NORTHRIDGE : Program Helps Students Beat Temblor Blues

It’s a prescription nearly every child can swallow: To reduce earthquake stress, mix one part drumming and one part singing with one part pretending to be a turtle. Add clapping and stomping to taste.

Hundreds of elementary school children across the San Fernando Valley are taking a dose of rock ‘n’ roll to ease anxieties induced by the earth’s rocking and rolling on Jan. 17, thanks to the music therapy department at Cal State Northridge.

The idea is to use music and rhythm to calm fears raised by the 6.8 magnitude Northridge earthquake. On Tuesday, three CSUN music therapy students visited El Dorado Avenue Elementary School in Sylmar, armed with drums and the will to endure as much noise as a room full of third- and fourth-graders could make.

The students pounded mallets against paddle drums with all the fervor their bodies could muster. The classroom vibrated with a growling rumble.

“The drumming sounds like the earthquake,” said 10-year-old Christine Valencia, who was staying with her grandmother when the pre-dawn quake struck--in a house that was later condemned. “This helps people be a little calmer so they won’t be scared anymore.”

Ron Borczon, director of the music therapy department at CSUN, said the drumming helps children channel their anxieties about the earthquake.

“The music is an energy release as well as being fun,” he said. “It helps them put emotional concepts into something they can see and feel.”

The 10-year-old music therapy department teaches students how to treat patients with a variety of physical, intellectual and emotional disabilities through music. The earthquake presentation marks the first time students in the department have worked with public schools.

The earthquake program, which involves six CSUN students, will last until mid-May and involve 20 San Fernando Valley schools.

It is funded with a portion of a grant for elementary school music programs that was awarded to the Valley Cultural Center by the Los Angeles-based Weingart Foundation. The about 70 drums were bought at a substantial discount from a North Hollywood drum manufacturer.

At El Dorado, in addition to pounding the drums, the students imagined themselves as turtles crawling on the ground, feeling safe within their shells.

They sang a rap song encouraging themselves to accept that the earth moves sometimes:

“When the earth shifts/

just move your feet/

and clap to the rhythm of Mother Earth’s beat.”