Voicing Support for Charity

When it comes to giving, musicians look toward home

After Hurricane Katrina swept through the Gulf Coast last summer, scores of New Orleans musicians raised money to help victims of the

disaster. While the Crescent City’s arts tradition certainly helped spur that outpouring of generosity, the city isn’t the only place to benefit from the charitable impulses of musicians.

With personal donations, benefit concerts, merchandise deals, and even their own nonprofit groups, musical entertainers generate millions of dollars a year to help the places where they were born or now live. And, for better and for worse, they pull their favored local charities into the spotlight with them.

Jazz, country, and rock ‘n’ roll musicians have a long history of such giving, and recently hip-hop performers have started to assist inner-city neighborhoods where they grew up. Some charity observers also say that, with Katrina as an example, more musicians may focus their philanthropy on their hometowns.

Yet there can be drawbacks for charities that receive musician-related support. Sometimes highly publicized contributions from popular artists cause other donors to shy away, or they bring increased scrutiny to the gifts’ recipients. Some musicians seem more interested in improving their images than in making true charitable commitments. Also, entertainers’ wealth is rarely as boundless or as long-lasting as that of donors who made their fortunes in industry, or inherited it from family members who did.

But despite these concerns, many performers are passionate philanthropists who say that helping poor children, improving schools, or meeting other social needs is as important to them as strumming the right chords on stage.

“I’m the son of a custodian and a maid,” says Boyd C. Tinsley, violinist for the Dave Matthews Band, who gives $75,000 a year to the school system in Charlottesville, Va., where the band is based, to pay for music, tutoring, and sports programs. “I didn’t have very much coming up. I’m very thankful for everything that was given to me. I just feel I need to give back.”

‘A Debt That You Owe’

To be sure, not all musicians focus their philanthropy on their hometowns. (For instance, the most renowned musical philanthropist in recent years — Bono, the singer for the Irish group U2 — has made debt relief for the developing world and fighting AIDS in Africa his causes.) But Glenn Gass, a professor of music at Indiana University at Bloomington, who teaches a course on rock ‘n’ roll history, says many performers feel an obligation to the place where they grew up or where their musical endeavors started.

“When you do a have a sense of, we really come from somewhere like Liverpool or Seattle or New Orleans, I think there’s a debt that you owe,” he says.

He adds that one of the world’s most lauded bands, the Beatles, is a “cautionary tale” for musicians: Residents of the group’s hometown of Liverpool, England, resented the Fab Four for not helping out the working-class city, he says. (Perhaps to make up for lost time, the former Beatle Paul McCartney has made large donations to Liverpool during the last 10 years, including a $5-million gift to establish the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. Forbes estimates Sir Paul’s fortune at nearly $1- billion.)

Some well-off musicians say helping their hometowns is a natural outgrowth of their financial success. After the Seattle grunge rockers Pearl Jam’s first album, Ten, sold millions of copies in the early 1990s, giving the group’s members newfound wealth, “one of our early reactions was to spread it around,” says Stone Gossard, a guitarist for the band. “We all did it with our families, and we all did it with our acquaintances, but we also really felt like it was important to help our community.”

A longtime beneficiary of the band’s philanthropy, the Northwest School, a private school in Seattle, has received nearly $1-million from Pearl Jam for scholarships and building-renovation costs.

‘I’m New Orleans’

It is unclear how many gifts musicians generate for their hometown charities.

In some cases, giving by artists seems relatively small compared with their fame and fortune. For example, despite earning $17.8-million last year, according to Rolling Stone magazine, the rapper Eminem’s nonprofit fund gives about $125,000 to charity a year. The organization, the Marshall Mathers Foundation, in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., bearing the performer’s real name, has made grants to food banks and youth groups in his native Detroit.

A study released this year shows that nonprofit groups in the Nashville area receive substantial revenue from that city’s vibrant music scene. The study, by Lisa M. Dietlin and Associates, a Chicago fund-raising consultant, said musicians, record companies, and other music-related businesses produced more than $13.3-million for charity in 2004, the most recent year for which data are available.

The response to Hurricane Katrina by New Orleans performers undoubtedly tops that dollar amount. The charitable efforts triggered by the disaster revealed an extraordinary dedication by the city’s native sons and daughters, despite their own hardships.

Members of the Rebirth Brass Band, whose funky sound has been an institution in New Orleans for 23 years, played five benefit concerts for Katrina victims, even though the storm destroyed some of the musicians’ homes and they had to borrow instruments to perform.

“I’m New Orleans, New Orleans is me,” says Philip Frazier, the band’s tuba player, on why Rebirth played the charity gigs. “If it wasn’t for being born in New Orleans, I probably wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today. We blessed.”

