WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — If your child is a budding musician, then there is a camp for them.
What You Need To Know
- Fernando Jones is a professor at Columbia College in Chicago
- The Fernando Jones’ Blues Camp has been at the Delta Arts Center for three years
- You have to audition for the camp
Fernando Jones has been in love with music since he was four years old and remembers when music and teaching merged for him.
Jones says in 1988 he brought a guitar to class while he was teaching and played it for the kids. They went crazy he said. That is when he got the idea to start a blues camp.
At his camp he teaches students the history of blues, different songs and different cues in music, which prepares the kids for a recital at the end of the week.
He teaches kids from as young as age four about the importance of blues and how it played a role in the musical world.
“It's really nice to be in a situation where kids that didn't even know something such as the blues existed, and they take to it so well,” Jones said. “And for us to be the ones to introduce them to it, we're kind of like pioneers. So that's a good feeling because once upon a time we were introduced to it.”
Jones says he loves to connect with the younger kids by giving them blues songs they can identify with.
“If it’s a little kid 4 to 6 years old, we have a song about a set of butterflies so they can identify with that because they're kids and it's like in as a kid type song, and then you have time to get them through songs with the 12-bar blues structure,” he explained.
And when it’s performance time, Jones says the kids blow it out of the park.
Jones says for some, this camp, and blues music in general, has already helped with their confidence. For him, that’s what it’s all about.