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HarmonyTALK is an inspirational podcast featuring ‘dreamers and doers’ who turned ideas into action. Explore creativity, perseverance, leadership and the human stories behind meaningful success through candid conversations designed to spark reflection, motivation and possibility, and join a growing community inspired to dream boldly and live intentionally.
I've been in conversations with people that say what you're doing is silly and it's futile and stop doing it. And so I try to tell people that what they think they know about The Middle East may not be accurate. And I feel extremely privileged to be able to walk between those two worlds. You have to go to a place to understand a place. And if you go to a place and you teach in a place and you interact with people, that's another level of understanding.
Harvey Price:Welcome everyone.
Todd Stephens:This is HarmonyTALK podcast. If you're tuning in for the first time, thanks for joining us. I'm Todd Stevens, your host for this episode. We're brought to you today by A. M.
Todd Stephens:Schuyre, a third generation family insurance business started in 1920. Today, I'm joined by a master percussionist who believes that harmony isn't just a musical term, it's a social one as well. He's enjoyed a long and rewarding career in music and academia. However, his biggest mark is something called the Peace Drums Project, and it's helping to heal one of the world's largest conflicts. Harvey Price, welcome to HarmonyTALK.
Todd Stephens:Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Harvey, peace drums, it sounds like a great concept, but can you tell us in your own words, what is peace drums project?
Harvey Price:Peace drums project is a way for people, teachers to connect youth in Israel and Palestine from different cultures. So we have four steel bands, Caribbean instrument, instrument actually from Trinidad And Tobago. And the bands are made up of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish youth as well as some Druze and Circassians, and so we use a lot of the cultures and ethnicities that are in Israel and Palestine. We have children play together, learn together, and perform together in a steel band, and that's the crux of peace drums. It's amazing,
Todd Stephens:these children from all different cultures as well, and as we see in the news every day, certainly in regions that I'm sure are difficult to grow up in for children, where did you get the idea for this project?
Harvey Price:The idea came from an early state department, I'm talking about like 2002, call, a request for proposal put out by then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. We were involved in one of the Iraq wars, and a call came out for, we'd like to have requests. We'd like to fund a project that deals with conflict resolution in predominantly Muslim countries using the arts. That was the exact wording. I had been dealing with steel drums for a long time, teaching at the University of Delaware, working in a special needs school in Wilmington, Delaware, and I thought that this would be a great idea to bring the instrument that has nothing to do with any of the cultures in the Mideast, bring it to Israel and try to work with Arab and Jewish youth in a steel band, and also using an instrument that itself was born out of conflict.
Harvey Price:The history of pan, which is the generic term, is very rich and way too long for us to go into here. But if anybody's interested in the history of the steel drums, it's really incredible. So it was an idea that was really formed then. I wrote my first grant proposal. It was rejected by the State Department, and you can get a callback when it's rejected, and they can tell you what you did wrong.
Harvey Price:So I got a callback, and the woman on the other end said, well, we in the committee just didn't get steel drums in Israel. I said, Well, did you read the proposal? Of course you didn't get it. There aren't any. They don't exist there.
Harvey Price:That was really the germ, and about ten years later, I got a chance to actually implement the program when an organization called Delaware Churches for Mideast Peace, which was various clergies from all denominations, approached me and said, we're looking for a project to invest in the youth in Israel and in The Middle East rather than divest from the peace process. So I pitched them this idea that I had floating around for ten years. They agreed to do it and raised the $40,000 that it took to establish two steel bands in Israel, and since then, we've brought more drums in, and we're in like six different schools, and we're finally, which was what I wanted to do from the beginning, in the West Bank. So we have youth both in Israel. We have Arab citizens of Israel, Jewish citizens of Israel, and Palestinian citizens of the West Bank all playing in a steel band.
