Talented Canadian artist helps build music institution for young people in Atlanta
December 13, 2019
In four years at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music, Dantes Rameau stood out as one of three Black students in classes of nearly 800. It didn’t get better when he went to Yale to pursue post-graduate studies.
The Canadian classical musician was among just two Blacks in the two-year program.
While at the Ivy League institution, an opportunity to work with Black musical students in nearby challenged communities was the impetus for Rameau to help start the Atlanta Music Project (AMP) that provides intensive tuition-free music education for underserved young people in neighbourhoods where school music programs are limited.
“I was always one of a very few and I thought the time had come for me to look back and pull others up,” said Rameau who is the Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer of the AMP that celebrates its 10th anniversary next year. “I felt like I had made it, I did what I was supposed to do and I am now going to use what has been given to me and do music outreach.”
Graduate students in Yale’s music program are offered the opportunity to spend a year in New Haven public schools mentoring and teaching Music Theory.
“About 90 minutes from the university campus, there are Black working-class neighbourhoods,” said Rameau who was one of Ebony Magazine’s 2013 Power 100 Most Influential African-Americans. “Seeing a young Black leader, I feel, means something to the kids and their families and the communities they live in. I just loved seeing how their skills developed. When that took place, their confidence increased and their energy became more positive.”
A Black student in Yale’s prestigious music program is a rarity and Rameau had to convince the kids that he was enrolled.
“They didn’t believe me when I told them I am at Yale and I had to produce my identification,” the AMP bassoon teaching artist recalled. “That, I think, made them realize that anything is possible. I was given much during my schooling and that’s why I flourished. The kids that I worked with were mainly of my skin colour, but they didn’t have the support that I got. The one year I spent working in the classroom changed my life.”
After graduating from Yale with a Master of Music degree in bassoon performance, the musician and social entrepreneur completed a two-year Certificate Performance Residency program at Carnegie Mellon University and was a member of the New England Conservatory’s Sistema Fellow Program inaugural class in 2009-10.
As part of the fellowship, he spent two months in Venezuela where the national youth orchestra system, ‘El Sistema’, serves almost 400,000 mostly challenged young people.
“That is where I learnt all facets of running a youth music program from creating a non-profit to partnering with different communities and institutions and how to effect the development of young people,” said Rameau who, in 2018, was named one of Musical America Top 30 professionals.
When his graduate studies were complete, he had a choice of applying for a job in a large institution or starting something from scratch.
Rameau chose the latter and went to Atlanta.
Dantes Rameau co-founded the highly successful Atlanta Music Project
“I wanted to work in a Black neighbourhood and build a music institution that can serve vulnerable youths,” he said. “I also knew that I didn’t want to work for anyone.”
Starting with 19 students and a program site in its first year, Rameau has secured over $6 million for the organization that has resulted in the AMP’s growth to 350 students in five sites operating with a budget of nearly $1 million.
Several student participants have been accepted into Georgia All-State music ensembles and the organization – through a $3 million capital and endowment campaign – opened its new headquarters with offices and rehearsal and performance space in the Capitol View neighbourhood.
An only child born and raised in Ottawa to immigrants from Haiti and the Cameroon, Rameau was enrolled in music lessons at age three. Just after celebrating his sixth birthday, he started piano classes.
“I loved making noise on the piano, but like most kids, I hated to practice,” Rameau said. “For the next seven to eight years, I played a game with my parents where I would do well in my lessons and, at the end of the year, I would ask them if I could quit. They would say, ‘Son, just give it one more year’. By the time I got to Grade Nine, I was playing music that was more complex and advanced and I really enjoyed it. I was motivated then to practice on my own. That all happened because my parents basically didn’t give me a choice. They could see that I was talented and pushed me when I needed to be pushed.”
Playing the saxophone in junior high school, he was turned on to the bassoon while at De La Salle Arts school.
Dantes Rameau started playing the bassoon in high school
“The orchestra was looking for bassoon players and they said they would pay for my lessons and I can play in the orchestra,” Rameau recalled. “I took up the challenge. I didn’t know much about the instrument, but I loved its sound.”
Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon features prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature.
“The range of the tenor sax which I played, I found to be exactly the same as the bassoon,” Rameau said. “In the context of a symphony orchestra, the bassoon plays a very diverse role because it is a low instrument and it has a lot of accompaniment parts where you are playing with the cellos, bases, trombones or the tulas. But because it can go high, it also has a lot of solo lines. Sometimes, you have to lead, sometimes you have to follow, sometimes you have to accompany and sometimes you have to stand out and fit in.”
McGill University appeared on Rameau’s radar while he was in the guidance counsellor’s office and he played in the symphony orchestra in his freshman year which is unusual.
“I remember the first time playing the first note of a piece and it was big and of such a high quality that, right away, I knew I was in a different world and if I wanted to be there, I had to raise my game,” the 2019 recipient of ArtsATL.org – Atlanta’s leading publication for the Arts – Luminary Award for Arts Education said. “McGill trained me to hustle and work very hard.”
Spending summers in New York City and other parts of the United States with his paternal relatives provided Rameau with a familiarity level when the time came for him to decide where he was going to pursue post-secondary studies.
“McGill was the best place I could go to in Canada for music and if I was going to continue my studies, my options were the United States or Europe which I didn’t have an interest in,” said the 2014 winner of the McGill Alumni Association James G. Wright Award that honours graduates who make exemplary contributions to their communities through voluntary service. “My bassoon teacher at McGill was a Yale graduate, so that too factored into my decision.”
Though a resident south of the border for the last 14 years, Rameau hasn’t ruled out the possibility of returning to Canada to live and work. He visits his parents in Ottawa at least once a year.
Dantes Rameau with his proud parents
“I could come back, but the focus right now is on the Atlanta Music Project,” added Rameau who has performed at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Centre and was a soloist last year with the Orchestra Symphonique des Jeunes de l’Ontario Francais in Ottawa. He also lectured at several universities, including the University of Manitoba.
This year, Rameau was selected to take part in the DeVos Institute Global Arts Management Fellow program that supports leaders in positions of decision-making authority in developing, implementing and refining organizational strategies.
Fellows attend a four-week residency in Washington, D.C. in July for three consecutive years and engage in mentoring and cohort-based activities between residencies.
