One of the joys of social media, especially for a newcomer/boomer like me, is the discovery of really cool people who do really cool things. It’s doubly awesome when it turns out they live and work and do those cool things in the same town as you. That’s the case with Jo Anne Yada, known to her students as Ms. Y, whose Instagram posts caught my eye many months ago. Images of art projects for little kids, focusing on classic and contemporary music performers from Dolly Parton to Bo Diddley, made me think two things: I wish she’d been a colleague of mine back when I taught, or I wish I could go back in time and be a kindergartener sitting in her art class. While neither are possible, I did get to spend some time getting to know her. Here are her replies to 5Q4: Jo Anne Yada.
Where did you get the idea that teaching kindergarteners about James Brown, Dolly Parton, David Bowie, Bo Diddley, Elvis, and Prince would lead to fun art projects?
When I was hired to teach kindergarten with the Bay Area Music Project in 2017, I wanted my students to learn the basics of music so as they grew up in the program, they would have a foundation of music knowledge. I started with Elvis Presley, and as part of my lesson, I wanted them to really visualize who this pop icon was. I drew a basic Elvis outline wearing a blank jumpsuit and gave my students sparkly stickers and gems to make it Elvis-worthy. That sparked the idea of cutting out a “leather” jacket from black construction paper and giving students pyramid stud stickers and letting them decorate a punk rock jacket in the same way. It’s evolved like that ever since.
Jack Black’s character in the movie School of Rock was an influence, for sure. The way he wrote the sub-categories and influences of rock musicians on the chalkboard and busted out a slideshow for his students truly resonated with me.
Clearly you have a love of music, and so many different kinds of music. How did that happen? Do you play an instrument, are you in a band?
My family had a jukebox in our house for a long time, just like any other piece of furniture. Half of the carousel of 45s was my parents’ music, and the other half was mine and my siblings’ music. So that created a love of Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston, the Pointer Sisters, the Beach Boys, and of course the Beatles from my parents’ records. The other half of the carousel was new music my siblings and I collected which included Janet Jackson, Madonna, OMD, Blondie, Depeche Mode, and Pet Shop Boys. We always had a working stereo in the Yada household and were quick to get a CD player when they became available. I don’t play an instrument; I just play the radio.
You have grown beyond your classroom art projects to helping your students create murals around Alameda. Can you share how that works and where folks can see the murals?
During school breaks, I need to keep busy, and parents need childcare, so I started hosting art camps where students made arts and crafts projects to take home with them. When the pandemic was still going on, the awesome folks at The Mission HQ (the gym on Clement Street) kindly welcomed us to their outdoor space. They suggested that we beautify their fence so that their clients could find inspiration when they worked out outdoors.
After that first mural, I wanted to do more public art works to connect with other small businesses around town. Business owners get a free mural in exchange for letting us use their space for a week. You can find photos of some of these murals on my Rock the Blacktop website. This year, I’m focused on doing all murals all summer, because it’s such a great way for us to connect to our community.
You can see our work at Lincoln Park, Wescafé, Aeolian Yacht Club, Bay Area Maker Farm, Almanac Brewing, and lots more places. If you look closely at the jungle-themed mural on the restroom building at Lincoln Park, my students painted some teeny-tiny Tarzan figures hiding in the jungle. Their idea was to hide a certain number of them, so that visitors can try to find them all (spoiler: there are eight of them). My students start with sketches based on the business owner’s theme, I pick up exterior paints from Pagano’s, and I supervise as the kids turn their sketches into large public artworks.
On your Instagram page you have several posts championing diversity, from trans persons to the LGBTQ community to those with autism to celebrating Juneteenth. How do you connect that to your love of music and creating art projects for your students?
Diversity and allyship are written in the stories that I tell about David Bowie, Sylvester, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Lady Gaga, Talking Heads, and Little Richard, among others. The stories are right there, ready to be highlighted and celebrated. The truth is that 21st century kids don’t need it to be over-explained to them. They get it. They are trans, black, queer, non-binary, and neurodivergent—all of those things resonate with them. Even if they don’t directly identify with those terms, they have friends who do, and they are happy to be allies for them.
If you were given the chance to make a mural telling us who you are, what might that look like?
Oh, it would be very colorful. There would be lots of interesting color combinations, patterns, and layers. It would have pink and green, which was a combination used on Elvis’ debut record sleeve, and influenced The Clash’s London Calling record cover. It would include a bit of ska checkerboard patterns, high-contrast stencils of figures wearing (my iconic) cat eyeglasses, some dark drips to represent goth music, the logo from The Stray Cats, overlapping images of 45s, cassette tapes, and LPs, a jukebox… you would see something new every time you view it.
Gene Kahane is the founder of the Foodbank Players, a lifelong teacher, and former Poet Laureate for the City of Alameda. Reach him at [email protected]. His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Gene-Kahane.
