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Leon Mobley returns to Dover to talk music, METCO

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February 03, 2012|By Francie Latour

Leon Mobley was recently a guest teacher at a fifth-grade music class at… (Brian Feulner for the Boston…)

When the music you’ve made since grade school has led you to concert stages around the world, and you’ve spent the past 40 years performing with the likes of Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Dave Matthews, Santana, and the Fugees, it can be tough to pinpoint the moment you first realized you’d made it big. So when the question is put to Leon Mobley - master percussionist, drummer for Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, and proud Roxbury native - he hesitates, not quite sure how to answer.

There was the time in 2001, when he went off to rehearse alone before the Grammy Awards and realized the singer he was backing up had followed him, dancing to his beat with abandon. It was Madonna. Then again, decades earlier, there was the night in the late 1960s when a mysterious family friend dropped by, pulled the 7-year-old Mobley into a waiting limo, and brought him on stage to perform at Franklin Park’s Playhouse in the Park.

That was Duke Ellington.

“The thing is, I didn’t know who Duke Ellington was. I didn’t know the mega-ness of him until much later,’’ said Mobley, 50, who spent a lot of his childhood making history without realizing he was doing it. “The biggest thing I knew as mega-success was being on [the 1970s PBS kids’ show] ‘Zoom.’ I’d walk down the street in Boston and people would stop their cars and start singing the ‘Zoom’ song, wanting my autograph. It was crazy.’’

As a kid, Mobley didn’t just make music history, sharing the stage with jazz greats like Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie and taking lessons from legendary Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji at Roxbury’s Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts. With his schoolbooks and backpack, Mobley also made Boston history: In the third grade, he became the first student to attend elementary school in the affluent suburb of Dover under METCO, the state’s 46-year-old voluntary desegregation program.

This week, the drummer boy who broke barriers in one of Massachusetts’ wealthiest enclaves has returned to his adopted hometown as an artist-in-residence at Dover’s Chickering Elementary School, where he’s exploring West African culture and music with students. The weeklong visit, years in the making by local resident Judith Schultz and other Chickering parents, culminates in a performance with Mobley and local students today.

“I’m really honored to be coming back,’’ said Mobley, who recently wrapped up touring with rapper Nas and reggae artist Damian Marley on their Distant Relatives tour. “It’s a joy to be honored by an institution where I learned so much, and hopefully with the accomplishments I’ve made, the children can see that and be inspired that they can possibly do the same.’’