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Home > Atlanta Music Scene > Archives > 2008 > December > 15
Monday, December 15, 2008
Ne-Yo Delivers — A $30,000 Gift To Atlanta School
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Students should have known it wasn’t going to be Monday as usual at M. Agnes Jones Elementary School when the convertible blue Bentley pulled up in front of the auditorium. Followed by a tinted, high-end Mercedes-Benz. Followed by another bright blue sport utility vehicle.
That’s how Atlanta R&B singer-songwriter Ne-Yo arrived to present director Arthur McClenton and his band students an oversized $30,000 check for instruments; courtesy of VH1’s Save The Music Foundation, and a generous anonymous donor.
“Music is not what I do, it’s who I am,” said Ne-Yo, a VH1 Save The Music ambassador and this city’s leading Grammy nominee - with six — this year. “If you cut off off my arm right now a song would probably fall out…And I know it may be cliche, but these kids are our future. And we are going to have some very smart, but very boring, very bland kids if we don’t keep programs like these in the schools”.
Ne-Yo was joined by his sister and mother — “who helped me fall in love with music” — and entertained questions from the students. Nine-year-old bass clarinet player Mylan Johnson (pictured above, with Ne-Yo) started the brief Q&A, asking when the Grammy winner when he first knew he wanted to be a musician. (“I’ve wanted to do it since I was 5-years-old,” Ne-Yo replied).
For the most part though, the children were almost motionless and incredibly quiet. “I think they’re in shock Ne-Yo,” prinicipal Margul Retha Woolfolk remarked.
Ever contributed to or benefited from VH1’s Save The Music program? Are you or were you ever a band student? And if so, do you agree with Ne-Yo in that it made a less boring, less bland person?