Harvey Price:Not altogether at this point because you can't physically cross the border between the West Bank and Israel, but our students are learning from the same curriculum so that the students in the in the West Bank are learning the same songs, using the same teaching methods that the students in Israel are using. So at some point, we're gonna
Todd Stephens:be able to get those students together. That's amazing, and you're talking about using the steel drum, steel pans as they're called as well, you know, those of us travel the Caribbean, that's what you hear when you step off the airplane, right? It's just such a wonderful welcoming sound. How important was it for you to choose a neutral medium, if you will? Something that wasn't skewed one way or the other?
Harvey Price:I didn't really think of using anything else. It wasn't like, how about if I use a music project involving oud or a music project involving guitar? I had been dealing with pan on an educational level for so long that it just was a natural thing. It's like, well, here's the instrument. You know, here's how we can at least take the political and cultural ownership of something out of education.
Harvey Price:We'll use something that no one knows about. And they didn't. And they were all like, what is this? What is this instrument? And I'll never forget the first class that I taught.
Harvey Price:I always teach the class by sitting at a drum set. You know, I'm sitting at a drum set in front of 15 or 20 kids surrounded by steel drums. I teach it using the rhythmic entity from Trinidad called the Soca, s o c a. And it's a very specific beat, and I can teach scales and chords and songs. And when I started playing that Soca beat, the parents who were watching and the kids who were watching all of a sudden knew how to move to it.
Harvey Price:It was the first time I had ever experienced that. And then I realized someone said, Oh, this is a mahuz. This is an Arabic rhythm, which we all hear every day. And then I went, Wait a minute. This is from Trinidad.
Harvey Price:But then, of course, everything in Trinidad comes from Africa, and in Africa, there's the influence of Arabic music, and African music influenced Arabic music. And I was like, wow. This is cool. Okay. I don't have to explain this rhythm or how to move to it.
Harvey Price:That was really fun.
Todd Stephens:Did the world get a lot smaller for you
Harvey Price:when that happened? Boy, did it ever. I'm sitting in Haifa, and I'm playing what I play in Newark, Delaware when I teach at the University of Delaware, and they're like, Oh yeah, we know this.
Todd Stephens:Wow. Tell me about the interest level of these children. When they come into the Peace Drums Project, they I'm sure know nothing about steel pans. What's the foundation that you're really teaching them when you start off? Is it about learning from each other?
Todd Stephens:Are they listening to the sounds? Are they getting the beat? Where does that come from?
Harvey Price:Most of them have zero music experience whatsoever. There are some piano, guitar, maybe violin, maybe oud players, but most of them are coming from a zero frame of reference. So the first thing I teach them is how to find a note. Like if I'm working in the key of B flat, the notes are written on the drum, so that helps them. And find B flat, find C, find D.
Harvey Price:Let's play those three notes. We'll call them one, two, three. Literally within fifty seconds, we're playing the first three notes of a scale. And by the end of three minutes, we're playing an entire scale up and down to a specific rhythm, talking about scales and scale numbers. And then it's a hop, skip, a jump to chords, and it's a hop, skip, and a jump to tunes.
Harvey Price:And usually at the end of the first session, maybe an hour, they're playing a song. And that's the beauty of that instrument, of teaching music on that instrument. But the other thing that they're doing is listening to one another and understanding that if you're playing this chord, you need to have these notes, and the person next to me is playing some wrong notes. Wait. This doesn't sound right.
Harvey Price:Why doesn't that sound right? So they're interacting. They're listening to one another without Arabic or Hebrew or Russian or English or any of those other languages that are
Todd Stephens:spoken there. Wow. Listening, isn't that a concept? What a concept. Is that really what you're teaching with this, Harvey?
Todd Stephens:Obviously it's music, but working with different cultures, why was it so important for you to use something like music to bring these cultures together? Is it about listening?
Harvey Price:It sure is, but my background is just in music. I am concerned about the world. Like, I'm not one to say, oh, here's conflict. That doesn't concern me. I'm just going to ignore that and focus on my own little world.
