BOSTON MINSTREL COMPANY CHARITABLE TR
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Mission Statement
Making "music with heart" among isolated people living in poverty and those who are forgotten. When the loneliness of seclusion and pain of homelessness are impacted by music, a sense of human connection and positive change develops. When guest or resident becomes the performer, there is transformation. Hope is forged. Live interactive music activates joy and conjures up possibility. Music heals. Enter the Boston Minstrels, Boston’s troupe of volunteer singers and musicians that offer compassionate and creative musical expression to folks residing in shelters, prisons, and senior homes. Since 1991, the Minstrels have been providing energetic and warm-hearted performances that lift people’s spirits. The benefits of live music, participatory singing and dancing are now proven to lift emotional states, ignite imagination, and arouse joy and revelry. When the curtain falls, all are in a state of happiness and well-being. There are over seventy Minstrel events yearly and nearly one hundred volunteers comprise the chorale. Thousands of participants are rejuvenated every year.
About This Cause
The Boston Minstrels is a Boston-based non-profit volunteer organization that brings troupes of singers and musicians to homeless shelters, prisons, and residential facilities in greater Boston, where very low-income people are isolated from society. Our mission is to uplift the human spirit by providing free, interactive, quality music to people who live in institutions or are otherwise isolated from society. We provide hope through music and feed the soul and lift the spirit of those who need it the most. The Boston Minstrels was born in 1991 when Tim McHale, a construction engineer by profession, but a song leader and guitarist for fun, and his wife, Jane, were caroling in nursing homes and hospitals during the Christmas season. The Minstrels was a happy fusion of both his work—developing housing for the homeless and poor—and this musical avocation. The joy in “live” music they created led the McHale’s to try this music year-round on another population of shut-in and isolated people - the homeless and incarcerated. Shelters and prisons welcomed them with open arms. Early on the McHale’s also discovered there were many people like them, with full-time jobs and careers, but also with a love of music, who wanted to give more than their money to a cause: they wanted to give their time and their musical talent. As the McHale’s minstrelsy infected others, The Boston Minstrels grew. People of all ages and all walks of life volunteered to join. In recent years, even former shelter residents have become Minstrels. And, thus, The Boston Minstrels became a 501(c) 3 in 2000. What the McHale’s did not expect in forming The Boston Minstrels was that the interactive form of music they were bringing to shelters and prisons would create a “musical bridge” between the homeless and prisoners and the “rest of us.” Making music together forms bonds between the “shut-out” and “the shut-in” and the volunteers who make up The Boston Minstrels traveling troupe. The minstrel troupe, via a two-hour long interactive songfest, provides a musical foundation for these evenings. Instrumentalists may include guitars, banjos, drums (whatever is available that night) and a sound system. With the Minstrels' focus on engaging the audience, the form of a Minstrel appearance must be fluid, open to spontaneity and improvisation from the audience, song-leader and troupe members. Engaging the audience actively in the music is critical to each appearance. The creation of this musical bridge between troupe members and the audience, and between members of the audience with one another, has proven musically therapeutic for guests, residents, and troupe members. For an evening, all become friends together in music. Barriers are broken down and new possibilities for change are imagined. Tensions are eased. Lives are changed. Hope fosters. No one can argue with the power of music to open hearts and comfort minds. The Boston Minstrels believe in the healing energy of music - rock, pop, blues, folk, and gospel. Many studies support these efforts and have proven the effectiveness of interactive-music making. The Minstrels volunteers see first-hand how awareness, community, participation, and well-being are fostered in this creative environment. One Minstrel articulated this well, “I became a Minstrel and a donor because it meets a basic human need – the need for hope in hard times.”