Ike Anderson is the Membership and Community Coordinator at The Music Resource Center, a Perkins Fellows community partner. I met with Ike at MRC in December. He gave me a tour of the professional studios, rehearsal rooms, sound booth, and mixing studio that spreads underneath the old Mt Zion church on Ridge Street. Like so many other folks, I had no idea that this creative space existed, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the students who fill it every afternoon after school. Here’s what Ike and I talked about! –MD
Volunteer with and donate to the MRC.
How did this organization start? In your own words, what is this organization’s purpose?
MRC was started in June 1992 by John Hornsby, the brother of Bruce Hornsby, and Ivan Orr. The original home of the Music Resource Center was a practice space for the Dave Matthews Band located above Trax, a popular local music venue at the time. In 2004, the band was instrumental in providing the current home of the MRC in the historical site of the Mt. Zion Baptist Church on 105 Ridge St. in downtown Charlottesville.
The vision of MRC is vibrant teens, vibrant community. The idea is to provide the opportunity for our youth to discover talents that they may or may not know they have, or to fine tune the ones they want to get better at through peer education and peer collaboration. We offer individual music lessons through our volunteer teachers as well, but a lot of the learning happens by getting artists in the same space to work together.
I remember my own first day at MRC. I was in the 7th grade and I had just heard about it that day at Buford Middle school and I went without my parents knowing. I walked up the stairs and with each step I could hear more and more music all playing at once. It sounded like chaos; everybody was talking loud to each other, popping in and out of doors. I remember standing there and looking around and thinking this is so cool. I had no idea that kids my age could play guitar or rap or go hard on the drums– I thought that was just stuff adults did. I was so impressed with the level of professionalism too–they spoke in a language that I didn’t understand yet about practicing and recording, but I wanted to. I found myself in a DJ booth that day and it was one of the greatest days of my life. Staff told me my first day was free and then I had to come back with a permission slip and $5. I was in trouble when I got home because I was late; I was supposed to be at the Boy’s and Girl’s club but had gone to MRC on a whim, and I just kept going back after that.
How did you get drawn to this specific work?
I grew up in the program and it was one of the better things about my childhood here. I was able to see the fruits of my labor through the music I produced, and now I get to see the growth of each member as they spend time here and develop as a musician. We’ve seen over and over again how this space positively affects the lives of the people who come through here and it gives me a huge sense of fulfillment. As the community coordinator I sit at the front desk everyday and I get to see the impact that we’re making, and I think that’s really rare.
Where is the organization experiencing need? Where is it experiencing abundance?
Just like every group in town, we are really wanting to get our attendance levels back up to what they were pre-Covid. We’re finally almost back to where we were with numbers and I really hope that continues to be the case.
The abundance has been the fruitfulness of the music created here. Like minded kids just find each other at the MRC and before you know it these kids will form a band. We’ve got several bands right now: Weird (pronounced weird) is a trio that does a lot of heavy classics like Hendrix and Nirvana. The Destructors are a trio of 6th and 7th grade girls that are completely bad-ass and full goth, they do a lot of punk songs. We have a quarterly performance called Live at 5 where students can perform and it’s really great to see what they’ve accrued over a quarter. The kids also book their own gigs too. The staff here are all working artists as well, producers and musicians, and they’ll collaborate. Another one of our groups, the Band with No Name, just recently opened for New Boss over at Hogwaller and it was fantastic. We also have a dance team that I teach called Swerve that has gone on to compete with the Ecstacy dance crew.
Photo by Eze Amos, from C-Ville Weekly
What are you most excited for in the coming year?
I’m most excited to continue the community building I’ve been pursuing. My personal goal is to make MRC a more integral part of the community among the youth, and to make connections with other youth programs who haven’t made it to us yet. I go out to a lot of different schools and programs to talk about MRC but it doesn’t necessarily have the same effect as the power of this building where kids see all sorts of professional equipment that is at their disposal.
What has been MRC’s relationship with the Perkins Fellows? What insights do you have on service learning?
I think it’s so great. Fifi (Fionette King) is our first Perkins Fellow volunteer. She always comes in with fantastic energy wanting to learn about everything that goes on in the space, about everybody who comes in the door. She boosts the kids’ confidence by showing interest and encouragement, and we always need more volunteers to do a bunch of different things: teaching music lessons, making promotional materials for social media, administrative tasks, helping with outreach. Every bit of it counts.