Amanda Panda & Rob Duquette: Music, Magic, and Kindness!
Every month PelotonLabs co-founder Liz Trice interviews a local community member. This month, Liz caught up with Rob and Amanda Duquette, husband and wife musicians who teach, perform music for kids, and run Music and Magic, collecting musical instruments for kids.
-Courtesy photo
What does Music and Magic do?
Rob: People donate instruments that are not being used, and we match them to families who have kids and want to be playing music. It’s been mostly world of mouth until this part year and now it’s exploded.
Last summer Maine Public found us and made us part of their musical instruments drive, and we got two hundred instruments, which is more than we’ve ever had! Now our job is matching the instruments up with families with kids that want to make music!
We’ve served over 125 families spread out all over Maine – the furthest one is Mount Desert Island – and at our event, The Great Instrument Giveaway in November, we have families coming from as far away as Bangor and Searsport. We put matches we’ve made up on our website.
How did you get started?
Amanda: In 2009, I lost a really good friend who was an amazing musician: Van Lawton. He always said that he wished he had access to instruments when he was a kid – he didn’t get hands on instruments until he was in high school. He was special to us; he played music at my daughter’s birth, and when he died, we looked for a way to keep his memory alive. So, whenever we give away instruments we say, “In memory of Van.”
You also have a business called KindKids Music. What’s that?
Amanda: We’re children’s music teachers and performers, and we share kindness through music, do shows at schools, libraries, museums. A lot of our music has subtle messages through the music; we touch on resilience, kindness, self-regulation, a lot of social emotional skills… We weave tools into our songs in ways that the kids are just learning a song and having fun with it but there is a greater take away.
We also offer scholarships so that kids can take music lessons for free through our work as Music and Magic of Maine.
Rob: When we met, I was doing music for kids, and Amanda was doing movement and puppets. I teach privately; I’ve taught at a few colleges. My group is called Duquette, and I used to tour with Jonathan Edwards.
Amanda: Rob has been doing music his whole life. I’m a dancer, but when I was homeschooling my kids, I realized I was using music for everything – teaching them how to read… everything. I started keeping track of the songs we were using and sharing them with other folks.
Rob: With the pandemic, our careers went into smoke! It was a little scary. So, to go back to it is a joy!
The pandemic was hard on musicians. What did you do?
Amanda: We barely made it through! During the pandemic we recorded an album at home. I taught myself how to create an app so we could reach more families with our mission. We did online classes with families, we made tons and tons of videos, we ran a channel for another friend’s app… Our mantra is adapt and create.
On one outlet, Zigazoo – it’s like a TikTok for families – we run the music channel, and we have 70,000 subscribers. We create prompts and kids reply with thirty second videos. That’s part of what inspired me to make our own app, which has meditations, stories, and music education.
I work a lot with the homeschool community and provide music resources for homeschool families. There’s always this magical thing that happens around our artistic work, and Music and Magic came together easily, too.
We have a big KindKids Music Family Winter Concert on December 3rd at 3 p.m. at the Chocolate Church in Bath. That’s going to be KindKids Music with a full band, all our puppets and a special guest singer.
What’s on the horizon?
The great instrument giveaway event is on Friday, November 11th, at our center in Saco with all the instruments we’ve collected in the past few months, so families can come and collect instruments. There are keyboards, and drums, and ukuleles, and more. We get a lot of requests in the fall when school starts, and it’s really expensive for parents. We’re going to be collecting donations at the event, have coffee and hot chocolate, and make some music and magic!
FMI
Find Kindkids music app on Apple and Android app stores.
Events
Sat, Nov 5th: KindKids Family Concert in Thomaston
Fri, Nov 11th: Great Instrument Giveaway in Saco
Sat, Nov 26th: KindKids Family Concert in Millinocket
Sat, Nov 19th: Family Music Class in Saco
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