She started out as a singer-songwriter, but Linn Brown didn't find her metier until she started teaching music to young people with autism, Down syndrome and other disabilities.
Brown, 59, grew up in Odessa, N.Y., with musical parents - Dad's a clarinetist, Mom's a violinist - and studied music
education at the University of Illinois and arranging and composition at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
She still writes songs, records CDs for children and for adults (
www.linnbrown.com), and teaches music at four East Bay day care centers in addition to private lessons. Brown lives in Oakland with her husband, Richard Fredekind.
Many of the professionals I know have asked me, "Do you have someone in your family with a disability?" That's often the key factor for going into this work. But I don't.
What I do isn't music therapy. I feel it's more like occupational therapy because when you teach someone a song or how to play an instrument, they have something they can do in their spare time. That's very important to people with developmental disabilities.
They have a lot of free time, and they're sometimes lonely and disconnected. But maybe when they've learned a song with me, and then hear it on a commercial or the radio, they suddenly feel, "I'm part of the world that everybody else is part of."
I have lots of drums, cymbals, all kinds of instruments. I teach piano. Also the flutophone, which is like the recorder but the finger holes are raised so they're easier to close. Many of my students have fine-motor-skill problems, and it's easier to get a good tone on the flutophone. It sounds very pretty and you can accomplish a lot in a short time.
Every single student is different, and I try to follow their lead. If I have a student who likes to laugh, I do everything I can to make them laugh. You slip in some information while they're having fun, it accumulates and stays attached to something they like.
People with disabilities benefit from staying with one teacher for a long time. I have one student, Edward, who I've been seeing 19 years. He's 36 and he plays Casio keyboards. He has autistic savant-like skills.
I see him for an hour and a half every week. We start by playing and singing songs from the '60s. Then we take shirt cardboards from his dad's laundered shirts, and I write out the lyrics to two songs. I write the letter names of each note that he's to play on his right hand, and the chords for his left hand. He has 970 shirt cardboards with songs written on them.
It's very special what he can do, because he's legally blind and profoundly challenged in other areas of his life.
What I like most about my students is, they really can't put on airs. They can't be anybody but who they are. And that gives me a big freedom to be who I am, to be creative and forthcoming with my personality. I know they don't judge me.
I become very close to my students. I keep boundaries, but I love these kids. They're just amazing to me. I think they're filled with courage to be able to negotiate a world that isn't always kind to them.
This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