Harvey Price:The only thing I can really do is teach music. I'm not a trained diplomat. I'm I'm not a child psychologist or an adult psych so my only thing is to teach music. And I know the power of music. And musicians know the power of music for connection.
Harvey Price:And so it's the most logical step. Well, you could
Todd Stephens:have done that sitting at home in Delaware and the Philadelphia area, which I know that you have through your career, but you've taken this worldwide. Can you just talk about the logistics of doing something like this for a second? Because I assume that this isn't an easy project, trying to get drums into these countries, and then once you get them there, you need people to teach. You need setups. You need a facility.
Todd Stephens:How do you pull all that together?
Harvey Price:So the first part is getting the instruments from Trinidad to The US. That's not an inexpensive proposition. It usually takes about three months if you're gonna order enough drums for 10 kids to play at once or what we call 10 piece band. Once they come to The US and they come in travel worthy cases, then I book a flight to Tel Aviv. I check them in to the airport as if they're luggage.
Harvey Price:So that's expensive. It's like, oh, you have 25 more bags than the one free bag you're allowed to take. So it's part of the cost. I know I'm going to do this. I have paperwork with me that when I land in Israel, I go through the red line or the declaration line.
Harvey Price:The paperwork, I'll say this quietly, doesn't exactly match the true cost. And when I go through the line in Tel Aviv, they have no idea what they're looking at, so I always have to take them out of the cases and play them. And then they call their buddies over and like, oh, this is so cool. Okay. You know?
Harvey Price:Pay whatever. I think it's a 17% tax to come into the country. I have a truck waiting for me that I can load the drums onto the truck and then take them to whatever school or village is hosting the instruments. And on that end, I have a great business partner, Michael Shachur, who runs everything on the ground in Israel. So we coordinate and he'll say, know, show up with the truck at a certain time, and then we'll meet this guy at the airport.
Harvey Price:The first time I went, I didn't know about the red line and the green line, and I just waltzed through the green line with pushing 25 k's. And they stopped me, and they confiscated the drums. No way. And it took me three days to get them out of the airport and much money. The truck had driven two hours from Haifa to Tel Aviv, so it was a learning process.
Todd Stephens:Yeah, absolutely. Then you get all these things here, so I'm just the logistics are mind boggling really when you think about it, but then you have to get these things to, like you said, a town or a village where you're having these classes, and then I would imagine for the children to actually get to where you're going to set up for instruction or rehearsal, is that easy in these areas or can that be a challenge as well?
Harvey Price:It could be a challenge. In Israel proper, the three bands that we have are all in schools, so the children come to the school, some of the kids go to that school, some of the kids don't. That's not an issue unless they're missile strikes and then it's an issue. This past year, we moved all of our steel drum classes into bomb shelters so that they wouldn't have to stop rehearsal and go to a bomb shelter. In the West Bank, it's a little bit trickier.
Harvey Price:We have a single band in a school outside of Bethlehem, a town called Beit Jallah, and the kids that go to school there at that specific school, obviously it's easy for them. There's kids that come from another school that's only a mile away. That's pretty easy to get to. But then there's kids that come from Hebron, which is about 20 miles, maybe not, maybe 15 miles south of Bethlehem. And for them it's a challenge.
Harvey Price:I mean we rent buses for them, but traveling in the West Bank on the roads that are not Israeli roads, that are Palestinian roads, in other words, you're traveling with Palestinian plates as opposed to Israeli plates, so the buses are Palestinian buses, they're often delayed at checkpoints. It's about a twenty minute trip normally. The last time I was there in January, I taught kids in from Hebron at the school in Bethlehem, and they were an hour and a half late because they had to sit at a checkpoint and make sure that they weren't terrorists going to a steel band rehearsal. So that is a challenge. But I have to say with those kids that come from Hebron, they never miss.
