One of the current YA programs is Welch's songwriting course at Craig Elementary, which encompasses grades K-8. The school is operated by the Recovery School District and is located in one of the more impoverished areas of the city. Craig Elementary is an open-enrollment school with no academic requirements for admission. Priority is given to students who live in the district, but many students are bused in from all over the city.

Welch is a journalist and musician who was recruited by Bates one semester before the storm. “I met him through his girlfriend, Morgana, who was working for us,” says Bates. “We developed a friendship because we were both musicians.” (Bates plays guitar and ukulele professionally.) Welch says that he never considered being a teacher, although his sister teaches. As he puts it, “I don't have the personality to do what my sister does.” In other words, he doesn't like being the disciplinarian. Bates had to convince him to give it a try.

“When Michael went in, I think he had a narrative he wanted to realize, you know?” Bates says. “It didn't quite happen that way. And I think he's happier, actually.”

FIG. 3: Young Audiences’ Michael Patrick Welch, known to his students at Craig Elementary as “Mr. Michael,” started teaching songwriting using his own gear. Fortunately, the school’s equipment has been expanded with donated gear such as this Roland GW-7 keyboard.

Welch figured that he would teach the kids music writing by having them do album reviews. The early reviews were hysterical. “He sounds like he's trying to get wild animals to come to him,” wrote one student. Bates's favorite is, “It gives me the bubble guts.” Bates still laughs at that one: “I wanted to name my band Bubble Guts for the longest time.”

Because YA is an after-school program, writing was the last thing students wanted to do on their downtime. “Eventually, the kids said to me, ‘If you make me write one more word, I will kill you.’” Welch, 27, says he is too young to die, so he began thinking he'd teach them to write lyrics. Eventually, he brought in some of his own gear, drum machines, and instruments, and a songwriting class was created. Since then, Welch has accepted donations of more gear to help him build the program, including a Boss RC-50 loop station, percussion pads, and a keyboard (see Fig. 3).

The kids have begun recording their own songs, posting music on MySpace (see the sidebar “More from Mr. Michael” for links to Welch's material and his MySpace page) and in some cases performing live. They have a performance scheduled at the House of Blues, and next year Bates is sure they'll play at New Orleans's JazzFest.

“After the storm, I thought I'd come back and get them writing about their experiences,” Welch says. “But it was a long time before the kids came back. I think that was the strangest part of coming back to the city — there were no kids anywhere. By the time we had the program running and I said, ‘Let's write about what we went through,’ the kids all said, ‘Oh man, aren't you tired of talking about it? We just want to forget about it and have some fun.’”

The reality of what happened to them came through at the most unexpected moments. Once, Welch tried to get the kids to write lyrics about their pets. One boy was drawing on paper instead of doing the assignment. “He didn't even take his eyes off the paper and he said, ‘I had a dog. We left it tied to a tree, and it drowned.’” Welch says he was speechless when the boy added, “My grandmama died, too.”

There are about a dozen kids in Welch's room, all in the school uniform of a red polo shirt and slacks. The girls (who have formed their own group called G4) are rehearsing their song “Girls” (see Fig. 4). “Girls … they like to go out and go shopping and get their hair and nails done …”

FIG. 4: Welch’s songwriting class at Craig Elementary inspired an all-girl group called G4. Here, two members of G4 rehearse a new song, “Girls.”

The boys are busy taunting the girls. “Mr. Michael,” as the kids call him, tells the boys, “Hey look, I tried to get y'all to write your own answer to these girls' [song], and you wouldn't do it.” One of the girls starts singing, “Boys … they like to be smelly and …” It's an elementary school all right.

Welch changed the focus of his class from writing to songwriting because he heard hip-hop artist Chuck D (of Public Enemy and Air America Radio) speak to a class at the Math and Science Charter High School in New Orleans. A teacher known as Hollywood, who is part of the NO Outreach program, teaches a class on rap and hip-hop there. Welch waited around to talk to Hollywood and Chuck D about how he could do this program at Craig. He wound up being Chuck D's tour guide around New Orleans.

Welch says the program is dynamic, with kids bringing in new ideas. The members of G4 come from all areas of the city, bused in to Craig. They've developed an amazing method of working on their music over the weekend: four-way calling. They call each other and rehearse over the phone. “Until this moment, I didn't know they were doing it over the phone,” he laughs. “The best days are when they've worked out a new idea on their own, and they bring it in. It's like, ‘All right … let's go.’”

