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Feature article

CHAOS reigns at Tates Creek

Article and pictures by Tammy Lane
February 6, 2008

Sometimes chaos is meant to be appreciated for all its expansive boldness and freedom. At Tates Creek Middle School, that means the freedom to bang on trash cans as part of a band appropriately named “CHAOS.”

Students at Tates Creek Middle School keep the beat with their percussion band CHAOS. “It’s all concentration,” according to eighth-grader Melissa Flores. View a slideshow of more pictures.

  “You can’t be shy to do this,” eighth-grader Aubrea Galloway said. “You have to show your personality.”
  CHAOS, a percussion band, stands for Creative Hands-On Active Organized Sound. Brian Lewellen, who leads a daily music class at Tates Creek, came up with the name.
  “It’s very rhythmic; you won’t hear any melody. It sounds very layered with its approach. You really need to hear it to understand what we do,” Lewellen, co-director of jazz and percussion studies at Lafayette High School, said in describing CHAOS.
  Wander down the hallways of Tates Creek Middle School a little after 2 p.m., and you’ll know what he means. During a CHAOS practice, Lewellen’s classroom reverberates with toe-tapping thunder that echoes in your head.
  Inside, students armed with wooden drumsticks pound 32-gallon metal trash cans (snare voice), 5-pound plastic paint buckets strapped to orange traffic cones (tenor) and large, dark blue Rubbermaid cans (bass). Occasionally, a stick splinters in the frenzy as the teens drum on the bottoms and sides of the cans and click their neighbors’ sticks. They also use the lids as cymbals.   “It’s all concentration. You don’t have to have rhythm. You don’t have to have beat,” said Melissa Flores, who played around with her aunt’s drum set when she was younger.
  Of the 16 eighth-graders in CHAOS, only two read music at the beginning of the semester; the rest were trained by rote. Lewellen handpicked the students from an earlier nine-week class, based largely on who could follow directions. He then rounded out the group with a couple of members of the school’s symphonic band.
  In a recent class, Lewellen called out cues – “Fast food,” “Jamming with Polly” or “I want a Coke” to guide his drummers through sections of a piece called “Boomtown,” which he adapted from his own high school drum line experience.
  “Trash can music follows all the traditions of African music. We do vocal signals to change patterns,” he explained.
  “We take a beat and keep it pretty consistent; we add another beat on top of that, then another beat on top of that. Before too long, it’s a spider web of rhythms running by you.”
  Polishing – such as hitting the dynamics right – is the hardest part.
  “It’s the detail work that’ll make all this presentable,” Lewellen tells his students.
  Each year he puts out feelers for potential performance sites. Last spring CHAOS did five shows but had requests from 17 elementary schools. The performances, which include a 30- to 40-minute program, usually are in May.
  This spring, the younger kids will hear more than a trash-can band. Lewellen also has his students developing a basketball routine (dribbling and slapping the balls and stomping their feet) as well as a body percussion piece called “Kawf Dooda Code” (which includes repetitive lines like “Achoo, sniff sniff, ahhhh”).
  What’s next up for CHAOS? Push brooms.
  The band’s past success suggests it’ll be a clean sweep.

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