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| Musician uses drums to beat drugs |
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| Written by Maddy Houk / Patterson Irrigator / | |
| Saturday, 20 October 2007 | |
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“The heartbeat is like a drum, the heart beats in rhythym. ... We all have to have a good, healthy heartbeat.” — Michael Bayard Musician, anti-drug activist  Elias Funez / Patterson Irrigator The musician and educator brought Red Ribbon Week’s anti-drug and anti-tobacco message to Sacred Heart Catholic School Heart Catholic School students Tuesday, a week before the national Red Ribbon Week. At Sacred Heart, Bayard used percussion instruments to celebrate healthy lifestyles through music and rhythm in his “Drums, not Drugs” presentation. Students showed off their dancing skills while Bayard provided the music. The special guest received a music scholarship to the Julliard School of Music in New York when he was 15 years old and plays classical, jazz, blues, Latin, contemporary, folk and rock and roll. Sacred Heart Principal Jason Olveira introduced the musician, who performed at the school a few years ago, telling students about his hard work and clean lifestyle. “With hard work, practice and dedication you can achieve great things,” Oliveira said. Bayard started the program by telling the kids their bodies can become a trashcan if they use alcohol and tobacco — after which he turned a trashcan into a drum, making a visual link to his speech. “We’re going to turn it into a wonderful musical instrument,” Bayard said as began banging on it. He hit one piece of wood and said it was “healthy wood,” providing a good ring and tone. When he hit an “unhealthy” block of wood — it “started smoking,” yielding only a hollow tap-tap. Besides the wood instruments, Bayard showed an instrument made from a gourd that was dried in the sun and had grooves cut into it. He played various sounds from other instruments, too. They included one that students compared to a cricket, frog, woodpecker, jaguar and galloping horse, and another that students said sounded like a waterfall, brook, stream, rain, hail or a rattlesnake. But it was the traditional beat that he used to keep his presentation going. “The heartbeat is like a drum. The heart beats in rhythm,” Bayard said, as he beat on a drum. “The heart pumps blood and circulates blood in our body keeping us alive. We all have to have a good, healthy heartbeat.” Sacred Heart sixth-grader Morgan Greene, 11, said she enjoyed the program. “I liked it because it had a lot of enthusiastic beats,” Morgan said. Third-grader John Guevarra, 8, and fifth-grader Nicole Henriques, 10, liked how students learned about all the instruments from different countries. “I liked the rhythm of the different percussion instruments,” Henriques said. Red Ribbon Week started after U.S. Drug Enforcement agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena was murdered in 1985 while investigating a drug cartel in Mexico. The first activities were in Texas a decade later. Over the years, the event spread across the United States. The national anti-drug campaign will be observed throughout the United States this week, as children have programs and make banners against drugs and alcohol. To reach Maddy Houk at the Irrigator, call 892-6187 or e-mail her at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
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