When budget cuts strike schools, typically art and music programs are the first to go. Entrepreneur Kiff Gallagher had an inkling he could do something to help.
In his 20s, he'd been part of the White House legislative team that created the national community service program, AmeriCorps. Gallagher's days were caught up in service and public policy. After work, he would step out into the local music scene.
"At night," he tells TakePart, "I was around a much different crowd, a very diverse crowd of people coming together through music."
After his time at the White House, Kiff took a few years off from service to concentrate on music. But he felt something was missing.
"The same impulse I had around service was what was driving me to be an artist," he said. "It’s this sense of being a part of something larger than yourself."
Kiff combined his two passions—music and service—to create MusicianCorps.
The program trains musicians and places them to serve as teachers and mentors in low-performing public schools.
"It just all came together for me," Kiff says. "I was in my basement, there was no exit strategy, I was 35 years old and said, 'I don’t know where I’m going, but if there's a HealthCorps, a Green Corps, and all this other stuff, why wouldn’t we create MusicianCorps?' "
The premise is that "music is service and that if you could bring people together through song, you can make real impact through song."
Now in its second year, MusicianCorps has employed 40 musicians. Last year, they piloted the program in five cities across the U.S. Currently, teachers are placed in elementary through high schools in the San Francisco Bay Area.
MusicianCorps fellow Hernando Buitrago heard about the program and knew it was a perfect fit.
He says, "Playing with the students every day has made me a much better musician. It's pushed my boundaries of what I can do and of being a role model musician for the students."
At the high school he works at in the Mission District of San Francisco, Buitrago sees "a lot of gang-related turf issues... Coming into the community and getting one of these guys to play instruments and get excited about it is a huge success."
Laura Cambron, another fellow, says she wanted to share with students the power of music and help them build their skills and confidence.
One students, she says, was very shy and "not a person to sing beyond the shower. Through the class, we supported her, and she ended up singing an original verse to a song and performed it in front of all of her peers."
MusicianCorps takes music beyond schools and shares it with the community.
Kiff says, "We have kids who don’t even go to school, who are in gangs and who are showing up on school holidays, on Veterans Day and Martin Luther King Day. They're joining us early in the morning at a veterans hospital to make music with the vets."
One of the best parts of the job for Kiff and the fellows is when kids come together through music. After a beloved teacher passed away at a high school MusicianCorps serves, Kiff says, "The kids wound up coming to our office with their parents. They sat around a circle making music together and processing this."
MusicianCorps plans to expand to more cities across the U.S. Next up is Los Angeles, and hopefully five more in the next few years.
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