Hayat Mahmoud and Newman Khan perform with the Hammond Hammerheads. LOUISE KRAFFT 2015
The Hammond Hammerheads joined blues artist and musician Curtis Blues for a musical assembly and concert on Wednesday afternoon, Feb. 25 at the middle school. Since last fall, the students have worked on building a four-string guitar out of a cigar box and a neck they constructed themselves. They used a traditional design that dates to the beginning of the 1900s in the rural South.
The project is a joint effort of Hammond Middle School and the Alexandria Seaport Foundation’s (ASF) Middle School Math Program. Hammond Middle School technology teacher Matt Cupples and ASF Education Assistant Anthony Ness supervised the students. Blues artist and musician Curtis Blues was sponsored by ASF and instructed the students in two workshop sessions on how to play their new instruments and also give them the cultural context for this instrument in American music history. This is the fifth year that the students at Hammond have participated in the Hammerhead workshop collaboration.