Kimberly: During the summer they get more opportunities to do in that way. During the school year, we’re mostly talking about what it means to be a leader. And it develops, because we typically have a young person from 12 up—we have one young person who’s about to leave for college this year. We had five leave for college last year. And then we have a few that are sophomores. As they grow up in the organization, they do take on more leadership roles. We have one young man, Miss Rita’s grandson has been with the organization since he was probably about six or seven. So he definitely has institutional knowledge of all the songs. “Remember we used to play this song?” And he could play it [00:44:00] just about on every other pan. And he is taking leadership roles in helping the new kids as they come in and say, “Oh, you don’t know that part. That’s this.” He plays really fast though. I’m like, “I don’t know how y’all can follow him. He plays so fast. Oh my gosh.” But he definitely has a leadership role. Yeah.
Elizabeth: Something else that the organization does is cultural heritage. And it’s also part of your program. And I listened to an interview with your founder, Dr. Gladys Whitworth Bray, speaking passionately about the importance of knowing when about one’s cultural heritage. Can you tell us a little bit more about this dimension of your work? Do many of your young people come from Trinidadian or West Indian ancestry? Is there anything like that?
Kimberly: No. We had maybe two since I’ve been here that did have Trinidadian roots. But for the most part they’re African American [00:45:00] youth, born and raised in DC. And for me that was one of the reasons when I looked at like the tenets of the organization, it was music education. I played the trumpet and the piano—”played,” past tense, I will emphasize that—the trumpet and the piano. I’m a lover of especially live music. Then there was youth development, which I’ve been working in since I guess 2000. So almost 20 something years. And in a way, I—my grandmother was a librarian, my mom’s an educator, and so that was, like, important to me. And then the cultural aspect, like, I was inundated with that growing up, my cultural heritage, where I came from, all of those things.
And so the cultural aspect of [00:46:00] the organization is really trying to make sure our young people aren’t out here just floating and don’t have an understanding of their foundation and what that is. When Dr. Bray started the organization, she was—I can’t remember, it was an African school of thought that was happening in DC at the time which Baba Lumumba was a part of—and they really wanted to impress upon young people that there’s more than to what it is that you’re doing out here, this is your legacy. This heritage that we have is so much bigger and just amazing, as far as where we’ve come from, and you’re the representation of that. And how you carry yourself represents where you’ve come from. [00:47:00]
And so that is an important part to me in this organization. And I think that we could probably do it a little bit better, especially when you consider what’s happening in the city. And I think that there has been like a loss. And we live the everyday day to day trying to survive and maintain what it is that we have right now that we don’t consider our history.
And I know that there have been some thoughts that because we were enslaved people, they don’t really want to revisit that. “Oh, I don’t want to talk about that. That’s not important.” But, from those stories of that time is a level of resilience that I think that is what the goal in those stories are trying to achieve. Not just merely saying that we were enslaved and downtrodden. Because we, yes, we were, but we weren’t at the same time because we were so resilient and [00:48:00] we made our way from that. And historically we have kept rising. Regardless of what has come our way.
Elizabeth: Speaking of that resilience, you, Kimberly Gaines, are descended, thrice removed, from the family of both William Still, the father of the Underground Railroad, and Dr. James Still, known as the Great Doctor of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. So, you, Kimberly, have spoken eloquently about how the past, as you say, informs decisions and our future. And also, that culture threads so much together. You’ve been energized by helping youth access and reveal their excellence through experiences, etc. Talk to us a bit about this deeply held conviction that you have about history and legacy being powerful fuel for the present.
Kimberly: We were transitioning in between myself and her, said, “Why don’t [00:49:00] we just go to New Jersey and visit to your family’s thing?” I was like, “What are you talking about?” So I was like, oh my God, these kids are going to think I’m weird. I’m trying to get a footing in the organization. And then also, I’m not ashamed or anything of my family heritage, but it’s just it’s like a weird flex, “Oh yeah, my family does this.”
But so that first year that I was part of the organization, we took them to the Dr. James Still Center in in New Jersey. And that center is on the site of his former clinic and home and where he did a lot of his medicinal work with herbs. We took the young people to—so we started in Philly and we talked about William Still, who is my great uncle. And also known as the father of the Underground Railroad. So we did like a Philadelphia tour of, like, where stops on the Railroad [00:50:00] were and then also like where the abolitionist papers that he wrote were, and just that history of Philadelphia.
And then, we went on the New Jersey side to Dr. Still, who’s my grandfather three times removed and his brother. And so they were able to see, like, herbs, how the herbs were grown, what the herbs were used for, and then also learn more about, like, how my family actually got together. Like it’s one of those, I guess it would be considered like a really great American story.