A Controversial Project

Such efforts, say many New Orleans residents, were a godsend. Yet one musician-led project in the city has been derided as a misguided venture.

Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis, along with the New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, are building a “Musicians’ Village” in the impoverished Upper Ninth Ward. The village will have a music center and 300 houses for musical artists and others who lost their homes to Katrina. Mr. Connick, the singer and pianist, and Mr. Marsalis, the saxophonist, conceived of the plan and serve as honorary chairmen of Habitat’s housing effort. The project is estimated to cost almost $25-million, of which the local Habitat chapter has raised $4.6-million so far.

But the two jazz performers and Habitat didn’t do enough to solicit the opinions of people in New Orleans, say local residents. While it is a noble idea, they say it will place a new community in a rundown area that lacks adequate transportation and access to hospitals and schools.

“This village is proving to be a glaring example of arrogance,” one New Orleans charity leader, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Chronicle. “Too much money and no respect for the culture and neighborhoods of the musicians.”

The official says Habitat is creating a “utopian ghetto.”

Mr. Connick declined and Mr. Marsalis failed to respond to requests for an interview. Jim Pate, executive director of the New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, says the village is “very conveniently located” and several hundred people have already signed up for houses.

He adds that charity leaders who criticize the project have “fund-raising envy” — Habitat for Humanity International has raised $120-million for Katrina-related housing projects — and that the project’s high-profile backers make it a convenient target. “We’ve got a big ol’ bull’s-eye right on our back,” Mr. Pate says.

‘A Beautiful Thing’

While Hurricane Katrina currently is the cause célèbre, musicians give to a wide variety of philanthropic causes. Efforts to aid youths, education, and the environment in their hometowns seem to be the most popular, and musicians also often have a personal connection to the groups they support.

For instance, Flea, the bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, helped found the nonprofit Silverlake Conservatory of Music, in Los Angeles County, in 2001 to provide low-cost or free musical instruction to children and adults. The impetus came after he visited his Los Angeles public-high-school alma mater and learned that state budget cuts had eliminated the school band and other music programs in which he had participated.

“All they had were a few acoustic guitars and a volunteer teacher,” Flea, who was born Michael Balzary, told The Chronicle in an e-mail message. “I was pretty shocked. Playing music was the thing that kept me out of trouble and gave me focus. I was sad that other kids did not have that opportunity, and I wanted to help fill the void.”

The bassist gave $320,000 to create the music school in a vacant storefront, where today 600 children and adults each week receive lessons in voice and all manner of instruments. Mr. Balzary performed at a recent benefit concert that raised $75,000 for the school, and he plans to organize a fund-raising golf tournament for the fall.

Not all musicians’ hometown giving, however, began so deliberately. For 17 years, Warren Haynes, a guitarist for Gov’t Mule and the Allman Brothers Band, who now lives in New York, has returned to his hometown of Asheville, N.C., to hold a fund-raising “Xmas Jam.” The concert, which has featured Mr. Haynes and his groups together with such national acts as Blues Traveler and the Neville Brothers, has raised more than $350,000 for the Asheville chapter of Habitat for Humanity.

Though now held in the town’s 7,600-seat Civic Center Arena, the Jam started modestly, in a local bar. “The one time when everybody was home was around the holidays, and the Jam began as just a fun way for all the local musicians who never see each other much to get back together,” Mr. Haynes says.

Early on, he recalls, the Jam’s revenue was given to a variety of local charities. Habitat for Humanity became the event’s sole beneficiary eight years ago because, Mr. Haynes says, the charity’s purpose “just clicked” with him and because he is an admirer of the former president Jimmy Carter, a longtime Habitat volunteer and booster.

“To see all these musicians offering their time and music and have it turn into houses for people who couldn’t afford them is just a beautiful thing,” Mr. Haynes says.

Habitat for Humanity acknowledged the guitarist’s contributions to the charity by creating a Warren Haynes Drive in one of its recent Asheville developments.

Hip-Hop’s Giving Movement

The raucous world of hip-hop has been taking philanthropy seriously in recent years. As the music has moved into the mainstream, more of its artists have started their own charitable groups, most of which provide services to young people in their hometowns. In addition to Eminem, other rappers, such as 50 Cent, Jay-Z, Ludacris, P. Diddy, Snoop Dogg, and Kanye West have started their own nonprofit organizations in the last five years.

Although these groups are usually called foundations, they are usually a hybrid of a charity, grant maker, and one-time giving opportunity — such as providing money for disaster relief — than traditional private foundations.

