DMK – A Family Making Music

A family, all the way from Colombia, performed at the Pearl Brewery Amphitheater on Friday, May 9th.   I, along with my husband and sister and her kids, had the pleasure of hearing DMK that lovely evening. DMK  is a Depeche Mode cover band made up of a father, son and daughter from Bogotá Colombia.  It was their first live performance in the US.  They have been performing in Colombia at various venues, but this was the first concert of their US tour.  We were pretty excited.

Maybe you’ve seen the group’s videos on Youtube. The videos are amazing!  The dad, Dicken Schrader sets up his computer with several cameras and captures himself singing, playing the bass and drum, a glockenspiel, other accent rhythm instruments, as well as his daughter playing the melodica, ukelele, recorder, and singing, and his son playing a toy keyboard, triangle, and other homemade rhythm instruments and also singing.  They play and sing together all of the different parts of the original song and it’s pretty incredible to see how they do it.  Click on this video of their cover of “Strange Love”, you really have to see it to believe it!

The coolest part about watching their videos and finally seeing them live was witnessing the pure joy that making music seems to brings them.  They really love making music together!  You can easily tell that they have to have spent much time learning the song together, and practicing their music for many hours in order to perform, and yet they look like they love it!   I admire Dicken, the dad, for his patience and his positivity.  He seems to work well with his children, teaching them, motivating them, and spending lots of time making music with them.  It’s neat to see what music can do for a family, and also how much joy they bring to all who get the chance to hear them perform.  There were many families at the performance at the Pearl, and I’m sure they were quite inspired by the whole thing.  I hope they continue performing and inspiring others to make music together.