Sidney Still, or Charity Still—Charity is the name that everybody goes by for her—their mother [00:51:00] escaped slavery twice. The first time she took all of her kids. They found her, brought her back with the kids. The second time she wasn’t able to take all of her kids, she just took two and brought them up to New Jersey.
The book, The Kidnapped and The Ransomed is Peter Still’s book, where he does the account of what happened to him after being left. There was two left, and two taken, I believe. And by the time Peter Still was able to essentially buy his freedom from his enslavers—it’s a really interesting story because he was sold further, I believe, into Alabama and was hired out. And so, the people he was hired out to weren’t really, they weren’t slavers. So, they made a deal essentially. And so, they said that he, they wanted to buy [00:52:00] him or whatever. And then he got out and got his, he was able to—the next thing he had to do was get his wife. But he went north and he went north to Philadelphia and he went north to Philadelphia to William Still’s office where he’s telling him this story. He’s, Yeah, so my mom escaped, and it was just two of us left and she took my two brothers. He’s, What? He’s, What do you—? That’s—. I think you’re my brother, essentially. He’s, wait a minute, what? So basically, because of all the information, all the hubbub that William Still was getting as doing this abolitionist work he met his brother and then they reunited with the family.
And then that’s where, I think we’re on our 152nd family reunion for the Still family. And so he, William, James, my great grandfather three times removed, [00:53:00] started a reunion to get all the family together and then Peter eventually got his wife and brought his wife up from Alabama. Yeah, it’s the truncated version of all those stories, but three books between them.
Michael: But the New Jersey Pine—
Kimberly: Barrens.
Michael: Barrens. What is that exactly?
Kimberly: It’s just the land in that area. It’s Vineland, New Jersey, Burlington County area.
Michael: But the “Great Doctor of the New Jersey Pine Barrens.” He was, like, dealing with, experimenting? Or coming up with medicinal cures?
Kimberly: Yeah, so from reading his book, The Early Recollections of Dr. James Still, he was like that, “If it don’t work, we’ll call Dr. Still” doctor. So when some of the white doctors said, “Oh, just make them comfortable.” They were like, no, I don’t want to do that. I want my person, my family member to be healed. They called Dr. Still. And so, he essentially came in and [00:54:00] had all these different ways of breaking fevers or removing mucus.Those things.
And some of those things, some of those herbal concoctions are in his book as to how he did that process. And he was like they didn’t want him there, but they did want him there because they knew he was effective in what he did. So he used herbs, he used the land to really, heal, to be healed.
Michael: Right, and some of these herbs are still in practice, or some of these medicines? You said the students went up and they saw—
Kimberly: Yeah, so they were able to go up and see how the herbs were grown The house isn’t, his clinic isn’t there. The house isn’t there. But the center is there, it’s run by my cousins. And they do all the tours and everything and they have classes where they’ll teach herbal medicine or just like some of the things that they would learn—
Michael: Did a lot of his sort of treatments come out of his experience or knowledge [00:55:00] of African medicine? Where did it come from? I mean, I don’t—in India, they have a lot of herbal remedies for all sorts of things. But—
Kimberly: That part isn’t clear to me. So I’m a lifelong learner, so I’m still learning about a lot of the things my family did, but it, in his book he talks a lot about the divine and God. And so he, it doesn’t really have an origin story of like how he learned it necessarily.
Michael: Well, a lot of medicine’s come out of it, I mean—
Kimberly: Yes, plant medicine is real and it’s helpful. And I think that it he helped heal a lot of people. And he has stories about the people that he did come across and things that he used to heal them. He was the first millionaire, first Black millionaire in Burlington County. I don’t know ‘cause I haven’t seen it. I don’t know who messed up in the family lineage, but it did not trickle down.
Elizabeth: Oh, that’s so interesting. You have your own family and then you have the East of the River Steelband family, it is very family centric. You have these, really, generations of folks working together.
Michael: Now, the Steelband that you’re—going back to the organization—has both boys and girls and maybe other genders, just to open that door, but so can you just talk a little bit about sort of the work across sexes and how that affects the whole sort of organizational approach?
Kimberly: So, the interesting thing is, so steelpan music originally was not a girls’—
Michael: That’s what I was imagining,
Kimberly: —music. It’s not—
Michael: Big drums.
Kimberly: [00:57:00] Well, not only that part, but more so it was the rebel music. They didn’t want to associate. The families were keeping their kids away from it because they thought, oh, they’re rebel rousers. Oh, they’re running amok. Oh, they’re being a disturbance or whatever. Until it gradually developed.
So now that they’re—there are like actual women composers. Even at one point our ratios of girls and boys were equal. And now it’s skewed a little different, we have more boys than girls. But there’s a camaraderie that it doesn’t really matter. It’s like they just want to be the best at what it is that they play. So gender wise there are no specific roles per se.