For example, the longest-running organization that derives its funds from hip-hop, the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, in New York, functions in part as an operating foundation, spending more than one-third of its $1.4- million annual budget on its own programs that teach the arts to 1,200 needy children in New York each year.

Russell Simmons, former owner of the pre-eminent record label Def Jam, formed the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation in 1995 with his brothers Joeseph — a member of the legendary hip-hop group Run-D.M.C. — and Danny, a painter who started Rush Arts (now part of Rush Philanthropic) in 1994 to help provide gallery space for struggling young artists. Although it raises much of its money through star-studded galas, the group openly courts grants from other foundations, repackaging them to small arts groups in Florida, Illinois, and New York that are often overlooked by mainstream donors.

With the help of the Fannie Mae Foundation, in Washington, the New York Community Trust, the Toys “R” Us Children’s Fund, in Wayne, N.J., the Donald Trump Foundation, in New York, and other corporate and private grant makers, Rush Philanthropic runs and supports programs that encourage children and teenagers to use their creativity.

“We try to make grants to programs that should be enlarged and replicated, but often aren’t,” says Mr. Simmons. He cites marching bands, little-known art galleries, and a “hip-hop project” that teaches kids to write poetry as the often-neglected types of groups his organization backs.

While Mr. Simmons’ organization focuses on developing youngsters’ minds, a group run by the rapper Snoop Dogg (who was born Calvin Broadus) encourages children to exercise their bodies.

The Snoop Youth Football League Foundation, formed in Sherman Oaks, Calif., in 2003, runs on money donated by Mr. Broadus (more than $100,000) and cash raised during its youth all-star game events — called the “Snooperbowl” — that run concurrently with the Super Bowl each year.

Like Rush Philanthropic, the Snoop organization has plans to branch out from its home base, encouraging the development of youth football leagues in cities outside of Los Angeles, such as Atlanta, by 2007. Currently, the organization helps 2,000 Southern California boys don shoulder pads and line up on the gridiron.

“It’s Snoop’s passion during the football season,” says Brodie Waters, director of football for Axcess Sports and Entertainment, the Jacksonville, Fla., company that promotes the foundation. “He still coaches his sons’ team in the league.”

The idea, Mr. Waters says, is to give children an affordable way to join a football league. For poor families with more than one boy, the costs can be prohibitive. “A lot of it is about keeping families together,” says Mr. Waters. “Young brothers who live apart are encouraged to play on the same team.”

Young Organizations

But while young people may be served by such charities, the youth of the organizations themselves has become an issue. Some observers wonder whether hip-hop will stay in fashion long enough to guarantee long-lasting philanthropy.

Many hip-hop organizations admit they suffer from growing pains. Mr. Simmons says he would love for Rush Philanthropic to have an endowment so it could guarantee some consistency to its grantees.

Already, he has lined up corporate sponsorships from Anheuser-Busch, General Motors, Motorola, MTV, and Pepsi for its fund-raising events and some programs. And the real-estate mogul Ron Hershco’s recent gift of a building in East New York could increase the foundation’s gallery space.

Still, Mr. Simmons says he will continue to study other organizations to see how they work for their causes. One grant maker, the Robin Hood Foundation, in New York, which fights poverty in the city, has caught his eye.

“I want to get on their board,” says Mr. Simmons. “The way they raise and manage money, then make sure that most every dollar goes to poverty programs — that’s something worth learning about and doing ourselves.”

But when musical artists create their own nonprofit groups, “it makes me cringe,” says Ms. Dietlin, the charity consultant. She says most musicians do not understand the time needed to run a nonprofit organization, which leads to poorly managed charity work. “The first couple of years is fun, but after that they’re going to be, ‘Wait a minute, this is not what I signed up for.’”

David Banner, a rapper who started a charity that aids Katrina victims in his home state of Mississippi, disagrees.

“Being a young, black male, I thought it was important for somebody to see us take our own destiny into our own hands, instead of depending on other people and complaining about what other people are not doing,” the rapper says.

Being in charge also makes his charity work more accountable to the public, he says. “You can catch me in Wal-Mart in Mississippi and ask me where the money is, and I can show you,” he says.

Mr. Banner originally established his group, the Heal the Hood Foundation, to assist urban youths, but during the weekend of its first benefit concert in Jackson, Hurricane Katrina made landfall. He shifted gears and raised $500,000 for relief with a show a few weeks later in Atlanta that featured himself, Nelly, and other hip-hop stars.

Despite his charitable efforts, Mr. Banner disagrees that musicians have a greater obligation than other people to help their hometowns.

“I honestly don’t believe it’s a musician’s responsibility to be a role model,” he says. “It’s your responsibility as a man or a woman.”