Top stories

‘Peak Of My Career’

Natalie Merchant talks importance of art education for children in Chautauqua lecture

CHAUTAUQUA – Natalie Merchant's voice has appeared on four Top 40 singles during a singing career that began in Jamestown 45 years ago.

It's saying something, then, for Merchant to say that her work now on the Cabinet of Wonder, a project created in partnership with Head Start as an arts curriculum for afterschool programs is the pinnacle of a career that has included years of her voice coming out of speakers around the world.

Merchant began her few days of events at Chautauqua Institution on Wednesday morning in the Amphitheater, focusing on her work with children and the importance of children specifically ages three to six having an arts education. Wednesday morning's lecture began with Chautauqua's Deborah Moore and Merchant discussing her own childhood, growing up with a single mother in a struggling, working class family, and her own memories of coming to Chautauqua Institution as a child, including for the Westfield puppeteer group, Das Puppenspiel. Merchant's teaching and connecting with children began for her back in her childhood days as well, including when she volunteered as a teenager to teach and help children at BOCES in Ashville for a summer as a part of an experimental therapeutic arts camp.

"I took the bus from Westfield to Ashville every day that summer and I worked with children between the ages of five and 18 who had severe mental and physical challenges," Merchant said.

Merchant noted that she was working with children around her own age at the time, and she noticed how powerful learning through the arts was to them, with their excitement about something such as a piece of clay, or paint or music. She added that this experience showed her the power of music and the arts for therapeutic purposes.

Fast forwarding to college and adulthood, Merchant attended Jamestown Community College and helped found 10,000 Maniacs while still young, with a successful career including platinum and double platinum albums. The band's first photo shoot was shared with the audience, taken in places around Jamestown and Western New York, as Merchant said they were very proud of being from there.

Merchant also has multiple connections to clubs in the area, being included in a book about some of the most famous Girl Scouts. Other work Merchant has done throughout the years focuses on writing songs and encouraging children to get involved in creative writing. In 1991 she took a year off from her music career to work at a day care as part of a homeless shelter in New York City, with kids that were a part of the Head Start association, which she still works with today.

WORKING WITH HEAD START

Head Start, she said, began during President Lyndon B. Johnson's war on poverty, and exists to help provide day care and preschool to children in poverty in this country. Later during the question and answer section of the event, she would note that Head Start is the only remaining federal organization for education currently left in the country.

"We have 75 million children in the United States," Merchant said. "11 million children live in poverty. 11 million."

Head Start also has a direct correlation with early childhood education and college, Merchant said, adding that they help children as early as the age of six weeks.

Merchant then discussed a bit more of her work, including becoming a mother herself, saying that while she released a solo album that same year she also "released a baby," During this time she began writing "Leave Your Sleep", which became an introduction to music and poetry for her daughter. Similar to her current project with "Cabinet Of Wonder", "Leave Your Sleep" focused on a collaboration to make a curriculum for children and to help teachers. Merchant shared some videos of this project with the audience, which is still available online, before discussing her current ongoing project, "Cabinet Of Wonder", which will also be a part of her upcoming concert on Sunday with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra.

In 2017 Merchant and her daughter moved to allow her daughter to go to a girl's private school, and she volunteered at Head Start for three full days a week for three years, helping them create an arts curriculum. Merchant emphasized that children need slow, gentle and quiet ways to learn and foster imagination. Working with children in schools through "Cabinet Of Wonders" curriculum Merchant said, the teachers said her ways were unorthodox, but that the children learned much from it. The full program involves music videos, teaching guides, and royalty free sheet music available on the website.

The program is done in collaboration with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, who it caught the attention of after it was interrupted by Covid and Merchant's emergency spine surgery. Songs are all a reimagining of the tales and poems of Mother Goose, including music videos with child actors for songs such as Little Miss Muffet and The Queen of Hearts -- which music videos of were shared with the Chautauqua audience. There are 17 songs in all in 17 different styles.

"All of the songs came out of me just singing in the shower or while washing dishes, because I wanted them to just be physically away from music," Merchant said. "That's while I worked at Head Start."

The songs also include any instrument they could get, played by "some of the best musicians in the world." "Cabinet Of Wonder" is used all over the country and available for use by teachers at cabinetofwonder.org.

Following Merchant's talk there was a designated time for questions and answers from the audience, focusing on topics such as arts programs being cut in schools, child protection and domestic violence awareness, and teaching challenging texts. It was noted that a lot of the time famous musicians and singers will begin by being a teaching artist before becoming famous and hitting the peak of their career, but that Merchant did it the opposite way, dedicating her life to the classroom now.

"To me, this feels like the peak of my career," Merchant said. "Everything I've done throughout the last 45 years with songwriting and recording, about working with musicians and music language ... I guess that's called wisdom and knowledge."

Merchant said it used to be her dream to be a puppeteer when she was young. Later, she wanted to be a preschool teacher, saying that she feels like she has finally achieved all of her goals. Merchant's event closed with a goodbye song that is included as part of "Cabinet Of Wonder."