banjosuffrage - Posted - 11/13/2009:  14:58:47

Hello all,
I work at an inpaient psych and rehab hospital and someone let the cat out of the bag that I play banjo and guitar.

I have been asked to play for the kids on the youth unit (ages 12-17). I havn't the slightest idea how to approach this. I guess my question is has anyone out there done this before? Any advice would be helpful, from song recomendations to suggested reading or websites geared toward this sort of thing.

My main concern here is that I play folk music on banjo, which I imagine a group of troubled teenagers may not dig AT ALL.

Thanks a lot

KANINJACK - Posted - 11/13/2009:  15:10:40

I work with at-risk teenagers also, and have done so for the last 11 years. They seem to love the banjo for some reason. I play more Scruggs than clawhammer, but the banjo seems to make them all crack a smile. Even the gangbangers, get a kick out of it. I think the banjo just has that effect on people.

meatmissle - Posted - 11/13/2009:  15:11:44

don't play Bob Dylan's "rainy day women #12 and 35"

I used to manage a group home in phoenix and also at a couple rehab places in Montana. I couldn't imagine a banjo going over very well with the majority of that crowd. Not unless you figure out how to play songs that they know and like. Ask the kids. That would be the best way to find out. If they want to hear it, then they want to hear it.

-----------------------------------------------

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

RatLer - Posted - 11/13/2009:  15:12:12

Just the fact you're playing a banjo should keep them entertained...for a while anyway. Go for it!!

RatLer

banjosuffrage - Posted - 11/13/2009:  15:17:39

Yeah I know, also eliminates all the songs about moonshine I know, which pretty much puts me back a ground zero.

Docmhc - Posted - 11/13/2009:  15:27:09

Don't worry about what tune to play, just play something. They'll love it.

Don

pauwac - Posted - 11/13/2009:  15:27:57

I'm a teacher and play for my high school students every year. I talk about the history of the banjo, my lifelong interest in it, play a few simple tunes as well as I can, and then pass the banjo around so everyone can hold it and strum the strings.

I suggest playing tunes you know well and like, rather than trying to play what you think the kids will like. Most teenagers think adults are pretty lame anyway, so it doesn't really matter what you play.

Have fun.

un5trung - Posted - 11/13/2009:  15:35:09

When I was in high school (mid '70s) my jazz quartet played at several retirement homes and one psychiatric hospital. It being jazz we got a good reception at the retirement homes, except for one gentleman who, em, critiqued my the sax player. Loudly and repeatedly. What's funny is that he was far better than me! I guess that's why I switched from woodwinds to strings.

In the psych hospital -- and I guess in the homes as well -- people were mostly happy to have guests to relieve the monotony, no matter how incompetent our musicianship. There's no way you can be as bad as we were, so I'm guessing you'll be welcomed with open arms
:-)



Just breathe.

banjosuffrage - Posted - 11/13/2009:  15:45:56

thanks for the advice, i guess I'm gonna give it a go

banjobilly32 - Posted - 11/13/2009:  15:54:21

Years ago a band I was in played for a State Mental Hospital. The patients seemed to enjoy the music very much. Afterward we had them coming up for autographs etc. The crowd seemed very appreciative. Go for it . Play FMB, Beverly Hillbillys, and any recognizable tunes you may know. They made us feel far better than we were!!

BANJOJUDY - Posted - 11/13/2009:  16:19:29

Ask Paul Roberts at Banjocrazy.com. He used to work in the mental health field healing folks with music.

Paul is a Hangout member.