Everybody lifts a pan whether it’s heavy or not, I’m just like, “Put that down!” I’m trying to tell the boys to put it down, ‘cause it’s, “Y’all hurt yourself! Roll it! It’s got wheels, roll it!” But there are no gender, [00:58:00] like, really gender, it’s not gender specific for anything that we do. And we’re welcoming to everyone.
Elizabeth: That’s obviously another dimension of many dimensions of what just incredibly affirming and empowering experience this is. You must have lots of stories about young people, young musicians, or their families. Is there any particular story you want to share about either an individual musician or their family?
Kimberly: I don’t have any offhand other than the one little who, when he went to New York to see MJ, his mom played in the band, his brother played in the band, and now he’s seven right now, but he’s been trying to play since he was five. Like he’s been adamant, like, ready. Another young man, [00:59:00] he played the guitar pan, his brother’s now playing in the band.
And it’s because of their coming to performances seeing, you know, when our young people look up to the older, the next generation, and so they are really excited about participating. And that level of excitement excites me. I love to see them excited about learning, especially.
And I know music education is I guess not really thought about all the time when it comes to excelling academically. But it fires different synapses in your brain because you have to figure out how to use both hands in playing an instrument or you have to memorize a certain piece of music and it makes new connections in our brain to other thinga. And, you know, [01:00:00] just seeing that family come up and play this music and seeing the excitement around it makes me excited.
Michael: Yeah, you mentioned that they were a composer and so I’m, maybe people that compose specifically for steelband, there are those folks right? So it’s not just taking something that was one in a more traditional orchestra and transposing it. Does the band play original compositions?
Kimberly: So we do have one original composition, but anything that you hear on a radio that has a melody, Mr. Roger can arrange in a way that translates to the steelpan. So when I listen to it, I’m like, “You skipped a note.” ‘Cause I’m singing the song, right? He’s, “Okay, but you can’t play that note particularly, so I have to adapt it or change it so that it [01:01:00] fits in the steelpan.” And then he also adapts and arranges it so that the young person can play it and memorize it. But it’s so interesting to watch because you can play a song for him on the spot and he’d be like, “Ah.” “Did you just play that? You just you didn’t practice, you didn’t hear that song before?” So, he knows how to like really listen and adapt it to the steelpan for it to be, for it to sound the same way that it sounds on the radio. Or, no, not even the same way, but to be recognizable as that song. But there’s a whole competition for steelpan. Panorama happens every year. I think they just had it, I feel it was a few months ago.
Michael: This is a competition between steelpan bands?
Kimberly: Yeah.
Elizabeth: This is an international competition?
Kimberly: So, it’s international in that there are some people who go to play with certain bands. So this year the winner was BP Renegades. Actually, it was a tie this [01:02:00] year. But BP Renegades actually came here on an international tour. And they came and visited us. We did a workshop with them at the Kenilworth Rec Center where our young people played and then their, the panists that were visiting, their educators did demonstrations with the young people, which is how we got a few of our little kids.
But it is big. The international day is August 11, International Steelpan Day is August 11. And people, there are pan orchestras in Canada, in Trinidad, in Curacao, like Japan. So it’s everywhere. It’s so interesting.
We’re still waiting on pans from Arizona which is, [01:03:00] it’s such a funny connection—so, a gentleman that I work with here, his uncle makes pans in Arizona. And we’ve been buying the pans from Arizona but didn’t know that they were related for the longest time. And then Mannette, which is in West Virginia. It’s also in odd places. West Virginia has steelpans and Arizona has steelpans. It’s definitely—
Michael: They have a lot of oil drums up in West Virginia. That’s great. That’s great.
Elizabeth: So, I want to just close out our interview and have you talk a little bit more about the extensive performance experiences that your company members have. You’ve performed at the Smithsonian Institution’s Folklife Festival and at the Millennium Stage, at the Kennedy Center, and at festivals and events across across the city. You mentioned that Freedom Plaza, Emancipation Day. Are there other aspects to the history of your performance? And then, we’ve talked a lot about the [01:04:00] power of performance to shape the lives of young people, but I’m wondering if the venue that they’re performing at has, there’s a kind of amplification of that effect if you’re in the Kennedy Center or the Smithsonian Institution’s Folklife Festival. Is there any anything you want to comment about that? Those connections?
Kimberly: I think it was funny, we did a performance for a foundation. And it was at the Warner Theater. And so I think that was after we did the Kennedy Center performance. And so, with the Kennedy Center performance, all the parents were like, “Oh my gosh, this is great.” The kids were just like, “Eh.” “It’s the Kennedy Center, guys!” They were super excited to be on the stage at the Warner Theater. And I guess I’m not sure why the resonance, like why are you so excited about the Warner Theater? It’s great. But they were just super excited about that.
