Jane Sapp Director, Voices of Today
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Click to Enlarge	Personal Statement: One of my primary goals is to help young people grow into leaders, to help them gain the confidence they need to be spokespeople and advocates for their communities. I have consistently found that as young people start talking about their dreams, they discover their own strengths and move towards a more positive and hopeful future.

Current Work Voices of Today is an afterschool program that encourages young people to give voice to their experiences and knowledge - to talk about how they are experiencing and reacting to the world around them. By setting their words to music, they learn constructive ways to express their thoughts and feelings. By singing the songs as a chorus, they learn positive ways to work together. The self-confidence, self-discipline, and concentration that the students find within themselves through music spills over into the rest of their lives, and their worlds are suddenly full of new possibilities. They do much better in school and their social lives as their spirits rise. An hour-long documentary film about Voices of Today, "Someone Sang for Me" by Julie Akeret, is available from Filmaker's Library.

Short Bio Jane Sapp is a powerful, highly-regarded performer, song-writer, recording artist, and educator. Her music reflects the blues and gospel sounds of her Georgia youth and is deeply rooted in the spiritual, religious and historical experiences of the African-American world. She has recorded four albums, and her performances have been featured in concert halls (including Carnegie Hall with Pete Seeger), colleges, and community centers throughout the U.S. and in Sweden, Canada, Senegal, and Mali, West Africa. As an educator, Jane Sapp has developed techniques to help the silenced find their voices through the arts. Her community-based cultural development programs have been the subject of an hour-long documentary - Someone Sang for Me by Julie Akeret (Filmakers Library 2002) - and three scholarly studies. She has lectured and performed extensively at colleges, conferences, and community gatherings.

Artist Location Springfield, MA

Type of artist Arts Educator, Performer, Composer

General Themes Activism/Social Justice, Race/Ethnicity/Cultural Identity

Last updated on January 21st, 2008

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