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GerryH - Posted - 11/13/2009:  16:52:29

It should be a treat for them. Almost everyone enjoys live music. Good luck and let us know how it goes.
GerryH

Skyraider50 - Posted - 11/13/2009:  18:43:38

It should be a treat for them. Almost everyone enjoys live music. Good luck and let us know how it goes
TRUE
BUT, offers like that...........drive you crazy........right?.............sorry

Life is hard. Being stupid makes it harder--John Wayne

Skyraider50 - Posted - 11/13/2009:  18:43:38

It should be a treat for them. Almost everyone enjoys live music. Good luck and let us know how it goes
TRUE
BUT, offers like that...........drive you crazy........right?.............sorry

Life is hard. Being stupid makes it harder--John Wayne

banjoak - Posted - 11/13/2009:  19:08:01

I have played at adult pysch hospitals as well as Youth Centers, which were a combination of kids with mental issues and kid jail. The adults are easier. The thing with many of the kids is they tend to be anti-authority, feel like they are wrongly locked up, and almost anything their adult keepers bring in is going to be lame. What I have found works best is to not try and sell them it's cool; just be myself, show that I enjoy playing, and I don't care if others think it nerdy. Which they can identify with that as kind of cool.

Play some contemporary tune on the banjo, or not? I would suggest not if it is only to try to make it seem like you are cool, they see through it. Same with almost any tune or song you think they will think is cool. Almost always fails.
They do however like and connect with dark songs and anti-authority songs. Murder ballads, outlaws ballads, celebrating breaking the law, outwitting the law or system, promescuity, moonshine, drugs. The staff don't want you to give them any ideas.

banjoy - Posted - 11/14/2009:  00:57:23

If the picking and music was conceived as some sort of therapy or if it is perceived that way, you'll get a reception to match. If you just play the music because you love it and want to share it and it's something you genuinely want to do and enjoy, that will be felt and will be received.

In other words, it needs to be authentic and you'll be fine. If this started as or becomes an academic or institutional thing for you, or has been handed to you as a task to perform, you may want to take a different approach. Kids aren't dumb and can pick up on all this unspoken background noise and if there is any, they'll know it.

If you love what you're doing that will come through, and you can play anything and it will be well received. I've seen this for myself. It's their hearts you're wanting to reach, not so much their heads.

Just all my humble opinion of course. Good luck.

--Frank

Edited by - banjoy on 11/14/2009 01:09:18

banjosuffrage - Posted - 11/14/2009:  05:48:04

thanks banjoy, that's very important to keep in mind. I know when I was a kid so many of the things geared towards kids/youth always seemed so...contrived. I think a large part of the reason I like old time and folk music is that it's so "not-contrived".

banjoy - Posted - 11/14/2009:  06:43:31

Yes that's right. You hit the word...contrived. Keep it real, keep it simple, do it because you love it, don't worry so much about what you pick, or adding any structure to it. Don't even try. Now, bring in another person, a guitar picker, a fiddler, a mandolin player, who shares that, the love of picking. Do this because you love people and you love music. Don't layer anything else on top of that. It becomes very real, very contagious, and you all go outside the box for a little while. I think you know what I'm talking about. You kind of stop time for a bit. If you can so that for those kids, just because you love to, the sky is the limit really. Worlds can change through music. It's the little things like this that will be remembered in years to come by those kids. It's those little things that can rock someone's world in a good way.

If you put that out there in that way, it will come reflecting right back to you in the eyes and smiles and laughs you bring forth. Not a bad thing.

I hope you get to do this and have some degree of control over not making it an institutionalized big deal. Good luck. Hope to hear back from you on how it's going.

--F

Ronnie - Posted - 11/14/2009:  07:28:10

I have played a few gigs at Western Mental Health Institute in Bolivar, TN. Quite an experience!

www.bobbythompsonbanjo.com

minstrelmike - Posted - 11/14/2009:  08:23:43

Be yourself. The only difference between adults and kids is that kids are more honest when they think you're boring or a lame-o. Adults will generally sit there quietly and applaud and even vote for you.

One thing I do is as many different styles as possible. Frailing is easier to do by yourself but it ain't something you want to learn for a gig. Different tunings are way kewl to show. If you have some older stuff you learned at one time and then moved on from, bring it back out. You aren't jamming so you don't need techniques so much as demonstrations.

