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The Michigan Daily | michigandaily.com | Thursday, March 24, 2016
the b-side

Seven Mile Music 

Brings Harmony 

to Detroit

by Dayton Hare

Daily Arts Writer 
 

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People have been noticing 

the salubrious effects of music 
for a long time. Both in regard 
to individuals and the public at 
large, its health benefits have 
been trumpeted by musicians, 
scientists and perhaps overly 
enthused devotees the world 
over. Studies of varying veracity 
have linked listening to and 
participating in music with 
everything 
from 
improved 

immune systems to heightened 
computational ability, in some 
cases leading to cultural waves 
which 
gathered 
cult-like 

followings (for instance, the 
“Mozart 
Effect” 
movement, 

born out of a particular widely 
misunderstood 
study). 
In 

recent years the fields of music 
therapy 
and 
the 
cognitive 

neuroscience of music have 
flourished, borne aloft by public 
goodwill and interest driven by 
both the intriguing nature of 
contemporary discoveries and 
pop-science proselytizers (see: 
Oliver Sacks “Musicophilia”).

But in addition to music’s 

effects on the individual, there’s 
also great interest in its health 
effects — in the less literal, 
non-anatomically 
inclined 

sense — on society. Music has 
been shown to be an excellent 
tool for building communities, 
strengthening bonds between 

groups of people and providing 
a collective sense of purpose, 
particularly when children are 
involved. This isn’t either a new 
idea or a secret — even as early 
as 1837, when Lowell Mason’s 
dream of public music education 
became a reality in Boston, a 
report submitted in support of 
his proposal cited many of these 
same concepts (along with a 
few other reasons that sound 
a bit ridiculous today, such as 
“It appears self-evident that 
exercises in vocal Music, when 
not carried to an un-reasonable 
excess, 
must 
expand 
the 

chest, and thereby strengthen 
the lungs and vital organs,” 
which laughably argued that 
singing 
could 
cure/prevent 

tuberculosis).

Most 
notably 
in 
recent 

years, however, a Venezuelan 
program 
colloquially 
known 

as El Sistema has achieved 
massive international renown 
for 
its 
successes. 
Founded 

in 1975 by the musician and 
activist José Antonio Abreu, 
El Sistema started with a mere 
11 students rehearsing music 
in 
an 
underground 
parking 

garage and the goal of lifting 
economically 
disadvantaged 

children out of poverty. Of El 
Sistema’s mission, Abreu has 
remarked, “Music has to be 

recognized as an agent of social 
development … it has the ability 
to unite an entire community, 
and to express sublime feelings.” 
By others, El Sistema has been 
described 
as 
a 
remarkably 

successful public health project. 
In 
the 
intervening 
decades 

since its founding, El Sistema 
has expanded to include over 
500,000 students and inspired 
similar 
programs 
in 
other 

nations (including the United 
States), 
where 
the 
concept 

has 
been 
warmly 
received. 

Laudation has been in plentiful 
supply; in 2009, Abreu and El 
Sistema were awarded the TED 
Prize (as in TED Talks), and in 
2007 one of El Sistema’s star 
students, 
Gustavo 
Dudamel 

(perhaps best known outside 
of the music community as the 
crazy hair conductor meme), 
was named to follow the highly 
respected Esa-Pekka Salonen 
as music director of the Los 
Angeles Philharmonic, a post 
which he still holds and likely 
will hold for several years to 
come.

But after all of that, it is 

important to remember that 40 
years ago, El Sistema began as a 
small program made up of just a 
few students and leaders with a 
vision — a description that could 
apply equally well to Detroit’s 

Seven Mile Music.

“It’s 
certainly 
the 
same 

concept,” 
Sam 
Saunders, 

founder and president of Seven 
Mile Music, said of his program’s 
similarities to the Venezuelan 
program in an interview with 
The Michigan Daily. “I think 
(Seven Mile Music) is in line 
with El Sistema … in that its 
focus is to allow access to 
everyone, not just those with 
the means previously.”

Saunders — who is a senior 

studying 
music 
composition 

and piano performance at the 
University of Michigan School 
of Music, Theatre & Dance 
— started Seven Mile Music 
in the fall of 2013, with the 
aim of providing free music 
lessons to Detroit’s inner-city 
youths, taught by University 
students. Beginning with the 
neighborhood of Brightmoor, 
Saunders hoped to fill what 
he saw as a distressing void in 
the opportunities available to 
children from the city.

“I 
just 
found 
that 
(for) 

children in some of the roughest 
areas, 
there 
were 
just 
no 

resources coming to them. In 
many ways, but particularly 
in music, I saw almost none of 
it,” Saunders said. “I read that 
Detroit was cutting all funding 
to arts and music in the schools, 

and that sort of affected me 
personally because I knew how 
important music was to get me 
out of a sort of rough situation 
… I knew how important music 
would be for certain children to 
rise above their circumstance. 
So I thought particularly in a 
city like Detroit, it was just a 
crime to do away with music 
education.”

Saunders began Seven Mile 

with very little in terms of a 
support network, and the road 
to its founding was challenging. 
Without knowing anyone in 
the area, Saunders started by 
driving down Seven Mile Road, 
in the heart of Detroit, stopping 
at every church and community 
center to propose his idea — 
where he was met with reactions 
ranging 
from 
suspicion 
to 

welcome. Eventually, Saunders 
found the perfect environment 
for the program.

“I came upon Brightmoor, 

which is just known as one of the 
worse-off areas of the city, and I 
went to the community center, 
and I met the leader of the 
community center, a man named 
Dennis Talbert,” Saunders said. 
“And he was so supportive of the 
music program, he just couldn’t 
contain his excitement about it.”

There were many things about 

Brightmoor that made Saunders 

feel that his idea could work 
well within the community, 
not the least of which were the 
people he met.

“I 
started 
meeting 
more 

people around here, and I saw 
that Brightmoor really has a 
grassroots community of leaders 
from within who are really 
working to make it a better 
place,” Saunders said. “I saw the 
combination of a neighborhood 
that lacked many resources but 
also had a lot of positive energy, 
and it just seemed like a perfect 
fit.”

In the years since, Seven 

Mile has expanded in scale and 
attracted some attention. In 
2015, Brightmoor and Seven 
Mile Music were the subject of a 
documentary short called “The 
Key of B,” previously reported 
on in the Daily.

Much has been written and 

said about the economic plight 
of Detroit, the generalities of 
which are universally known 
enough that reprinting them 
here would be unnecessary. 
Let it suffice to say that when 
I accompanied Saunders and 
other members of Seven Mile 
into 
Brightmoor 
that 
the 

dilapidated state of many of the 
houses we passed confirmed a 
great deal of what is said about 

ALLISON FARRAND/Daily

See SEVEN MILE, Page 2B