Elizabeth: It’s a big [01:05:00] theater. It’s a big theater.
It is, for sure.
Michael: It’s downtown.
Elizabeth: It’s downtown, yeah.
Michael: Maybe that’s it.
Kimberly: Maybe.
Michael: They might have heard of the Warner Theater, too, because there’s a lot of—
Kimberly: But I would imagine that they would have heard of the Kennedy Center as well. So, it’s very interesting. I never know what to expect as far as the kids’ excitement. Especially, I think, I know the Emancipation Day, they were excited because it was like, “There were so many people!” And then I think one of our new students, “Who would have thought that I would be on stage?” I said, “Did you just say, ‘who would have thought,’ sir? How old are you?” But he said, “Who would have thought I would be on stage performing in front of so many people?” And I think they try to play it cool. So, I don’t think that they really, I think they do get nervous, but they just don’t tell anybody that they’re nervous. Because we’re always trying to make sure that they have everything that they need and they make sure that they’re good, that we’re not concerned about the audience because we know the audience is going to like [01:06:00] them because they’re great. That’s how I look at it, but I think that also quells some of their nerves because we’re not nervous.
Elizabeth: Good point.
Kimberly: So they’re not.
Michael: It would be unreal for them not to be nervous. Whenever you’re performing, you’re going to have some kind of nerve.
Kimberly: Yeah. Yeah. I, but I think that they play cool, like I said.
Elizabeth: And you talked about that focus.
Kimberly: Their focus on the music.
Elizabeth: When you just remember which second, the steel drum has the A and the B and the C, that, whatever, all these different places you have to really, you know.
Kimberly: And then they also look up to the older youth in the band, who aren’t, they’re like, “Yeah, this is just another show.” And so they’re playing it cool for them. And just “Okay, what are we supposed to do?” “Play what you do normally.”
Elizabeth: One of the very last questions I have for you is a question we’ve asked all of our interviewees in all these many interviews we’ve done and that’s if you have any sort of tangible, practical advice that you would give to our listeners on how they can nurture their own creativity.
As somebody who’s been, you have been both [01:07:00] an artist and an educator your whole life, is there any one thing that you would urge our listeners to do so that they could cultivate their own habits of a creative life?
Kimberly: That’s a very interesting question, especially for me in this stage in my life. Being an executive director is a challenge. So finding that balance has definitely been a challenge, but I have been encouraged recently to do more of my personal art. So I would say, invest that time in yourself.
I’ve taken to AI. I’m very interested in AI. I’m very interested in the visual aspects of AI these days. And I think that it can spark creativity. I look at it as a tool, I know so many people shy away from it. Maybe because it’s, oh, it’s going to take over. Eh, it’s not going to take over unless you let it take over. So, I think [01:08:00] utilizing your mental space creatively within AI will help you utilize it more as a tool. So, I’m doing those types of things. I’m exploring new avenues to being creative. And I think that if you have an idea, try it. Go do it.
Elizabeth: That’s good advice. “If you have an idea, try it.”
Kimberly: If you have an idea, try it. And if it, you might find something new out of it. Or find a new perspective from it. I think that it’s definitely important to nurture your creativity because it helps us not feel stagnant and it helps us feel like we’re moving and being productive.
Elizabeth: So finally, Kimberly, tell us what is next for the East of the River Steelband and also tell us how our listeners can find out more about you all.
Kimberly: We have shows throughout the summer. Especially coming up for we have a show this [01:09:00] weekend, June 1st. We have Juneteenth coming up which is on the 15and then the 22, I believe, is when folks are celebrating it because it’s in the middle of the week.
But our website is eotrsteelband.org. I am working on being better about updating that myself. But we’ve done a whole bunch of stuff throughout the city and look to do more, but our June is planned out right now. And then we’re working on a cultural trip, probably to South Carolina this year to visit like the Gullah Islands, which we performed at before. So we may be performing down there. I don’t have any dates or anything for that yet.
But you can always find us on our website or Instagram is the most populated. Our Instagram is @eotrsteelband [01:10:00]. Yes, that’s the Instagram. @eotrsteelband. And we have most information on there.
Elizabeth: Fabulous! Kimberly C. Gaines, Executive Director, among her many hats, of the East of the River Steelband in Washington, DC. Thank you so much.
Kimberly: Thank you!
Elizabeth: It’s been terrific talking with you.
Kimberly: I’m so happy we got to do this.
Elizabeth: I know! Thank you all for listening.
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Special shout out to Creativists in Dialogue’s production team: Audio engineer Elliot Lanes, social media manager Erin Dumas of Dumas83, and transcription editor Morgan Musselman. Thank you all.
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The Creativists in Dialogue podcast is supported in part by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and subscribers like you. The Theatre in Community podcast series is supported in part by Humanities DC. Thanks.