My Letter to the Bronx and Brooklyn

November 6, 2021

#ReadUsThen Whoa! To all the concrete in Brooklyn—cold and unforgiving. To the delis with stale bread, selling sandwiches at 2:00 AM to our inner city youth. To the eldest, telling the youngest they can only raise the bar beneath their dreams—we offer the Brooklyn Music and Leadership Institute.

As you stare into your smartphones, wondering how to achieve the next step toward greatness. Do you have to steal, like Rycon told you? Can you pray on it like Rynay told you? Do you have to pay for it with money you don't have? Do you have to sell candy on the train? Do you have to stand out on the street? No—you simply must show up to the Brooklyn Music and Leadership Institute- as you are, every day until you graduate.

When your family tells you, your dreams are too obscure. When your teachers tell you that you're not smart enough. Before you don't get accepted, you come to the Brooklyn Music and Leadership Institute.

Who told you; you had to settle for second place? Second place in instruction, equipment, location, and the habits you need to change. Who said belonging needed to surround an energy that cared more about your potential to pay their debts, then help you achieve your dreams?

We're talking about—you saw her watch, and thought it was gold because of how she carried herself. You saw his watch and knew it was fake because of the things he says. The choice is still not clear, look closely at several faces. One tells lies, all the time. One knows very little about the journey. The other is valuable, but only has eyes for money. The last one always tells the truth, and sometimes it stings. So, would you rather be lied to, or hear the truth and pursue your dreams?

The devil is in the details. A missing floor tile, food dropped on the floor. Reviews that don't quite add up. It's in the past when, back in the history of Brooklyn, gritty people were up to no good.

Brooklyn and its concrete, its people the families that call our borough home need to understand. The Brooklyn Music and Leadership Institute followed the Brooklyn Way to our uniforms, instruments, and more. The East Coast Ocean of Soul—to stand forever, and we call Brooklyn our home.

Typecasting an individual is easy when you can't hold the weight. You want to be just like someone, then fine, pay the bills. You want to try to hate someone, then fine, take their pills. Not only that, but you want to try to be standoffish, then swallow moldy food. Furthermore, you want to make life difficult then wear the same clothes for 26 days, then take a shower.

The Brooklyn Music and Leadership Institute is a unifier. We unify people, places, communities, and heal statistics. Statistics say if you're too black, too poor, to minority, too Latin, too multicultural, too global, too much, too LGBQIA+, too different, too Brooklyn, too Bronx, too unique or if you’re not enough- that you won't make it. The Brooklyn Music and Leadership Institute is here to speak of a renaissance.

It’s time to put your finger on what you want, it’s time to understand the work you’ll need to put in to get it. It’s time to realign your experience, expectations, and outcomes by traveling throughout the world and breaking the cycle of self-centeredness.

It’s time that you are appreciated, as you are, without needing to change your appearance. It’s time that you understand healthy foods you can eat for good brain health and allow you to make healthy choices. It’s time for the bureaucracy to advocate for equal pay. The bureaucracy also needs to roll back vetting of community programs at certain levels. It would be nice if the bureaucracy realized that reforms, in all forms, are meant to make life better for the future.

The most powerful person in the community is the public-school principal. The most innovative person in the community is the band director. The most important people in the community are our families and children. The least indispensable things are our own individual corporate interests, in outside parties, who seek to challenge the notion that Law Abiding citizens, by their choice to avoid the pathways to prison are then somehow, not deserving of equal protection under the law.

Brooklyn Music and Leadership Institute is uniquely focused on providing and promoting excellence. So, what is excellence? The product of hard work and extra effort, which creates the difference between Outstanding and Exceptional? Or is Excellence a 100% Graduation rate, students entering college, with a scholarship to help them pay for it. Why study music when you can build bridges?

So that’s it – you can go on and become a fast-food worker, and we’ll still love you for that. Or, you can own your own catering company. You call it apples to apples, but that’s not the case. We’re in the business of promoting a generation of bridge builders. Some will be field engineers, some will be on the architecture team, others will be estimators, some on the conceptual design team, others will be inspectors, project managers, human resource professionals, investment bankers.  

The Brooklyn Music and Leadership Institute, our East Coast Ocean of Soul Marching Band – we seek to be the constant. The constant source of good, positive, encouraging energy. We will be the source of challenge, change, and innovation. So, as we concrete ourselves into the bricks of Brooklyn, NY, as the temperatures drop, and as we load our jet to our ultimate performance venue. We are here to stay.

To the Bronx – we first crossed paths on 149th street, Tremont, Townsend Ave, we’ve been to Fordham, Pelham, Morris Park, Belmont, Woodlawn, Eastchester  and nothing was wrong with your borough or community. The hills of the Bronx, the apartments, the elevated subway tracks, are somewhat familiar. The challenge we face is the Brooklyn Music and Leadership Institute getting safe passage. So once it’s confirmed, cause in our borough it would be this way, once it’s confirmed, more resources will come your way to build it in your image of the Bronx – so you can win together as a community that way. The White stone, the Throngs Necks – are roads we must travel, but if you’ll have us – we’ll stay.

To Brooklyn – we've eaten with you, we’ve performed for you, we’ve won trophies for you, we graduated all our students for you. We worked without pay for months for you. We built ourselves up to who we are for you. The Brooklyn Music and Leadership Institute is made in the image of Brooklyn, NY. Sometimes that image is rough around the edges like East New York, the Stuy or the Crown, Sunset and sometimes is smooth like Downtown, Park Slope, Bay Ridge. The Brooklyn Music and Leadership Institute plans to stick around, but you must make space, you’re squeezing our teams so hard right now, that we can’t eat. We're hungry Brooklyn, let us have sustenance to feed our team and eat.  

Never giving up – no need to. Not stressed, been through worse when I was younger. Band is important, because it helps heal society, through expression. Why stop the renaissance when a movement is still incomplete? Fighting our own people when war is on the other end of society