Gareth Manning, Gleaner Writer
As both the major victims and perpetrators of crime grow younger and younger every year, yet another group is targeting youth with a move to bringing about some social change.
Nearly 31 per cent of young people from as early as a few months old to 24 years are murdered each year, national crime statistics show. These same statistics show that an even greater percentage are committing murder. Youths 12 to 25 make up 56 per cent of those arrested each year for murder.
It is out of concern for this trend that the 13-year-old Hands Across Jamaica for Righteousness has renewed its effort to reach youth. This time they are using the media they know best: music and technology. All this is being done with the help of a renowned Jamaican concert pianist and an acclaimed music innovator who will start their programme in five troubled schools in the Corporate Area.
Powerful forces
"Music and technology are powerful forces. Music communicates internationally; it communicates into all the levels of the social structure," Dr. David Van Koevering, an American scientist who played a part in the invention of the synthesiser, said during a Gleaner Editor's Forum yesterday.
"The keyboard changed the music world. The lyrics and the message of the musician were carried more forcefully, very positively with electronic music," a passionate Dr. Koevering said, noting that with consistently improving technology, creating one's own music has become easier and easier, particularly for young people who understand the technology better.
"If you listen to the music on the streets, if you listen to the young people, we believe that's a force that can be used effectively," he continued.
Concert pianist Huntley Brown endorsed that point, saying what Jamaican children need is a medium to express themselves. He said once they are given that and made to understand that they can sing songs that uplift them and not degrade them, then their attitudes will change and violence will decline.
"If we can put up a clean glass then we can change the nation that way," he said.
The programme is to be kick-started with the provision of five synthesiser systems which will go to the Windward Road Primary, John Mills Primary and Junior High, Boys' Town Primary and the Cecil Boswell Basic schools, as well as to the community of Trench Town. It will allow children to create their own compact discs as well as MP3 files and add their own lyrics.
