Find Your Voice

Find Your Voice

AHA!’s Sing It Out Program Uses Music to
Help Teens Unleash Their Power

By Leslie Dinaberg | Photos by Ingrid Bostrom
April 18, 2024

The undeniable power of music — to unite; to motivate; to express joy, love, rage, sorrow, and a thousand other feelings that are hard to put into words — has been used to teach everything from the alphabet to social justice. But AHA! — the nonprofit organization that has provided social-emotional education to more than 20,000 teens and youth care providers since 1999 — has a unique take on its music program. 

Titled Sing It Out, this annual spring program uses vocal training, experiences, and ultimately a performance taking place at the Lobero Theatre on Sunday, April 28, to allow teens to get more in touch with who they are through music, urging them to “flip the script on their inner critics and find their voices.”

As AHA! Cofounder (with partner Rendy Freedman) Jennifer Freed has said, “The singing is really just a vehicle. Sing It Out is really about creating a vehicle where we all get to be fully expressed.”

Participants of Sing It Out, now in its 20th year, take part in a unique 14-week journey of what the organizers describe as “self-actualization, resiliency, relationship building, and artistic expression. With AHA! facilitators and music mentors, teens navigate an individual and shared journey of claiming their voices and identities, culminating in their mastery of one solo cover song and performance (backed by a live rock band) on the historic Lobero Theatre stage.”

“I estimate close to 200 teens have been through the Sing It Out program,” said Development Director Molly Green. “No participant is allowed to do it more than once. We keep the number of teens [that participate each year] to between 10-12.”

Ten teens were at the Unitarian Society’s Jefferson Hall (which AHA! rents for several of its programs) last week when the group welcomed me, along with photographer Ingrid Bostrom, to one of their weekly meetings. It started out with a group check-in circle of roses and thorns (positives and negatives) from our days. Right off the bat, it was a good reminder that teens’ lives are hardly stress-free, with thorns ranging from things like homework and frustrations with social media to social anxiety, feeling self-conscious, and feeling depressed. 

The adult staff members at rehearsal included two (Executive Director Roxana Petty and Facilitator Leo Rubio) who will join the students on the same journey of vulnerability and growth as they get ready to perform and have their rock star moments in front of a big audience at the Lobero — and all of the adults (which included facilitators as well as specialized musical performance coaches) were notably respectful, kind, and considerate toward the teens. This is definitely a caring bunch, and Programs Coordinator Caitlin Cohn made sure to ask the teens for their permission to be photographed and interviewed. 

During some breath work and warm-up exercises, Coach Mariangelica Duque reinforced and got their permission once again, saying, “We have two people here today that are going to share our story out there. So I just want to remind you this thing is very important, and it’s about this trust, and it’s not just about that. It’s an opportunity to talk about the message that we’re bringing out into the world and how much of what we do is about giving back, and loving back, so I just want us to remember that. It’s a reminder that what we do here is not just about us; it’s about community.”

They begin a warm-up of the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love,” quietly at first, and slowly growing more raucous, with Boxtales Theatre Company Cofounder and Area 51 bandleader Michael Andrews accompanying them on guitar.

Asked to describe his experience with Sing It Out so far, Lamar Russell said, “I just immediately fell in love with the whole thing because it was such a perfect time in my life for me to find it.” A senior at San Marcos High School, Russell first heard about the program from a friend of his older brother. “He told me, ‘There’s this thing called Sing It Out — you should do it.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, I don’t really know much about this at all. But I like going outside my comfort zone.’ So I wanted to try something new.”

To get priority in joining Sing It Out, teens are encouraged to join either the “Guys’ Group” or the “Girls’ Group” first. The Girls’ Group “provides experience and information to guide young women toward knowing themselves and others and supports them in being authentic, assertive, and emotionally, physically, and relationally healthy. Participants build a sisterhood founded in trust, vulnerability, respect, and love.”

Similarly, the Guys’ Group provides a safe, brave space for male-identified teens to “build relational intelligence and to learn about themselves. Participants are supported in their transition to male adulthood through vulnerable conversations about the complexities of life and relationships. Opportunities for deep conversation and self-reflection are balanced with fun and play.” 

Russell said his experience with both Sing It Out and the Guys’ Group has been positive. “Because it really helps me with being able to express vulnerability and being able to express this fun side, but most of all, to be able to just make connections with a bunch of people. Without that, I wouldn’t be able to and go outside my comfort zone. And, you know, this really changed my course of life. I love it now.”

Singing is just one component of Sing It Out, as Russell explained, saying, “The first week, we were just getting to know each other. It’s a lot easier to sing in front of people that you’re comfortable with. That you can trust. We basically just go slowly, gradually, then the next week, we started to sing just a really small portion of our song with the sound in the background. And just slowly we get more and more comfortable with it. Until we were building up to now — we have a live band.” 

