R&B singer Joe talks about upcoming album, religion, and life.
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| R&B songster Joe is embarking on a mission to teach music to teach music to youths. What's more cool . . . acoustic guitar strings or the trigger of a gun? R & B singer Joe is building an ambitious plan to lure New York's young troublemakers from the temptations of picking up a pistol, using music as the bait. The 39-year-old crooner, who released his album "The Good, The Bad, The Sexy" on Tuesday, said he's giving out guitars to youths in hopes learning to play the instrument will soak up energy normally used for fighting. "Someone really has to take a stand. Things have really gotten out of hand. I want to take these kids under my wing and show them a different lifestyle," Joe - a.k.a. Joe Thomas - told the Daily News. "Music is very powerful." The high rate of black boys and men shooting each other in New York neighborhoods such as Harlem and the South Bronx, as well as in Baltimore and Detroit, sparked the idea. New York City statistics are shocking: A NYPD analysis of 2010 homicides showed that while blacks make up 25 % of the city's population, two-thirds of the slaying victims - 357 out of 536 - were black. While male blacks, ages 15 to 29, make up 3% of the city's population, the group made up one-third of the death toll. And 85% of black suspects arrested for homicide had attacked someone of the same race. "A lot of kids have broken families, mothers in the home but no fathers around. But that shouldn't be an excuse," Joe said. "Just touching an instrument for the first time can change your life, other than touching a gun." Joe is going to the Kaplan House, on St. Mark's Place, tonight at 7 p.m. to give his first music lesson to about two dozen young men, ages 17 to 20, who grew up in foster care and are now living in the East Village group home. He'll also give away guitars. Some teens were skeptical that hardened hoodlums would leave the streetcorner to strum a few chords, but Kaplan resident Theo Vidal, 19, said studying music keeps him from being "locked up." "Dealing with music, you are dealing with parts of yourself that nobody understands," said Vidal, who grew up in the South Bronx and now is interning at a hip-hop radio station. Harlem and Washington Heights kids will meet Joe next week when he pairs up with the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network to start spreading the guitar strings Uptown. "Kids can realize 'I can do this too," said Victoria Pannell, 12, a NAN student leader and seventh grader at Intermediate School 218 in Washington Heights who is already planning ways to keep the music-not-guns push active after Joe's visit. "Teaching music would really help," she said. "They won't have time to think about bad things." |
