This past Friday night, students from the Paseo Academy of Fine and Performing Arts put on a show that the whole town should have seen. That would have laid to rest criticisms that the Kansas City, Missouri, School District is beyond hope. In fact, the night made me impatient to see these kids get out into the world and start making their voices heard beyond a high school auditorium -- even if it was filled to capacity.
Anchoring the night was a house band with Leonard Tann on keyboards, Reginald Simmons on drums and Broderick Joyce on pretty much whatever he wanted to play (bass, guitar, most impressively drums -- you don't often see guitar players sitting in on drums, and at one point Joyce stood up and to let Simmons take back his rightful seat, in the middle of a song, one player taking over for the other without anyone missing a beat).
front of the stage and played a gorgeous, Stevie Wonder-complex ballad
that made note of the fact that someone had told him "No one would
listen to a song by a kid. Let me sing my song for you."
That was the prevailing sentiment -- everyone had something to say over a two-hour night of a couple dozen music, spoken-word and rap performances put on by the students in Mr. Odam's creative writing classes.
Some of it was deep. Kids called out absentee fathers, scolded George W. Bush and eviscerated centuries-old slave catchers. They shared their prayers. Sometimes, they just bragged, like Cortez Williams and Troy Ron Vann did in "I'm So Fly":
In his turns at the microphone, Zendrix Berndt broke down the word "Broken," removing that nefarious n-word, soldiering through "broke" to get to the all-important community implied in "bro" and the existential imperative of "b," as in "to be," before promising himself he'd never again be broken.
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Hi this is the robert mentioned i usually dont do youtube but ill make it a point to get circus of deception up and send it to you thank you so much for the support
My name is Broderick Joyce, I am the bass, drums and guitar player on stage with Leonard and Reggie. There was a mistake, Mitchell Chandler was the vocalist that sang with Leonard 'Let Me Sing'. It would be greatly appreciated if it could be fixed, thank You!
Beautiful work, CJ! I'd like to see an ongoing public forum where these kids could perform and we'd all get a chance to check them out. If anyone else wants to fill me in or talk to me about how to get this kind of thing happening, my e-mail's above.
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