Page 4B
The Battalion
Wednesday, August 23,1989
4
Harlem Boys Choir keeps youth off streets
EDITOR'S NOTE — The Bovs
Choir of Harlem has earned an in
ternational reputation for excellence
in music since it was founded in
1968. But the choir, comprised
mainly of black youths from poor
families, perhaps does its best work
in other areas. It takes the young
sters off the streets and steers them
toward more prt>ductive lives
through tutoring and counseling.
NEW YORK (AP) — Nathan G.
Simmons, an afTablr college musk
major with Aghts set on Broadway,
still remembers the telephone call
that turned him away from life on
the mean streets of Harlem.
He was ironing his onlv white
shirt nine years ago when the phone
rang Walter Turnbull, director of
the Boys Choir of Harlem, was on
the line.
“Dr. Turnbull said. ’You’ve been
accepted.’ and I was just ecstatic.’' re
tails Simmons. 23. “My mother was
sitting at the table and I told her.
and she got on the phone and
started calling people. It was an hon
or...and it kept me off the streets.’’
As a 14-vear old. Simmons re
members ’’doing baskally nothing
except hanging out, meeting people
who didn't do much except smoke
and drink a lot of beer .**
Crack invaded the neighborhood
a few years later, and mans of his
former buddies dropped out of high
school, “graduating’’ instead from
beer to the cheap, highly addictive
stnokable cocaine.
But a different world was opening
for this teen-ager.
He was performing. He was re
ceiving regular tutoring and coun
seling and traveling with the choir
nationally and internationally t to
places other Harlem kids hadn’t
even heard about
The New York Board of Educa
tion calculates that about one-quar
ter of the city's blacks drop out of
high school, accounting for 39.2 per
cent of all dropouts Blacks comprise
only 39.9 percent of the high school
population
troubled Harlem kids are
thought to be among the worst aca
demic performers. But under Turn
bull’s supervision. Simmons went on
to college after leaving the Boys
Choir in 1984 and is in his final vear
at Westminster Choir College, in
Princeton, N.J. *
It’s not a unique storv, according
to Turnbull He says that 98 percent
of Boys Choir members — all black
and most from desperate Harlem
backgrounds — graduate from high
school and go on to college.
And Simmons’ former friends?
“A lot of them have fallen down
by the wayside. They’re involved in
drugs.** Simmons savs. “W'e don’t
really have a lot of long conversa
tions. because we are in two differ
ent worlds
The co-founder of the choir, in
1968, spends 18-hour days oversee
ing the musical, scholastic and social
needs of more than 200 voung peo
ple bet ween the ages of 8 and 18, in
cluding a girls’ choir established in
1979.
Turnbull. Simmons and others
£ »ke in Turnbull’s office — a r«»om
minated by a Baldwin habv grand
piano, partialis covered by stac ks of
sheet music, and by shelves bulging
with music books.
The office is in old Public School
68. on a floor rented by the choir.
Turnbull spoke over a muted back
ground of major third chords, sung
in unison About 30 boss were
warming up in a nearby classroom,
its windows covered by heavy wire
mesh and overlooking a row of ten
ements disfigured by graffiti, some
boarded up and abandoned.
The towering, robust tenot and
former public school teacher took
over later, praising and cajoling as
he conducted a selection of works in
cluding Bach's “Christ laig in Todes-
handen” in (German One passage
that sounded perfect to the casual
listener raised his ire.
’’That's unacceptable, what kind
of reading is that?” he thundered,
slamming a meaty hand down on his
note stand. The kids —some in their
mid-teens, all clearly respectful —
did it again without a murmur.
Turnbull holds a doctorate in mu
sic and is proud of the Bovs Choir’s
international reputation of excel
lence. Besides German, the ensem
ble sings in French. Italian. Hebrew
and Latin as well as English and has
toured much of Europe. It has sung
in St. Paul’s in London and St.-Ger-
mam-des-Pres in Paris and was off to
Japan this month.
“It’s a very unique sound.” Turn-
bull savs, rejecting attempts at com-
C nson with well-known European
vs’ choirs. Unlike those, the Har
lem ensemble includes tenors and
basses as well as the traditional tre
bles.
Turnbull also places emphasu on
the non-musical opportunities for
choir members
1 utonng. in subjects ranging
from English and mathematics to
music theory , is provided six days a
week, and some kids go to the choir's
own school. Choir members must
maintain a B average.
Three full-time counselors give
year-round career, family and ado
lescent counseling. During the sum
mer, choir members attend day
camp in New York City and a live-
away camp in the Connecticut coun
tryside.
The choir has received interna
tional rave reviews, and Barbara
Bush, the president's wife, com
mented after a June 5 While House
performance that the choir’s pro
gram of all-round care should be du
plicated around the world.
