‘Percussion in the Valley’ drops new beat in downtown Palmer studio

PALMER — Meggie Aube took the meaning of “garage band” a bit differently than most when she began her career in music.

“When I graduated from college,” she said, “it was either a car or a marimba.”

The cost of that instrument is comparable to that of a used car. She chose the marimba.

Like many children, Aube started taking piano lessons at about age 7, at her mother’s request. As much as she enjoyed music, pretty soon she decided she wanted to try a different instrument.

“I didn’t really like piano lessons, but it was a good start,” she said.

When she entered fifth grade, she joined her elementary school band and found just what she was looking for: percussion.

She had dreams of being a drummer in a rock band at that time — she wrote them down in a letter to her future self, as a fourth-grader, for a class assignment. By the time she graduated from Palmer High School, she still wanted to drum, but she wanted to play the marimba and the tambourine and the djembe, too.

“I didn’t even know what else was out there,” she said, reflecting on her 9-year-old self. “I think a lot of people are like that, when they think percussion, they’re not even thinking percussion, they’re thinking drum set.”

Aube was no longer of that mindset. She had become well aware of the huge variety of instruments available to a percussionist, and she wanted more.

Her parents were willing to help.

“They always pushed us all to go into music,” she said. “Not (necessarily) as a career, but they wanted us all to be involved with it, and I just kind of went for it.”

Aube pursued a bachelor’s degree in percussion at UAA and went on to obtain her master’s and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in the same subject at the University of Iowa. She even spent a summer, five years ago, in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in the Middle East, teaching percussion to various different students, including a group of young military men who didn’t speak English.

“All my training has been in drumming and percussion,” she said.

That’s still a bit unsettling for her. Even though she has received complete support from her family — her mother is a potter, her older brother teaches English in Taiwan, her younger brother works at Fireside Books in Palmer and her sister is working on her Master of Fine Arts in Portland, Oregon — she often doubted herself.

“When I was graduating I was just like, ‘what am I gonna do with my life? There’s no jobs. Why did I go into music?’ (I) definitely (had) all those thoughts,” she said. “I think all musicians and artists probably feel that.”

A story she heard from a fellow professional female percussionist while conducting research for her dissertation gave her hope of using her career to make a difference.

The friend went to a small country in Africa and asked the village people to teach her to play the djeli drum like they did. At first they refused, Aube said, since no women were allowed to participate in drumming in that community. However, the native people also had an age-old custom to teach outsiders — especially those from a Western country — about aspects of their culture, and decided to grant the woman’s request.

By the time she left, Jordan had changed.

“Now there’s women in that culture playing those instruments,” Aube said. “She kinda opened the door for all the women in the area, in that region.”

Aube heard that story three or four years ago.

In the fall of 2011, she moved back to Alaska and set up shop in her parents’ garage as a professional percussionist. She had one student.

Eventually her classes grew, and when her mom decided she wanted to use the garage for her pottery, Aube moved into the house.

Soon, it just wasn’t big enough.

Now, Aube has more than 30 regular students who visit her in a bona fide studio, between the Midnight Sun Yoga Center and the Palmer Bar, which opened just a week and a half ago. There’s a teaching room, a practice room, a back room for extra instruments and larger group classes and even a sizeable front lobby.

Aube said her youngest student is about 6 years old, and her oldest student ever was an octogenarian.

Even 6-year-olds are pretty young, she said, partially because their “coordination just isn’t there” yet, but they’re still worth teaching.

“It’s not gonna be like teaching someone who’s older and more mature, it’s gonna be a lot slower of a process,” she said. “But if the parents are willing to have it be a slower process then it works, they can learn something.”

She prefers to teach the middle-aged and older students, however — the people who have always wanted to drum, but never thought they could or had the time.

“A lot of the adults I teach, for them it’s like a new hobby,” she said. “It’s something to get them out of their everyday regular life. It’s something, I don’t know, it really frees your mind and kind of gets you away from the stress of your job.”

What Aube really wants to do, she said, is work with seniors, especially those who have never even touched an instrument.

“I would say it’s never too late to learn how to drum,” she said. “Music really helps you expand your brain even, because it makes you think in a different way, helps your creativity, so I think as we age, it’s actually even a better thing to get into as you get older.”

Aube also teaches as Mat-Su College as an adjunct professor, so she only does individual lessons by appointment, and group classes in her spare time.

“It’s always been a goal of mine to teach at a university setting full-time, but it’s just really hard to get a job for that,” she said. “You really have to be willing to be able to go anywhere, and I’m really not, I guess. I wanna live in Alaska.”

Needless to say, Percussion in the Valley is here to stay. Aube said she hopes to someday be able to hire additional staff at her studio, too, and spread the word.

“No one else is doing what I’ve been doing so it’s been open to me to, I don’t know, pursue something that maybe is a little untraditional,” she said.

A grand opening performance, tour and celebration will be held at the studio, 832 S. Colony Way, at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 22.

Find Percussion in the Valley on Facebook at on.fb.me/1wCF6YA.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.