Nonprofit uses music to change young lives, build community
By Courtney Cole
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BOSTON (WBZ) — A nonprofit in Boston is using music to change young lives and a special person is being honored at their fundraiser this weekend.
As you walk through the Hamilton-Garrett Center for Music & Arts in Roxbury, you’ll notice there’s a special type of energy. Every space, both indoors and out, is filled with the sounds of music. This year the nonprofit is celebrating 25 years.
“We started out with a ministry actually, and the congregation known as Charles Street AME Church, which is a prominent African American congregation here in Boston,” said Gerami Groover, the executive artistic director of the center.
“They started out with the intent of preparing youth in the church, in the community, to learn the music of the Black church. Many youth, just like myself, we come to church on Sundays, dragged by your parents, not really interested in what the preacher is saying. We’re looking at what’s going on in that band section, what is the organist doing? What is the drummer doing? And how can I learn a little bit of that?” Groover explained.
Now, it’s grown into a marching band, youth choir and a drumline for college students, which Groover describes as the pathway to phenomenal Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
Currently, the program has a relationship with The Marching 100, the marching band of Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), but they are open to forging relationships with other HBCUs, too.
“Just growing up in New Orleans, a lot of the things we were doing, I grew up seeing it. And a lot of terminology and things like that, it was a big part of the culture there. So, I’m teaching students who have never seen a marching band before. They don’t know what the culture is. [I’m] building them up to understand and introduce them to that world. It is very exciting,” said Trevon Sullen-Trotter, the marching band director and alumnus of Berklee College of Music.
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