The Night Staffer: Theme 2 The Power of Music

The power of music to create a bridge between people is a central theme in The Night Staffer.

Jai, a young person recently admitted to the residence, is an experienced and reasonably competent guitarist despite his young age. One night he hears Wyatt the night staffer playing a tune he really wants to learn. Over a period of months, Jai and Wyatt engage around their interest in music. It takes time because Wyatt works nights and that isn’t the best time for guitar tutorials, but also, Jai is not easy to engage. He has a lack of trust in adults already, and there is pressure from within the client group to regard the staff as the enemy. Despite these barriers, Wyatt works away sharing what he knows when he can by chatting with individuals and groups of boys at night. When eventually he gets a chance to work on day shifts, an opportunity finally opens for him to talk in-depth with Jai about his musical interests and to show him the tune he really wants to learn. Jai for his part begins to talk to Wyatt about his feelings regarding his family, something he has been unprepared to do with anyone else.

People who work with challenging young people have one initial task, to engage. Without engagement, it is difficult to fully assess their issues and to bring the young person along as a partner on the journey to change. Basically, if they won’t talk to you then you have to make far more suppositions about what is going on for them. Wyatt has three tools that help him build a communications bridge. He is personable so shows respect for the young people in his care, he has music, and he has sporting prowess. Sport is not available at night so that leaves music. Initially, he just plays at night because the guitar is there and that’s what he does to fill in time. After a while, he learns it has currency and he more actively exploits it.  

In the residence, we see the influence of music as a connector in other ways. It has a particular presence because for many of the boys, hearing Wyatt play at night is their only communication from him. As such it becomes the main thing they know about him. Despite the minimal opportunities to get to know boys, he develops a reputation. They start to seek him out and try to engage with him. Eventually, he learns that it has also become a protective factor. Some boys who are acting violently tell Wyatt they deliberately avoid directing it at him because he’s the ‘bluesman’.  As for Jai, music is in his blood and it doesn’t take long before he starts to play the guitar in public, albeit at the back of the room and quietly. The boys immediately gather around and give him encouragement. He quickly learns playing gives him standing with the group and helps build bridges with other boys.

I wanted to use the theme of music as a potent connector in the book because I found it to be so powerful in my own life. Playing in the residence became more important as a tool when I moved from working nights to day shifts as a social worker. Quite a few boys in residence had musical skills, and almost all were interested in music. It was talked about continually, branded T-shirts were worn, everyone had a favourite artist and it was a big thing in the schools. Later when I worked on the floor, I ran music programmes and there was always a lineup of young people who wanted to be involved. These types of programmes remain popular in residences to this day. Also, recent elements of the Maori Renaissance which focus on the importance of Waiata, Maori language songs, and the importance of songs to the Pacifica cultures, have given music a significant presence across the residential and social work systems. This is contributed to because of the very high numbers of clients from these ethnic groups who end up incarcerated.

Apart from the work in residences, there were many situations throughout my career when the power of music to connect was reinforced for me. Here are three of the biggest.

When I started my role as Inmate Services Manager at Wellington Regional Public Prisons, I was taken to an area where many of the staff from the region's three Prisons had turned up to greet me. It was daunting. On one side of the room were about fifty or more staff members, on the other myself and the manager of the Rimutaka Prison site who was acting as my support person. It felt very tense. I had been warned by the Regional Manager my background would mean I was regarded as an outsider because I had not come through the prison system and, perhaps worse, I had worked with many of the young people who had eventually become their inmates, so from their perspective, I was seen as a bit of a failure. It was going to be a challenge to build my credibility. After a brief mihi (Maori greeting) led by a Kaumatua, a respected Maori elder, the staff broke into a song as is their cultural tradition. It was formidable, loud and sweet. Then it was my turn to respond. I did the best I could with my few Maori words. I finished speaking and there was silence. Someone coughed in expectation. I realised that something more was required, I held out my hand and the guitar was duly given to me. I belted out ‘Just a Closer Walk with Thee’, a well-known hymn. Before long several staff members crossed the floor and stood beside me as I sang. I felt almost a palpable release of the tension in the room. I had built a bridge, a small one but it was a good start.

A few years later I was at Arohata Women’s Prison where my Inmate Services role gave me responsibility for the education, health, spiritual and treatment programmes. Rarely did I go into the yard when I visited, the common area where the women inmates congregate. It was a place that some did not consider safe for managers and was most often avoided as you were likely to be assailed with questions about parole, or complaints about the system or other inmates, or just abused. However, I liked to do this from time to time because I felt it helped me connect. Someone was playing a guitar when I walked in and on this day one of the women came over to me and put it on me to play. I can’t remember what she said exactly but I recall that it was a challenge along the lines of, ‘We’ve heard you play a bit so let’s hear it!’ I played a song called ‘Trouble in Mind’. It is a spiritual tune written by a jazz pianist in the 1920’s. The lyrics are about being sad and downtrodden but also a belief that things will get better. It was a standard tune for me, one I played often. The impact was immediate in the yard. The place went quiet. There were tears and some women swayed with the rhythm. There were even a few ‘Amen Brothers!’ Then there were requests. I don’t really do requests, so I got one of the women to play. Thereafter on my frequent trips to Arohata, I was invariably greeted by someone, an inmate or Corrections officer who had seen me play. I felt that day had given me something valuable. It broke down a barrier where I had been regarded as somewhat aloof, a management nob, ‘a suit’, to being seen as someone who was prepared to treat the women with respect, take the time to talk, and maybe even a little suggestion that I had some understanding of their plight. I didn’t really, of course, I was a middle-class boy and hadn’t experienced the trials and tribulations most of them had, but the music, in particular the feeling, was something we could have in common for a brief time.

There was another occasion that I remember well. When I worked as a manager in the national office of the then, Child, Youth and Family Services, one of my team members died unexpectedly. There was a gathering of staff to express their feelings. Prayers were said and eulogies and memories were shared. It fell to me as her manager to speak last. There was not a lot I could say about the person because I had only been on the job for a matter of weeks and didn’t really know them. I had no desire to talk platitudes or meaningless nonsense. I had brought the guitar with me that lived in the office. I played the spiritual tune ‘Death Don’t Have No Mercy in the Land’ by the Reverend Gary Davis, a hard-hitting tune that is about exactly what the title describes. Feet tapped with the rhythm and hands began to clap along. When I finished there was silence except for a few who were sobbing. Someone closed with a prayer in Maori. I got positive feedback from people over the next few days, but it was at the first team meeting that I heard playing that song had been particularly meaningful.  Several said it was cathartic. It resurrected their memories of every death they had experienced in their own lives, captured the uncompromising nature of death, and it provided a release. It was not so much the lyrics, but the mood that was right, the mixture of words, music, and delivery.

When I wrote The Night Staffer, I wanted to capture the sense that music connects people in ways that are deeper than just the sounds or words. It is about feelings, joy, sadness, grief, elation, loss, and love. We experience music in our ears then our hearts and bones, right into our very spirit. Sometimes we only need to hear a few notes and the feeling is there quickly, resurrected from deep within our unconscious self. We can ride the memory or feeling for a few moments, captured by it and distracted from the other incumbrances of our lives at that time. People who have nothing else in common will often find the thread that connects them is their shared response to a particular piece of music. It is a way for individuals and cultures to connect. It is the universal language.

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