Mike Moxcey
http://moxcey.net/mike/minstrel/index.html

Paul Roberts - Posted - 11/14/2009:  10:21:42

"I have said that I’m going to kill myself in the morning and then in the afternoon I’m singing my heart out," said Ronnie. "It’s brought me, time and time again, out of depression. I’m not sick when I play music," she said. "It’s a realm that’s beyond sickness. It’s separate from sickness, so it’s marvelous for me. It’s magic almost."

Ronnie was a truly great blues singer, whom I worked with at McLean Hospital, where I was a music therapist in the '60's.

banjosuffrage said, "My main concern here is that I play folk music on banjo, which I imagine a group of troubled teenagers may not dig AT ALL."

You mentioned that you work at the hospital where you're going to be playing music for teenagers. That's what happened to me, and it segued into a career as a music therapist. I wouldn't be surprised if this weren't the last time you're going to be using music as a therapeutic modality.

Music can be highly therapeutic to many people who are suffering from disturbed mental states. Whether or not it's immediately apparent, you may actually be saving a life or two - even in one session.

My suggestion is not to worry about whether your choice of tunes, or instrument, is going to fit into an imagined criteria of what these kids think is cool. Play from the inner core of your being - that's where you'll connect. Show them what music means to you. You're modeling a survival tool that some of them may choose to utilize - in one form or another - for their self-healing. I've seen lots of people heal themselves through music. Show them what music means to you.

Next time around, you can explore different possibilities for engaging them. Someone may want to learn banjo. Others may be inspired to bring out their guitars and play some of their music. An ensemble could get going. A concert might eventually be arranged for the all the patients. It's fertile ground.

There's an enormous stigma attached to being labeled a mental patient. Music can give people a chance to emerge from that role. On an institutional level, it can make a very significant contribution to alleviating some of the sense of alienation that so permeates these institutions. One of the magical aspects of music is its potential to have a humanizing effect - mental hospitals are in dire need of this. It can also benefit any staff members who may get a whiff of it, which helps humanize the whole system. Whatever you do will be a meaningful contribution. I hope you enjoy it and that it continues in one form or another. My own experiences, working as a music therapist, have greatly influenced my entire perspective about the meaning of music, in every situation.



Paul

http://www.banjocrazy.com/ Gold Tone Banjos - Lowest Prices

http://www.youtube.com/user/strumstering Paul's YouTube Channel

R.D. Lunceford - Posted - 11/14/2009:  22:55:57

Great post Paul.

Be yourself, and let your banjo be itself.
I would suspect that the people you're going
to play for have a talent for seeing to the core of things
in spite of or perhaps even because of their condition.

You're doing a good thing.

R.D. Lunceford- "Missourian in Exile"
Model 1865 Bowlin Fretless Banjo
****************************************************
"Drink from the Musselfork once, and you'll
always come back." -Dr. Bondurant Hughes, 1917

Solo - Posted - 11/15/2009:  00:24:49

I was drawn into this environment because of schizophrenia of a loved one. It's taken me from mental health wings to halfway homes, and been one of the most rewarding periods of my life .... performing for late teens through adult.

R.D. is right. These people tend to see into the core of things, and synch with your good intentions.

It is a very good thing.

majikgator - Posted - 11/19/2009:  13:21:31

best of luck i think you've got it

erstokke - Posted - 11/22/2009:  01:25:45

I once played in a prison for hardcore criminals. They seemed to enjoy it.

I recently talked to a rapper about banjo music. He said "cool"! I think he appreciated the honesty of folk music. He also told me that he likes Johnny Cash. I think the "enemy" is commercial nonsense music. Which of course becomes a problem when rap turns into commercial nonsense.

While a crowd of rap lovers might not think banjo is the coolest music of the world, they might appreciate it. Give the ones that don’t like it the option to leave the room.