LAST SUNDAY, I watched one of the most inspirational stories I’ve ever seen in my life.  It was on ‘60 Minutes’, and I’m sure many of you would have remembered it.   Presented by veteran correspondent, Lesley Stahl, it was a truly heartwarming story, ‘Gospel for Teens’, about a gospel group in Harlem. For me, the piece was emotionally stirring on two levels.  The first is the impact the programme, run by a woman named Vy Higginson, through her Mama Foundation, had on the children who took part in it. If that wasn’t enough to bring you to tears, the music itself was so moving and beautiful that it had to stir something inside you — those of you who would have watched the Susan Boyle audition video would understand.
Now I have to state as a disclaimer that though I was raised in the Christian faith, I can’t recall the last time I’ve personally been to church; and I’ve never really had a special affinity for gospel music.
As Stahl says in her ‘intro’: “If you think that Higginson thought up this programme as a way to save the teens, you’d be wrong.  She did it to save the music.”
I’ve always believed in music’s ability not just to inspire people, but to change them as well.  This column has seen more than one mention of the role the music of Michael Jackson played in shaping my outlook on life — when I was younger, I was a founder-member of the only Michael Jackson fan group I’ve known about in Guyana; a group, a gathering of young people who met not simply to listen to Michael’s music and share news about him, but who actively sought to follow the message of his music, much like he did.
Seeing the ‘60 Minutes’ story, I was reminded of that time in my life.  Of course, to be fair, I can’t really compare my relatively normal and stable coming-of-age with the very real dangers or difficult choices that some of these young people have to face.
I can’t begin to shower praise, as the case may be, on the innovative genius behind this approach.  First of all, it’s based on the presumption that there is an automatic redemptive power in gospel music, and therefore what is of primary importance is to preserve the thing which has the power to change people than to focus on the people themselves.  In terms of the wisdom of the approach, I suppose the best parallel would be Jesus’ saying that if you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, but if you teach him to fish, he’ll never go hungry again.
The religious aspect of the programme was almost incidental.  As was noted in the story, the programme is held on Saturday and not at a church.  What the music does, by the emotionality of its very form, is act as way of releasing tension and expression that would otherwise be expressed through actual violence or the very urban musical encapsulation of it, rap music. One thing that I noted early on is that Higginson didn’t jump right in to deal with the issues the various young people had – she just let them sing.  The drama, the stress, of their lives were dealt with afterwards.
Secondly, this approach ties in with a particular focus that I have with regard to the importance of youth in the promotion of and preservation of ideas.  African American spirituality has long been a source of sustenance to blacks in America, from slavery through to the civil rights era.
Higginson’s criteria for being allowed into the group have a double reinforcing effect. As she said in the interview with Stahl, she doesn’t expect those applying to be great, although it helps. This, and the fact that the training offered by the programme is free, means that anyone showing enough commitment and a certain level of talent is eligible for membership.   However, and this is actually complementary to the entry eligibility, there is no guarantee of being entered into the programme.
In short, the message to the young person applying is that you this space, this good thing is accessible to you, but you’re not guaranteed participation in it. As a life lesson, you can’t get more simple and profound than that, particularly when it comes to young people who come from disadvantaged homes, as several of those focused on in the story have.
The end result, is that you have a set of young people who are working to participate in something that gives them a sense of self worth by having them contribute to something great, both individually as well as collectively.
As usual with anything that I write about that may not have a direct link to Guyana, I have to specify how I see it as potentially useful here.  In this instance, I think it’s clearcut: as a developing nation, we have our own pockets of poverty to deal with, and young people who lack focus because of whatever economic and social circumstances.  The lesson to be taken away from this is that you don’t need tremendous amounts of money, nor elaborate programmes, in order to begin to make a change in our youth, our future.  What Higginson and her group did was to give them something to believe in, themselves and the future.  That, for me, is a workable formula universally, whether in Harlem or Albouystown.