It was while living in Woodstock in the 1990s that Fre began getting involved in community drum circles, the first one being started by the late jazz chanteuse and violinist Betty MacDonald in her own living room. “Then I took it over, and we started meeting at the Woodstock Community Center every Sunday.”
Then Fre met a Connecticut-based vocalist named Victoria Christgau at a Clearwater Festival. They began working on a festival together honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, and Fre started studying conflict resolution techniques. “I’m now a certified Level One Kingian Non-Violence Trainer,” she reports.
Those skills came in handy when she moved to Rosendale in the 2000s — a place, she says, that had long been a “second home,” since her sister Barbara had moved there after college to raise a family. With her Elders’ Drum Project colleagues, Fre had dreamed of buying a piece of land and building a community that would serve as an alternative to nursing homes, “with elders as active participants in community life,” she reminisces. “I researched so many aspects of community development.” But after moving to downtown Rosendale, she discovered, “We didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. Rosendale had just about everything we needed. We found our home.”
Besides starting a business in 2010 that would serve as an integral part of the arts-based renaissance of Main Street, Fre got deeply involved in community activism. A familiar face at Town Board meetings, she brings her college media training to bear by videotaping them for public access — a task that Mike Camargo has recently taken over for his All Things Rosendale website. “My dream is to have the new municipal building [at the former Rosendale Elementary School] wired so town meetings can be broadcast live.” Fre was a founding member of the Rosendale Theatre Collective, currently serves as the vice president of its Board of Directors and runs the Foley table doing sound effects for the live “radio shows” that Ann Citron has been directing at the Theatre.
She has long been involved with the Rosendale Street Festival Committee, works with local land trusts on the Joppenbergh Mountain Advisory Committee and was recently appointed to a six-month term on the town’s Recreation Commission. And she volunteers with an informal environmental action group called the CreekKeepers that monitors the state of the Rondout Creek “from bridge to bridge” and keeps it clean. “It’s so rich back here,” she says, noting the recent return of the green heron and a resurgence in fish and mussel populations. “It’s a fantastic ecosystem right in our backyard.”
Fre is also a key member of the Rosendale Improvement Association Brass Band and Social Club, founded by Amy Trompetter, which brings the funky, celebratory, amateur aura of a New Orleans funeral procession to all sorts of Rosendale happenings. “Amy wanted to bring the community together after a very divisive election,” Fre recounts. “That’s why we play at the beginning of Town Board meetings: to just bring some levity to the situation. I think we have made inroads, because everybody loves the band.”
Fre also sustains her involvement as a performer in several more professional musical groups. She was a member for many years of the all-women Brazilian ensemble IABAS, which is currently on hiatus. She plays regularly with a local “folkloric Gypsy band” called Rózsa, and on occasion with an African band in New York City called Ase. She gives drumming lessons if asked, but not in any systematic sort of way. “I’m not a weekly-get-your-lessons kind of drum teacher,” she says. “The best way to learn is to play with other people. That way, you increase your skill and learn exponentially.”
Busy as she is, you’d think that it would be hard to track Fre Atlast down, but she can be found in her shop most days. The nature and function of TRANSnDANCEnDRUM continue to evolve in response to requests from its users. What she originally thought would be a space to host dance gatherings has now become the home gallery for the Rosendale School of Arts. It’s also used for show rehearsals, classes and workshops, the Queer Film Festival and an informal Craft Night on Monday evenings. “People in the community come to me with what they need, and we make it happen,” says Fre.
The shop isn’t quite breaking even yet, but Fre is optimistic that it will eventually, although she worries about rising rents as Main Street continues to be revitalized. “More and more people are finding us,” she says. “I think it’ll be self-sustaining.” So stop on in, buy a djembe or a fossil or a photograph or some bit of antique kitchenware and give a little back to this woman who gives so much of herself to the Rosendale community.