Harvey Price:They never say, you know, the last time it took two hours to get to rehearsal, I'm not gonna bother. They get on the bus and they come and they stay as long as they possibly can. Sometimes it's two hours, an hour longer than they're supposed to, and it's their outlet. It's their musical outlet for the week. That's amazing that a trip that short could take that long,
Todd Stephens:but understanding the security threats and the risks, the fact that these folks, these young folks, and I assume sometimes they're parents, they put the time in and it doesn't matter once they get there, that's what they're there for, it seems.
Harvey Price:For sure. We don't even talk about that. It's like they show up, they scramble off the bus, they come in, I don't say, Oh, how was your trip? What did it feel like to have a rifle pointed at? We don't get into that stuff.
Harvey Price:They're in playing right away.
Todd Stephens:Wow, and you mentioned you were just there in January. What's it like for you traveling in and out of that area?
Harvey Price:I fly into Tel Aviv. I go through customs. I'm traveling on an American passport. I've been there so many times. They know how many times I'm in and out.
Harvey Price:I rent a car, depending on where I am first. If I'm traveling to Haifa first to teach there, then it's about an hour and a half I drive to Haifa. I'm there three or four days. I meet with my business partner, and then we do classes. And then I'll drive south into the West Bank.
Harvey Price:It's not an issue for me to enter the West Bank because I'm traveling on an American passport. If I was on an Israeli passport, it gets a little bit trickier. You're not supposed to travel into the West Bank. I have never had any issues, and one of the things that's interesting for me is talking with people in Israel who have never ventured into the West Bank because they're convinced that they're going to be kidnapped and hurt. I just have never experienced that.
Harvey Price:And my only experience there is love from the kids and their parents and watching our teacher teach with this tremendous sense of love and compassion for these kids. So I love traveling to Bethlehem and Bejala and teaching there, and traveling across the border into Israel, and going and teaching these kids. It's very interesting. I may be the only musician doing that on a regular basis.
Todd Stephens:Sure. It's quite the tourist schedule, and like we're talking about the logistics of this, but when you hear these children practicing and playing, and I assume you have rehearsals recitals where the parents can come, what's the feeling that you get when you see this happening, Harvey? I mean, is your baby, so to speak.
Harvey Price:I mean, when I was there in January, we had a concert in front of about 600 people in Haifen. Now this was at the school in an Arab village called Ibelin. So we had Arab kids and some Jewish kids playing in front of tons of people, and it was fantastic. Like, they were really into it. When I went to the West Bank, I was only teaching.
Harvey Price:We we didn't have any classes. We didn't have any concerts just because the kids had been out for a while because they couldn't travel. There's often restrictions of traveling in the West Bank whether there's a war going on or not. So sometimes things are just canceled. Our goal for this coming year is to do some performances in Manger Square during the Christmas season, and we've been talking about that for a while, but the last two years have been so bad.
Harvey Price:But they do performances in front of kids, in front of their peers at the school where the drums are, but they do less performances unfortunately, and we're trying to work to overcome that. But it's great seeing them on stage. I mean, we work with how to bow, how to face your audience, how to look professional, dress nicely. I try to impart to them that people could be anywhere that hour that they're listening to. They could be home, they could be out to dinner, but they're here in front of you.
Harvey Price:Appreciate the fact that they're there listening to you. It's a whole another sense of place for these kids. I can
Todd Stephens:only imagine, and those of us who keep in touch with what's going on in the world and you watch the news, you can almost get a sense that there are such great divisions in the world, particularly in The Middle East, where people are Again, you
Harvey Price:get the sense that that level of hatred in these hundreds and hundreds of years of history is almost insurmountable, but seeing kids and families get together over music, and you said love. What's the picture you see when you see this happening? Well, you know, I'll say that the kids and the families that are involved know what they're getting into. Right? There's plenty, plenty people on both sides that want nothing to do with having their kids play music or even see kids from another side.
Harvey Price:Maybe more now than ever. So, you know, I'm seeing kids and families that are interested in a different narrative. I've been in conversations with people that say, What you're doing is silly and it's futile and stop doing it. I can't even respond to it. It's like, Okay, that's your grasp of things.