But Turnbull and his aides have
trouble funding even the one opera
tion.
Despite some generous corporate
donations, the program is enroni-
cally short of money — $300.C¥K) was
lacking in Mav from a projected
budget of $1.4 million, although the
choir is fully booked with paving
performance dates
Most of the children come from
one-parent, low-income or welfare
families, and Turnbull said the
(ounsplors often have their hands
full ^
“There are problems within the
family, with siblings who might be
dealing or messing with drugs, or in
some cases even parents." he says.
“Poverty is the main problem It all
bods down to poverty.
“Sometimes parental problems
are so severe that they make it diffi
cult to come to rehearsals every day.
and once they stop coming every dav
they kind of fall.”
The boys also have to Fight peer
pressure from outsiders.
“Mans kids are ribbed.” Turnbull
says. "But then, their comeback is.
’Have vou ever been to Japan? Have
you been to Europe? Have you trav
eled to the t -anbbean ?’
"There are all kinds of things that
kids in the Bovs Choir of Harlem get
to do that most kids would never get
the chance to do.’*
Actress Rolle
says blacks’ role
poor in theater
WINSTON-SALEM. N.C.
(AP) — Esther Rolle has made a
name for herself on stage and on
television’s "Maude’* and “Good
Times.” but she says the lot of the
black actor has improved little
since she started in snow business
in 1942
“No matter what age 1 am or
what age they require, I generally
have to be fat and gray," Rolle.
55. who played the maid Florida
on “Mauoe. said "They can’t see
an attractive, mature black grand
mother. She has to be gray and
decrepit, generallv But a white
gra no mother can be her age."
Rolle said the best hope for
black actors is the small but grow
ing number of black producers.
Whites, she said, just don’t think
of casting blacks in mainstream
xulea
lowans start the betting on reinstituting
river boat gambling on the Mississippi
1 he mighty Mississippi once carried cargo and
cotton ana damsels and dandies up and down the
lazy river. Now lowans are betting these waters
will deliver another precious commodity —
greenbacks.
Iowa, known more for hogs than high rollers,
is moving to revive riverboat gambling, hoping
the romance of the past will generate nches for
the future.
Across America’s heartland, several states are
planning or considering gambling ventures to try
to bring dollars, fobs ana tourists into struggling
industrial cities and small towns hit hard this de
cade by factory closings, the farm depression and
the exodus of jobs and people.
’I? 1
into the great Rust Belt, vou would not see this
great influx of gambling in the guise of economic
development." state Sen. Denny Jacobs, a key
sup|K>rter of riverboat gambling in Illinois, said.
“It’s a nice stopgap until we can readjust our
selves and get txack on two solid feet.”
Soon there will be wagers in the land of Wild
Hill Hickok. the g«>ld rush town of Deadwood,
S.D There's gambling talk, too, in Indiana. Mis
souri and Wisconsin.
That’s not to sugy
irgue the stakes are too low" to fie an
economK salvation, the sites too ho-hum or bleak
for tourism.
<gest there aren’t skeptics and
critics Some argue tne <
Others fear games of chance will erode the
American work ethic.
“When gambling comes in. all of the other so
cial crimes increase," Owen I’nmavera, spokes
man for the Iowa Alliance Against Casino Cam
filing., said. “It increases loan sharking. It
increases drug traffic . . . (and) prostitution '
Supporters insist they intend to create family
.entertainment
“Those traditional Midwest heartland values
are . . . still going to be there," tjirrv Reed, exec
utive vice president of the Davenport Chamber
of t Commerce in Iowa. said.
The onlv change, proponents say. is the Mid
west will being doing more to strut its stuff.
"The Mississippi is well known worldwide."
Don Rinehart, executive vice president of the
River City Chamber of Commerce in Iowa. said.
"(It’s) a gold mine in our backyard and we
haven't taken advantage of h.“ •
“It’s all right to fie homespun. ' Jacobs said
"That’s part of the charm of tne Midwest. But it
may be tune we get a little more sophisticated ”
And gambling seems a logical step with (he in
creasing popularity ol bingo, lotteries and horse
and dog tracks. In North Dakot.i. Un example, a
record *205 million was wagered on games of
chance last year, including pull tabs, blackjack
and bingo.
More than 30 states have lotteries and more
than 40 have parimutuel betting, William
Thompson, a University of N'evada-I^s Vegas
management and public administration ptofes-
sor and co-author of a book on casinos, said
There’s more to come:
In Deadwood. S.D.. there will be |N>ker. lilac k
jack and slot machines, probably in October.
Voters this spring approved gamMing
City proceeds will go to historic preservation m
this once rip-roaring Black Hills town where'
Hickok’s last poker game ended with a bullet in
his head
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