Other days students come in and say, “I don't want to go with you. I don't even like you.” Those are the harder days. Welch says that he often supplies a line that gets them inspired. If he can do that, they will take off with the idea. He uses the drum machine or loop station to create beats that the students can write a rap to. The tools have really helped the creative process along.

“It's all about giving them an avenue of expression,” Welch says. “And it's about getting up in front of their friends. That's really important to these kids, because it's important in New Orleans.” Welch says that it's also about writing, which he has not abandoned. He feels that writing is too important to their success in life, and he's determined to push them to do as much of it as they can stand. “It works because I can get their reviews into Gambit (a local entertainment tabloid) and get them a little bit of money for it.”

One thing that FEMA did after Katrina was to give everyone a small amount of money. Welch used his share to buy a new laptop, which he uses for recording the kids. In addition, the MusiCares Foundation helped musicians replace some of what they lost. “It worked out okay for me,” Welch says, “but it didn't work out for a lot of people I know. Some of the people who needed it the most got nothing.” He says he's still unsure how FEMA distributed aid, but suspects that many of the poorest in New Orleans simply didn't have checking accounts for FEMA to deposit the money into.

Bates says that establishing programs for older kids are more difficult to pull off. It takes more resources, more money, more tools, and more supervision. And finding things that attract older kids is difficult, too. Music technology would certainly be one of those things.

FIG. 5: Master percussionist Curtis Pierre teaches Brazilian music at Laurel Elementary. An 18-year veteran of the Young Audiences program, Pierre is an inspiration to his fellow teachers and a father figure to many of his students.

Pierre, who founded Casa Samba (www.casasamba.com), teaches Brazilian music at Laurel Elementary (see Fig. 5). He has an idea for a high-school music-technology program based on drum machines and beatboxes. “Everyone wants to make beats. That's all they want to do these days,” says Pierre. “But to do it well takes preparation, and I think I can show them how to do that.” Pierre is a master percussionist and has been working with Young Audiences for 18 years.

Gear is the main issue for this artist-teacher, who takes students to his home-recording studio to record. “I have kids coming in and out all day,” he laughs. He owns an Edirol R-09 field recorder that he takes into the classroom with him to record, but he needs more drum and recording equipment to be able to work in the high schools, where he thinks he could make a difference. “The way he deals with the kids is inspiring,” explains Bates. “You'd be surprised at the number of kids who call him ‘father.’”

Barnes works with middle schoolers at Behrman Middle. Traditional band directors will be amazed at this: he uses traditional marching band as the carrot to get them into the program (see Fig. 6). Once they're there, he teaches them theory and jazz. They have been lucky about getting band instruments through Tipitina's and Young Audiences, but electronic musical instruments are hard to come by. “We get band instrument stuff, but things like guitars, amplifiers, and keyboards — we need that badly. We just don't traditionally get that stuff,” Barnes says.

FIG. 6: Behrman Middle School students march at the famous New Orleans JazzFest. In New Orleans, performing in a marching band is considered cooler than playing sports, so Behrman band director Desmian Barnes uses traditional marching band as the carrot to get kids into the program.

Bates says many more YA programs would like to do the types of things that Welch has done, but they need help. While band instruments survived or were replaced, many electronic musical instruments were lost in the water.

Many reasons contribute to why public schools in New Orleans were as bad as they were before the storm. Bates believes that things go back as far as the 1980s, when Texas offered tax breaks to attract the oil companies to move there, leaving New Orleans without that essential money. “At one time, oil was 75 percent of the funding for Young Audiences. Now it's less than 5 percent, all from Chevron, which stayed here.”

Welch says that you just have to be there to understand how thoroughly racism was embedded in the New Orleans school system. He hopes that Katrina gives city leaders the opportunity to get it right, but he's afraid that monied interests will ruin what is unique about the city. Welch recommends a documentary called Left Behind (www.neworleansleftbehind.com), which clearly explains what was happening in the New Orleans public schools before the storm hit. “If you see that film, you'll understand everything,” he says. The film is expected to be in wide release soon.

“New Orleans's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness, at least in my cynical Yankee opinion,” asserts Welch. “It never changes. And there are some things that definitely needed changing.” There are many who hope that the right things are being done for the students, things that can actually fix the mistakes and change the course of public education in New Orleans. But there are many who feel that corporations' interests will prevail, and that their motivation is making money, not serving students. And while those decisions are being made in offices outside of New Orleans, four ten-year-old girls are writing music over their cell phones.

Debra Barbre is the Music Education Specialist for Roland Corporation and sits on the executive board of TI:ME. For more information on integrating technology in your school music program, contact her at debrab@rolandus.com or visit www.rolandus.com/community/musiceducation.

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