Harvey Price:So I try to tell people in The US, which is really my primary audience. Why is that? Because we're a five zero one(three) based in The United States. Most of our funding comes from The US. So I try to tell people that what they think they know about The Middle East may not be accurate.
Harvey Price:It may be tainted by the news and tainted by what they're hearing in their churches or synagogues. That's what I try to bring. I try to bring the good news and the bad news, and there's both good news and bad news. And I feel extremely privileged to be able to walk between those two worlds. The world in the West Bank, I guess three worlds.
Harvey Price:The world in the West Bank, the world in Israel proper, and the world in The United States, that you have to go to a place to understand a place. And if you go to a place and you teach in a place and you interact with people, that's another level of understanding.
Todd Stephens:Absolutely, and you have such an amazing worldview, and the fact that it's connected through music is fascinating to me. So I have to ask, where did your musical journey start? This obviously has been in you for a long time.
Harvey Price:Yeah, I mean, I've been playing music since the second grade in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia school system in the nineteen sixties was a tremendous teaching ground. Like, you weren't asked if. You were asked which instrument do you wanna play. So they gave everybody musical instruments, and there were 285,000 kids in the Philadelphia school system there.
Harvey Price:Wow. So, you know, 10% latch onto it and you so it was just with me always growing up that there was music lessons in schools. There was music in the neighborhoods because you went to a neighborhood school. So it was always there in my consciousness. You get to a certain age and you say, Well, I wanna do this for a living.
Harvey Price:So you go to music conservatory after studying through high school, and forty years goes by and you go, Oh.
Todd Stephens:I guess I'm doing this. I guess I'm a musician. How did you choose the drums? Percussion, I'm sure, as you got to know as you were older, but in second grade, I imagine it was the drums, right?
Harvey Price:Yeah. My brother started playing trumpet. He was a couple years older, and it was a natural accompaniment to that for him to play trumpet and I could play drums. But when I was very young, maybe as young as two, I and don't know if we're supposed to remember that far back, but I remember sitting on my parents' couch. They had a big one of these big hi fi pieces of furniture.
Harvey Price:And my parents were not musicians at all. They had a huge record collection. The record collection was movie soundtracks and Broadway musicals. So the one movie soundtrack I asked them to play over and over again was the soundtrack to a film called The Man with the Golden Arm, which was a Frank Sinatra movie, 1956 or '58 maybe, and it was a jazz score. He's a jazz drummer who's a junkie.
Harvey Price:What a concept. And I think he was nominated for an Academy Award. It's a fantastic movie. It's a great movie. And the whole score is a big band score, but the whole soundtrack opens up with a hi hat, and it was, I found out later, the great jazz drummer, Shelly Mann, playing on the soundtrack.
Harvey Price:And it's an open closed jazz hi hat sound that goes. And, like, at two or maybe two and a half, I went, wow. That's the best sound I ever heard. Like, that's what I needed. And the first time I was able to get a drum set in the third or fourth grade, the first thing I did was learn, Okay, how do I make that sound?
Todd Stephens:On the high hat. So it's so funny. We talk to dreamers and doers on this program all the time, and we talk about what's the moment. I don't know if I've spoken to someone who's had an moment at two or two and a half. That's awesome.
Harvey Price:It's like it was yesterday. It was just so funny like, Oh, that's the sound.
Todd Stephens:Wow. So your early influences, I'm assuming growing up in Philadelphia at the time, had the doo wops, you had the street corner groups, so all that was very present. What were some of your other early influences?
Harvey Price:Well, growing up in Philadelphia school system with the great Philadelphia Orchestra, at that time under under Eugene Normandy. They used to come to my elementary school and perform on stage, and they did this throughout the city. They would split the orchestra in two because it was too big for an elementary school stage. And William Smith, who was assistant conductor, would take half, and Eugene Ormandy, who was the great conductor, would take the other half, and they would just visit schools. And to be in the fourth grade and hear even half that sound of the orchestra was like, Wow, this is awesome.