By show time, each of the participants will be ready to sing a solo — literally “sing it out” loudly and proudly in the spotlight on stage — with a professional band there to back them up at the Lobero. “It seems kind of crazy going into it,” said Russell. “It’s like, ‘I can’t sing in front of 600 people.’ But as you get more into it, it’s not that scary.”

For the show itself, they start out with everyone together, and then each person takes their turn doing a solo in the spotlight with a song that was assigned to them. Of course it was terrifying at first, Russell said, but through the group process, “I think the confidence and the ability to understand that I am worth something coming from this, like, definitely transformed me a lot.”

He said he’s noticed an impact on other parts of his life as well. “A lot of aspects of life. I’ve always had my social anxiety. So it’s like, in a lot of different things like that, it’s helped me a lot in overcoming a lot of things that were previously impossible.”

Asked what he would tell another kid if they were interested in becoming part of Sing It Out, Russell offered, “I would say that Sing It Out is something that everyone can find their own purpose in, like their own thing that they’ll get out of it. Things that I would get out of it are different than what anyone else gets out of it. But what they personally got from it is, that’s their own thing to appreciate. And basically, it’s for everyone, and singing and music is an extremely powerful thing in anyone’s situation. … Music really does, it connects like everything that matters. I know it just really seems scary, but it’s a really beautiful, loving experience. I was very lucky to find it.”

“It’s been a great experience for me,” said Aza Elwood, a junior at Providence High School, who remembers years of singing with her hairbrush as a microphone at home, but had never sung in public or performed before joining Sing It Out. “I’ve met a lot of people and learned a lot.”

Even the song she was assigned to perform — the Motown classic “Dancing in the Street,” written by Marvin Gaye, William Stevenson, and Ivy Jo Hunter and originally popularized in 1964 by Martha and the Vandellas — was a history lesson for Elwood, as she learned that while on the surface it’s a pure feel-good tune, it also has another meaning as a civil rights anthem for social change. 

For Emi Lopez, the Sing It Out experience has brought a different kind of social change, bringing him out of his shell to meet a lot of new people. “I don’t know, it was just in my head, but I thought it was just going to be very scary. … Having to meet new people was a lot different than I thought,” said the Santa Barbara High junior. “But in the end, it was honestly a lot more fun and exciting than I thought it was. Meeting these people is a lot easier than I expected. And having a support group behind it was amazing. People here are really supportive. So I like that a lot.”

In addition to the Guys’ Group and Sing It Out, Lopez is also part of AHA!’s ALLY After-School group at his school. The idea behind this group, he explained, is to learn leadership skills, develop empathy and social-emotional and life skills to learn to approach differences in opinion with curiosity and empathy, and help build a safer, more welcoming campus. 

One of the most surprising things he’s learned through these experiences is, he said, “that I have the confidence to do things. Yeah, before doing this, I was really introverted; I don’t really like doing stuff out of my comfort zone. And then after doing this, or during this, I just feel like I’ve gotten the support to go out, do something different with my life, and just go out there and be more extroverted and meet new people.”

Lopez continued, “I started talking to more people. And I started asking more questions to my teachers. I started joining clubs, doing other community service hours. It’s honestly helped with my self-confidence, and my ability to communicate with people a lot more and it’s really good.”

The impacts of a program like Sing It Out are long-lasting ones, said Hailey Simmons, now 26. Now working in fundraising at Understood, a nonprofit focused on learning and thinking differences such as ADHD and dyslexia, Simmons was part of Sing It Out in 2013, during her sophomore year in high school. 

“Sing It Out was a transformative experience for me,” she said. “I had pretty low self-esteem after being bullied in middle school, and my confidence was further shaken by transferring high schools after freshman year. Needless to say, at that time in my life, the prospect of singing in front of hundreds of people could not have been more terrifying.”

She continued, “What got me past that fear was the support of the AHA! staff and the camaraderie of my peers. I knew that the kids in the program with me had struggles of their own, and that we were all bravely opening ourselves up in order to create something beautiful together.

“The AHA! staff approach their work with so much empathy, humor, and enthusiasm that we all had no choice but to do the same. AHA! has nurtured the most connected, joyful, and supportive communities I have ever witnessed. … They are making Santa Barbara a kinder and more loving place every day. Sing It Out helped me quell my self-doubt and shed my fear of looking silly in front of others. Even today, I can attribute my confidence speaking in public back to that experience!”

“Sing It Out is the event that reminds us all that we have a voice and that each of us has a key part to play in uplifting community,” said Jennifer Freed. “We all rise when we lift each other up.”

As Lamar Russell, the current participant, said, “It’s very loving. And it’s also all about connection of people and things. Yeah, it really is all about harmony.”

The culminating AHA! Sing It Out concert event, where 10 teenagers will take to the Lobero Theatre stage to perform solo renditions of rock ’n’ roll covers — sharing their gift of song and spreading the love backed up by a team of professional musicians — takes place on Sunday, April 28, at 6 p.m. at the Lobero Theatre (33 E. Canon Perdido St.). Tickets can be purchased at lobero.org. For more information about AHA! and all of their programs, see ahasb.org.