Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Nov 29/99) - Violinist Andrea Hansen compares musical themes to potatoes and variations on a theme to french fries, mashed, boiled and scalloped.

Hansen is talking to a gym full of elementary school students at J.H. Sissons in Yellowknife. She's teaching them what they need to know about music to enjoy it; that music is good, very, very good, and fun.

"Music matters," she later states emphatically over lunch. "It's not a frill. Not to teach kids music is criminal. They learn how to focus, listen and think things through."

For Hansen, these are essential skills.

The elementary children focus on the 61-year-old blond dynamo, who was in Yk last week, with rapt attention.

She asks them what the difference is between a violin and a fiddle. There's a profound pause as 200 young minds try to figure it out.

Nothing, she announces. Nothing. The violin and the fiddle are one in the same. The difference lies in how they talk.

I'll tell you about a tune, she continues. One day, a young Mozart heard a tune while walking down the street...

Hansen proceeds to play Mozart's classic Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. She then leads them through an array of Twinkles; an angry version, a very sad version and a sexy version. In 10 minutes, the children have learned this stringed instrument can speak volumes.

Coming North

It was in 1987 that Hansen, a violinist with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, first came North. The orchestra, on a Canadian tour, visited Inuvik. Businessman and fiddler Frank Hansen (no relation) pointed out to her that the tradition of fiddling was dying out in the Arctic.

Together they formed the Strings Across the Sky Foundation.

Since then, the foundation has brought Hansen to the North -- from Iqaluit to Holman, from Tuktoyaktuk to Fort Smith -- each year.

In every community Hansen visits, she gathers a small group of children and teaches them how to play the violin/fiddle.

"I'm not teaching them to be fiddlers, I'm teaching them what the instrument can do," she points out.

"You learn as you go ... what do the kids need to know? How do you teach that to them? This has been the biggest learning experience of my life."

In Iqaluit, for example, where Hansen has been going for five years, her fiddling classes are now part of the Iqaluit Music Camp.

"My husband and I went to the Hay River Fiddling Jamboree (1994). I met her (Hansen) while there and I learned some of her methods," says Darlene Naqingaq, a teacher and fiddler in Iqaluit.

"We started a fiddling group here and out of that grew the idea of a summer camp."

Naqingaq explains that the camp offers children the opportunity to try.

"To buy a fiddle and to pay for lessons, that can be out of most people's reach."

Two years ago, children were brought in from Cape Dorset to participate in the camp. There's a great possibility that Hansen will soon share her love of music with the children of Pangnirtung. Plans are in the works.

The fiddling group in Iqaluit now has 35 members. Some own their fiddles, the club owns 20.

Iqaluit has a music society, which will endeavour to bring kids from several different communities for the next summer camp.

"A lot can happen when people get involved," notes Naqingaq.

A family history

Hansen has been playing since she was three. Her mother's Scandinavian cobbler father was a self-taught fiddler and became a living legend.

"He fell under a train in his late teens and lost his legs. He built himself a three-wheeled bicycle and peddled with his arms. He made shoes and boots all winter long and in the spring, he strapped the fiddle on his back. He'd be gone all spring and summer."

Hansen's mother decided that if she ever had kids, she'd give them the chance to learn music.

At the age of three she wasn't allowed to handle a violin, so she played with a wooden spoon.

To teach her groups of Northern kids, those who have never held a violin, Hansen returned to the wooden spoon of her childhood. The bowl of the spoon gets tucked under the chin. A long wood stick plays the role of the bow. They must learn proper handling, and they do it to a rhyme.

Hansen's goal is to give the kids the tools they need to play. Once they know what the instrument can do and how they can make it do those things, the sky is the limit.

Over the past few years, she's added extra emphasis. She was inspired by watching an older child help a younger child. As a result, she now tries to work mostly with the experienced children.

"To elevate the students to where they can work with beginners," she explains.

"That's how the generations taught each other ... I thought, 'Wake up! What's gonna happen when I drop dead.'"

While we're talking, an elder walks up to Hansen.

"You can't give up, eh?" he says.

"I can't give up," she replies.

Getting it started

The Sisson's performance was Hansen's first time in Yk, except for passing through on her way to other communities.

This year, she will be in the North for a month and has added Yk to her roster of communities, which includes Iqaluit, Inuvik, Aklavik, Tuktoyaktuk, Fort Good Hope, Tsiigehtchic, Fort McPherson, Fort Smith, Norman Wells, Tulita and Deline. Local Kathy Moore co-ordinated the three-day fiddling workshop in Yk held at the Tree of Peace Friendship Centre.

"I'd been teaching jigging for two years in a row and I wanted someone to teach them (the children) fiddling. And I remembered Andrea Hansen."

Word had spread from community to community more than 10 years. Moore got her hands on Hansen's home number and called her.

"I asked her what was involved in bringing her up."

An invitation is all it takes to get Hansen to visit.

Moore was then responsible for two things, raising the money for six fiddles and providing Hansen with accommodation and meals.

Diavik Diamond Mines Inc., Agra Simons and Nishi-Khon/SNC Lavalin Ltd. generously provided two fiddles apiece at $450 a fiddle.

Davis and Company offered $300 for meals and The Prospector Bed and Breakfast donated a room.

As for getting around the North, Hansen has been flying free up here thanks to Canadian North.

"The reason we do it is because it's for the kids," says administration assistant Mary Dewar.

"She's the one going around the North teaching these kids. That's why we sponsor them in whatever they do."

The workshop

Hansen spent three eight-hour days with six children at the Yk workshop, held Friday, Nov. 19 to Sunday, Nov. 21.

Friday at 5 p.m., Tiana Hardy, Shawn and Travis Paul, Darcy and Jesse Ross and Caitlyn Fraser had never, ever held a fiddle.

By Sunday, they were performing their new-found skills in front of a small gathering from the community, parents and friends.

Was it worth it?

"Oh, yes. Yes," Moore insists.

"They (the children) really liked it. Especially toward the end when they saw what they could do. It was hard for them, sitting for eight hours a day."

The six budding musicians learned how to open the case and take out the fiddle. They learned chords and scales. They even learned a song.

Ten-year-old Tiana has the fiddle with her at home. It was Tiana's grandfather who encouraged her to attend the workshop. Though Richard Hardy doesn't fiddle, his father did.

"I think she thoroughly enjoyed it," says mom Candy.

"She was hesitant because the first day was on her day off from school and she wanted to play with friends. But once she got into it, she loved it."

Tiana, who already takes jigging, will be attending the weekly fiddle session that Moore, along with fiddler Bob Bromley, will conduct in Hansen's absence.

In March, Hansen will return.

"We're going to be planning something really big in March, fiddling and jigging, for the kids," says Moore.

"No one ever tried to provide this for the kids. It's just something I've got to do."

During her stay in Yellowknife, Hansen ran into the mother of a little girl who had been at her gym performance.

That little girl insisted there had been a wonderful magician at the school. The mother tried to explain that Hansen was a musician, not a magician.

"But she made the violin TALK," insisted the little one.

That's what kids all over the North can do now...make their fiddles talk.

Magic.