Todd Stephens:That is so cool. It's amazing to me because that obviously has evolved to a career for you. You're an incredible vibraphonist, and if folks haven't checked out your work, you got to Google Harvey Price and check out some of your work. I mentioned it reminded me of Modern Jazz Quartet, which is one of my favorite groups going back.
Harvey Price:Me too.
Todd Stephens:It's just a terrific swing and you're leading the band, and you still play all over the area, and you played with so many greats all over the world. I have to ask you though, what's more exciting for you? Is it playing in front of a group on the Vibraphone, or is it watching a bunch of Muslim and Jewish kids play the steel pans?
Harvey Price:Oh, that's a really good question. I think I get the same feeling. Watching those kids play, yeah, I would say I get the same feeling. It touches different things for sure. When I'm on stage, I'm a little bit more focused into what's but watching kids play together and react, it's like, wow.
Harvey Price:I would say it's the same. That's amazing. And knowing when you're watching them that you did that. This wouldn't have happened without you. And some great teachers and some great teaching.
Harvey Price:Oh, sure. Sure. You know, we have teachers that are on the ground teaching day in and
Todd Stephens:day out. What's next for Peace Drums Project?
Harvey Price:We are working on a July 2027 tour to The US, as they say in Arabic, Inshallah, and that will involve traveling with about 50 people and going to three different cities, into Philadelphia, Buffalo, and Detroit. Those are three centers that we have supporters there, and both churches and synagogues and Islamic centers. That's a big thing that that we're working on. And I'll start to travel there in November of this year to try to start to put that together, work on repertoire, see which kids can physically go or how much you know, who needs financial help and and that kind of thing. So that's sort of on the horizon, and we have to plan that way because if you just say, Well, there's gonna be another war, and there's bombs falling, you can't hold the kids' interests that way.
Todd Stephens:Well, right. And this is, I'm sure for you, it's not a project with a finish line. It's something that will continue to go on, correct?
Harvey Price:Again, as they say in Arabic, Inshallah. Right. Inshallah. Very well put.
Todd Stephens:Where can folks find out more about Peace Drums Project and about Harvey Price?
Harvey Price:I mean, peacedrumsproject.org. Peacedrums within askproject.org. It's a really good website. For me, I have a jazz website called vibeadelphia.com. It's all one word, like Phil Adelphia, but it's you start it with a vibe as in vibraphone.
Harvey Price:So vibeadelphia.com is my personal what do they call that? My ego driven website. But Peace Drums Project, you can log on to and donate. There's plenty of places to donate. You can also reach me through Peace Drums Project if you have any questions about it, about the project, or how to help, or anything like that.
Harvey Price:We also have a Facebook page, but I really like going through the website these days. It's a better venue.
Todd Stephens:Well, should take a look at what Harvey Price is up to with Peace Drums Project support if you can, and you're just doing so many amazing things, Harvey. I've got one final question for you. Sure. Can music really heal the world?
Harvey Price:I think it could connect. I wouldn't say that it can heal the world, but if we don't connect people, then we certainly are not gonna heal it. So it's the pre healing, I'll say. Music can pre heal the world.
Todd Stephens:Well, that's wonderful, and thank you for all you're doing, Harvey.
Harvey Price:Well, thank you, Todd. Thanks for the opportunity.
Todd Stephens:It's been wonderful having you on the program. Thanks for telling us, much more about Peace Drums Project, and we wish you best of luck with that and your other endeavors going forward.
Harvey Price:Thanks so much.
Todd Stephens:Absolutely. We've been speaking with Harvey Price, the visionary behind Peace Drums Project uniting children around the world through music. This is HarmonyTALK podcast, bringing you the stories of today's dreamers and doers sponsored by AM Sky, a third generation family owned insurance business started in 1920. Meet other fascinating people like Harvey by checking out our episodes on harmonytalkpodcast.com and sign up for updates. I'm Todd Stevens.
Todd Stephens:For everyone out there, keep dreaming and doing.