Reaching for the 'Skye': Growing up Common Ground

On Skye Zentz’s first day of Common Ground on the Hill, she said she sang gospel music for the first time, met her best friend, began learning basic guitar, kissed a fiddler and fell in love.

“I wasn’t enthusiastic about coming,” Zentz remembered. “My dad brought me. It was one of those things that when your parents bring you to something, there’s a little bit of a feeling of being dragged. I wasn’t unwilling, but I wasn’t enthusiastic. And in 24 hours that changed, a ten-fold.”

That was 11 years ago for the now 27-year-old, Norkfolk, Va-based singer/songwriter.

“That’s what most of my years at Common Ground have been like, taking really great classes, being inspired, falling in love, whether with a person or with the community, until I started teaching,” she said.

Zentz began teaching basic ukulele to the participants of Common Ground when she was only 23.

“It was challenging, but it taught me how to teach,” she said. “Being a teacher in a classroom with a curriculum is one thing, but being a teacher of a performance art is something where you can have a class of 12 people are on a different learning curve.”

Because Common Ground on the Hill is open to all ages, Zentz also had to face instructing individuals older than herself, which she found unnerving.

“It was moreso in the beginning,” she said. “But I didn’t want to be a laughable kid teacher to them. I always get these looks when I walk into my ukulele class on the first day, and I can tell that they’re like ‘Really? Her?’ They’re expecting someone who is at least in her 30s. And it’s hard to give directions to people older than you.”

Zentz has expanded her teaching load over the years, with courses in basic and intermediate ukulele, as well as urban folk songs, the “Rising singer/songwriter” class and “Women Songweavers,” which addresses various female composers throughout the ages.

But Zentz still said she misses the time she spent at Common Ground in her teens. For a long time, according to Common Ground Executive Director Walt Michael, Zentz “ruled the rock garden”--a place for the younger generation of Common Ground to relax and hold jam sessions until the early morning.

She said one of her ultimate goals is to inspire the kids and teenagers in the way she was inspired.

“I think teenagers need to be around people who are older than them that they can actually look up to,” she said. “And that are ‘cool.’ And for teenagers to support and nurture each other’s creativity as well, and that’s the really cool thing that’s here.”

To listen to Skye Zentz's music and to learn more about her activist and educator role, visit her website. Common Ground is a two-week arts education festival taking place at McDaniel College.

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