Lifesongs
by Steve Burgess
"It's funny how you sometimes stumble into
things." "Inspiration comes from the most unexpected
places." "Winning by intent" For a lot of people,
including me, the ideal job is one that includes both personal and professional
interests. As a musician who is also a Life Skills Coach and a Child and
Youth Worker I never expected that I would get that opportunity. Sometimes
though the gods intervene and stuff just starts to happen. In 1991 we at the John
Howard Society of Sault Ste Marie began a little experiment. At my suggestion
we decided to combine music, live performance and information about social
skills into an interactive workshop/concert that we would deliver to grade 6,
7 and 8 students. The inspiration for this little project was my 18 month
daughter who I observed singing along to a Raffi video. It occurred to me
that Raffi could be singing about car repairs and she would be singing right
along . . . and learning. The little experiment,
called Lifesongs, used music, in-class concerts and songwriting workshops, to
talk with students. Over the three years of the program we delivered more
than 350 in-class concerts to students, other professional organizations,
social work professionals and teaching professionals. My partner in this
project was Sue Roy, musician, songwriter, bandmate, co-worker, Life Skills
coach and correctional worker. What we developed was a series of 5 one hour
concerts, each having a theme and all with original songs. We would go into classes
(with our guitars) and do interactive performances encouraging the students
to share their opinions and feelings about the issues we were talking about.
The themes we covered included coping skills, problem solving, decision
making, inside stresses and outside stresses. Pretty boring stuff, right?
Well how about a reggae tune about brainstorming, or a slow acoustic jazz
tune about the feelings of an abuse survivor, or an R&B tune about
respect in relationships. We discovered that the addition of music "opened
up the mind to the message". As Lifesongs began to get
more popular we decided to add another element. We knew as songwriters that
to write about things it was important to have opinions or feelings about
them. This required that we spend some time and actually think about the
issue we were writing about. It occurred to us that the process of getting
inside an issue might be useful to the students so we developed a songwriting
workshop. For about 2 1/2 hrs in a songwriting workshop we would help groups
explore an issue and develop lyrics that expressed a point of view about
something going on in the world around. We ended up with close to 100 songs
written by groups. Topics that were covered included relationships, money,
racism, sex, gangs and drugs. We even wrote a polka, "The Friendly
Polka". "Roll out the barrel the barrel of friends . . ."
Great tune! As other professionals
started to take notice we began to get requests to do songwriting workshops
as staff development exercises. Pretty soon we were writing songs with staff
groups about everything from burnout to vision statements. We discovered that
the frustrations and feelings of adults were the same as those of young
people. Hardly a surprise but to see it acted out by a group of Teachers or Social
Workers or Administrators through the writing of a song was a powerful
learning experience for us. Money was always an
issue. Finding ways to pay for all of this stuff was a full time job.
Sometimes we charged for our services and at other times we were funded by
various government ministries. To help with costs we began recording the
songs we did in concert and releasing cassette tapes for sale. In fact our
third release, this year's "Lifesongs...The Trillium Sessions", is
a collection of songs that we wrote with student groups. Recorded by local
session players and high school students, it is a CD/Cassette product that
contains 10 songs. Sort of a "best of" thing that covers many
styles of music and many themes. As with many projects of
this kind, the strain of keeping the money flowing eventually proved to be
too much. It became a full time job unto itself, which left less time for the
music. We experimented with touring as a way of raising money and tried it a
little bit but being away from home for a week at a time, living in a hotel
room etc. didn't work for us. We chose not to go there. As we found ourselves
distracted more and more by the business, we made the decision to stop the
performance end of the program. So at this point Lifesongs lives on only as a
recorded resource for people to use as they see fit. Sue and I have moved on
to coaching groups (without the music, although when the mood strikes us
we'll drag out the guitars and do some tunes) and our musical ambitions now
live on with our band, The Wailing Aztecs. So with my coach's hat on
I reflect and ask myself, "What are the learnings here?" Well there
have been many:
By the way, if anyone
would like more info on Lifesongs or would like to purchase a copy of one of
our cassettes or our latest CD, contact me at: The John Howard Society
of Sault Ste Marie and District |
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