The past few months have been a mix of joy and pain for Karla Brustad.
Known around Ramona as leader of the Ukulele Jammers and the Ramona Ukuladies, Brustad led a successful fundraising drive to get 25 ukuleles for her granddaughter’s school in Seattle, but also cared for her daughter, Jessica Brustad, who was battling skin cancer.
“It was unexpected joy at a time when a lot went wrong,” Brustad said of being at the school for the delivery of the ukuleles last month. “It was a whirl, but now life is back to normal.”
While managing household chores and shuttling Jessica Brustad’s 6-year-old daughter, Inga, to and from school for five weeks in the fall, Karla Brustad became the go-to resource when the James Baldwin Elementary School’s parent-teacher organization was seeking funding for new ukuleles. The easy-to-learn instruments were needed to teach music lessons to third and fourth grade students.
The Ukulele Jammers and the Ukuladies raised the majority of the $2,500 that paid for the ukuleles and music lessons.
“It warmed my heart to see the kindness and generosity from our two uke groups,” Brustad said. “They just wanted to spread the joy of music.”
James Baldwin Elementary recently added a large music room and had funds for a music teacher, but no money for instruments, Brustad said.
More than half of the students at the Title One school have families below the poverty line, so parents couldn’t afford to buy the instruments themselves, Jessica Brustad said.
While kindergarten through second grade students are equipped with percussion instruments such as shakers to learn basic rhythm lessons, and fifth-graders have wind instruments and xylophones for their music lessons, the third- and fourth-graders didn’t have any instruments.
They were “left out and weren’t going to get a music education,” Brustad said.
When Brustad heard from James Baldwin’s music teacher Monica Allen that she was interested in buying ukuleles to teach these students, she rallied with the school’s PTO to kickstart some fundraising.
Courtesy Jessica Brustad
Ramona ukulele instructor Karla Brustad, left, opened boxes of new ukuleles with James Baldwin Elementary School music teacher Monica Allen in early December. (Courtesy Jessica Brustad)
“If the music teacher had said she needed any other instrument I would have donated some money, but I wouldn’t have done this fundraising project,” she said. “I told Monica she talked to the right person.”
Knowing her mom volunteers to teach ukulele lessons every week, she asked her if anyone in her two groups would like to donate to the cause.
Karla Brustad quickly reached out to seek donations from the Jammers and the Ukuladies and contacted ukulele manufacturer Kala Brand Music Co. The family-owned business in Petaluma makes ukuleles with color-coded chords that make it simple for children to play the instrument with visual aids such as yellow chords for the musical note “C” and green chords for the “F” note, she said.
The two groups got on board to donate cash, and Kala offered to sell 25 of their ukuleles to the school at half price as a way to support the Title One school.
Altogether, $2,500 was raised to purchase the ukuleles at the discounted price of $750 and to pay for the cost of a music teacher to provide lessons, Brustad said.
Two sisters who are Ukulele Jammers members anonymously donated the final $250 to reach the goal, she said.
“The musical groups will probably never meet or see the students, but the kids will learn music because of them,” she said.
The Jammers is a group for ukulele players of any age and skill level that practices from 10 a.m. to noon Saturdays at the Ramona Community Library. The Ukuladies of Ramona is a group of 10 women who perform for luaus and other events.
Brustad said her daughter coordinated a separate social media fundraising campaign in Seattle.
Courtesy Jessica Brustad
Ramona ukulele musicians and James Baldwin Elementary’s parent teacher organization raised money to buy ukuleles for third- and fourth-grade students. (Courtesy Jessica Brustad)
At the same time Brustad was spearheading the donation drive from Seattle, her daughter was being treated for melanoma stage 2 cancer. Jessica Brustad had surgery on her back and lymph nodes on Oct. 14, and is currently in remission, she said.
On Dec. 2, Brustad went back to Seattle to visit James Baldwin’s music room and meet Allen, the music teacher. The two women, along with Jessica Brustad, unboxed the 25 ukuleles from Kala.
For Jessica Brustad, the delivery of the ukuleles was a full circle moment after her mom had spent more than a month caring for her and her family in Seattle.
“It was really amazing how quickly we got this done,” she said. “It was nice to have this cause to feel like I had a purpose or light at the end of the tunnel.”
“Music creates great enrichment for the students,” she added. “The power of music is really great. Not all kids can be scientists, but kids can feel successful in something like music.”