Growing up in a lower-middle-class family with limited resources has taught Lorrie Murray that if you want something, you must work hard for it.
This upbringing and a can-do attitude she developed from working in the music industry gave her the determination and drive to make Bay Area Music Project (BAMP) happen in 2014. The founder and executive director of the nonprofit helps provide music education at low or no cost to hundreds of students from under-resourced communities.
However, Murray doesn’t even play an instrument and laughs that she has done almost everything else in the music industry but become a musician. “I can’t play a note,” she says, adding that she tried piano when her kids were taking lessons, but her busy schedule got in the way.
In 1992, she moved from Boston to Oakland to become a documentary filmmaker. But money was tight, so she started working as a bouncer at a nightclub. After that, she became immersed in the Oakland music scene, doing everything from tour manager to booking agent at a club to publicist.
Eventually moving to Alameda when her kids were born, Murray became involved in her daughter’s school, serving as PTA president. The Title I school was struggling to meet academic requirements, so she joined a committee to turn it into an arts-integrated magnet school, naming it Maya Lin School.
“That kind of fueled my activism,” Murray says. “Then I was like, what’s next?”
A New Program is Born
She heard about a program in Venezuela called El Sistema. It’s a publicly-funded music-education program that helps lead children in impoverished circumstances away from lives of crime. Founded by Venezuelan educator, musician and activist José Antonio Abreu in 1975, the idea focuses on the philosophy that playing music, especially orchestral and choral, promotes discipline, teamwork and social integration.
It has gained worldwide recognition with many El Sistema-inspired programs in different countries. Murray decided it was exactly what she wanted to duplicate in Alameda.
The principal agreed to a pilot music program after school. At first, another organization ran the after-school portion, and BAMP showed up twice a week as an enrichment class where students sang in a choir. Murray raised $3,000 and hired a teaching artist for the program.
“I just started. We had a little concert in June, and it was magical. I remember that day like it was yesterday,” Murray says. “The feeling in that room that day when parents watched their children perform. The feeling that the kids had performing. The pride.”
When Murray decided it was time to add instrumental music to the program, BAMP had only a few percussion instruments and funding was low. Drawing from something she heard El Sistema had done, she had the students make paper violins for the first month. They used the paper violins to practice on and learned how to care for them. They have continued this tradition of making paper violins at BAMP when students first start playing, even though they now provide real violins for the students.
“It teaches them very basic things like if you drop your instrument, it will break. They learn respect for their instrument,” she says. “They make it, they decorate it. It’s the first part of ownership. It’s become a rite of passage.”
Around the time Murray was searching for instruments for the program, a parent discovered 12 violins in a dumpster outside of middle school that was closing. They brought them to a repair shop and were able to use almost all of them in the program. Then, one day, a generous man contacted her, asking how many instruments the program needed. Shortly after, pallets of instruments were delivered to her home.
The Program Expands
Since then, the program has continued to grow. In 2017, they became the main after-school program at Maya Lin, offering music instruction to almost 200 students five days a week. Students have the option to learn a variety of brass, percussion and string instruments, as well as join one of the ensembles, including orchestra, advanced chamber, advanced band, youth chorus, junior choir, winds and brass and more. BAMP also recently entered into a partnership with a Sausalito school to offer a similar after-school program. Since the program is partially subsidized by state funding, families who qualify can participate at no cost and fee-based families may be eligible for a sliding scale based on need.
BAMP also has a studio in Alameda where youth and adults receive music instruction in areas such as music production, songwriting and instrumental artistry. Middle and high school students can also join the studio’s cello academy for dedicated musicians.
“I just wanted to make the access wider. We want to have a space where we can welcome anyone,” Murray says regarding the studio. “We want to work with high school students and young adults to help them with career pathways.”
Opening up BAMP programs to more children in the community, possibly with a youth choral program, is one of her many future goals.
Giving children of all backgrounds and abilities a chance to shine has always been her main purpose for creating BAMP.
“To have a kid in elementary school who already has a label. To give them an opportunity to prove I’m not that trouble-making kid. I’m not the kid that can’t sit still. That’s what this program is supposed to be doing,” Murray says. “That’s why I started this.”
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Teresa Mills-Faraudo is an associate editor of Bay Area Parent.
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