Music heals; Ragazzi commits to working intensely and beautifully and devotedly.

Is Ragazzi irrelevant and old fashioned in today’s society? The money and the crowds are going to songs by singers like Drake or Riahanna. Check out the words on the top Billboard hits of the year and know this is what our young people are hearing. There are certainly some great pop songs today, but there are many with words full of violence and despair.

Boethius (480-525 C.E.) wrote  “Music was given us either to purify or to degrade our conduct.” What does Ragazzi offer us in this world?

Modern 21^st century culture has become the bastion of noise and chaos.  On holidays, we are told to shop rather than encouraged to enjoy our families and friend. When we go into stores, we are often blasted with loud, pulsating music. When we go to the movies, we see  violence, gun shots, blood flowing.

Does it matter what we allow in the minds of our young, impressionable citizens? Mick LaSalle, the SF Chronicle film critic, in a column January 2 2013 has refrained from commenting on violence in movies in his reviews, thinking that it is too subjective a subject. After the shooting in Aurora Colorado and Newtown Connecticut, he questioned himself in his hesitation to comment on violence in movies and he decided to speak up, recognizing the impact that our movies and games have on our consciousness: “…let’s not fail to recognize that today, violent media is the new regime. The industry, in cinema and gaming…monstrously profitable, is a mechanical, repetitive neural training ground for action…targets disenfranchised young men and boys who are unformed and weak in personality.” He suggests that to mitigate this effect that we create a rating system for violence that is at least as powerful as that used for pornography in films and games. Then parents can make an informed decision about what their children encounter.

Many crimes are committed by males feeling isolated. While participation in sports  involves working in teams and creating community, a recent disturbing trend offers some cautions to how our society is engaging in these sports.  We have seen an uptick in fan violence at sporting events and according to Jay Sterling Silver in the December 5 2012 SF Chronicle, we might be creating a brutal atmosphere with the  “fanatical importance we attach to winning sports competitions…”  “Indeed, many of our most popular spectator sports are unabashed celebrations of violence….all this can breed a sense of empowerment, entitlement and invulnerability on the part of the athlete..[who is being pushed]…into what WE want.”  ….”Why do we worship, reward and contort athletically gifted boys and men ....at any cost?”

Ragazzi helps young males express their feelings and form bonds with others.  A recent  year-long study conducted in the U.K. by Tal-Chen Rabinowitch and Ian Cross, who are both on the music faculty at Cambridge, found that children between 8 and 11 years old involved in different types of group musical activities were more likely to develop empathy than those in control groups where music was not included. “Empathy is considered to be a precursor of prosocial behavior, a crucial ingredient in our daily social lives, said Rabinowitch. “Empathy keeps us ‘together,’ connected, and aware for each other.”…. “The Rabinowitch work helps reinforce the intuitive notion that engagement in music is beneficial in terms of ethos, pathos, and logos,” said Jonathan Berger, co-director of Stanford University’s Institute for Creativity and the Arts. “The important notion here is that, in this age of ‘removed listening,’ in which the vast majority of engagement with music is done through earbuds and on the run, the importance of true engagement is critical.” (For complete article see: http://www.sfcv.org/article/is-music-the-new-social-media-empathy-entrainment) Singing in a chorus like Ragazzi is a positive social experience increasing our capacity for understanding our feelings and the feelings of others.

As we see a growing sense of entitlement among members of our society, Ragazzi resists that by rewarding boys for effort. Quoting Ruben Navarette Jr. in the SF Chronicle January 2 2013, “These days it seems as if parents and teachers are more reluctant to reward good behavior in children….in an era where building a child’s self-esteem is the ultimate goal, we’ve become terrified of words like ‘good’ and ‘bad.’  Are we producing a generation with a sense of entitlement?” Certainly not in Ragazzi, we are not. We are helping to build young men of character.

Ragazzi teaches boys to study music beyond the four chords that make up most of popular music. Ragazzi singers engage deeply  with the mysteries of composition, the building blocks of great pieces. We sing classical songs, folk songs; we sing about love, and friends, and sharing and loss and recovery and triumphant.

By singing with our friends music that is based on texts which explore the human condition in all its phases, we are part of the solution to a society of isolation and chaos. At the very least we are infusing the brains of our young men with more positive images.

Leonard Bernstein said, “This will be our reply to violence; to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” In response to the Connecticut tragedy December 14, the December 15^th opening to Saturday Night Live was presented by children’s chorus singing a quiet “Silent Night.” Music heals. Here is our mission for 2013, to work intensely and beautifully and devotedly.

Ragazzi Boys Chorus is committed to excellence in musical performance and education.  The Ragazzi experience instills self-confidence, cooperation, leadership, sensitivity and tenacity, helping our boys develop into young men of character and distinction.  Ragazzi serves our boys and the community by performing a diverse selection of choral works to the highest artistic standards.