News Article – A steel magnolia: Janiva Magness sings the blues in Taos
January 20, 2011
A steel magnolia: Janiva Magness sings the blues in Taos
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By Ariana Kramer
Friday, January 14, 2011 2:08 PM MST
Most people are roughed up a little by life’s twists and turns. Some are slammed down hard. If they get up, they aren’t the same. If they find their voice, it rings clear.
Janiva Magness has that kind of voice, and you can find out just how clear it is when she performs Sunday (Jan. 16), 6 p.m., at the KTAOS Solar Center, 9 State Road 150, north of El Prado.
Magness has received international fame for how she sings the blues. In May 2009, she became the second woman to ever receive the Blues Music Award’s B.B. King Entertainer of the Year Award.
“Queen of Blues” Koko Taylor was the first. Taylor’s last performance was on stage at the 2009 Blues Music Awards. That night, Taylor accepted her 29th Blues Music Award, making the “Queen” the recipient of more awards than any other artist. Less than a month after the awards ceremony, Taylor died. Was there a passing of the torch that night?
For nearly three decades, Magness has performed blues and R&B to audiences across the world, 150 nights a year. In 2008, Magness visited Kuwait and Iraq as the co-headliner for Bluzapalooza, bringing hope to American soldiers abroad.
She has recorded with artists including the late, great R.L. Burnside and released nine highly acclaimed CDs. Magness grew up in Detroit, Mich., steeped in the classic Motown sound. As a child, she sang along to the radio, her father’s country and blues albums, and TV show theme songs, and made up acts to perform for the family’s cats and dog.
She recalled her father as an early musical influence. “My dad had a beautiful voice, and sang to us as little kids,” she said.
Overall, though, Magness wasn’t particularly supported in her interest in music. She wanted to, but didn’t, take piano lessons. She wasn’t allowed to touch her family’s piano. As she grew older, Magness hung around with musicians and started to learn the profession. She remembers the first time she sang in front of an audience.
“It was absolutely horrifying and completely exhilarating all at the same time. And that’s really true,” said Magness, “Absolutely horrifying. And totally exhilarating. Like nothing else I’d ever experienced. Both. At the same time. It was amazing, really amazing.”
At around 19 years old, Magness started auditioning for gigs, driven by a primary thought. “I was pretty sure I was gonna die young, and I didn’t wanna die having not tried.” Magness tried out for every gig that she could, even the ones she didn’t want, in order to practice auditioning.
“It would turn out,” said Magness, matter- of-factly, “I got every single gig that I auditioned for — I got every single one of them.” She added, “It wouldn’t occur to me until years later that that actually meant that I could sing. I just thought it was some sort of fluke. I really just could not wrap my head around this idea that it might be an indication of some raw talent that was there, that I really might, that the universe was saying ‘yes’ to me.”
Magness also found her way to interning at a recording studio. One day she was asked to sing some background vocals at the studio. Soon she had steady work as a backup singer.
In the early 1980s, Magness left Detroit and moved to Phoenix, Ariz. She became friends with Bob Tate (musical director for the great Sam Cooke) who helped her form her first band, Janiva Magness and the Mojomatics. The band was named the city’s Best Blues Band by Phoenix New Times.
After moving to Los Angeles, Magness recorded several independent releases before signing with Northern Blues in 2004. Coproduced by Magness and Canadian roots star Colin Linden. “Do I Move You?” debuted at No. 8 on the Billboard Blues Chart and was the No. 1 Blues CD of the Year in 2006 on Living Blues magazine’s radio chart.
Magness has been nominated for four 2011 major blues music awards. But, that isn’t her whole story.
By the age of 16, Janiva Magness lost both of her parents to suicide.
Asked how she survived, Magness answered, “a handful of people basically changed the course of my life. A small handful of people.”
“I’m talking about a 15-minute conversation,” Magness continued, “with a seventh grade English teacher, who was a man who cared about me in a very, very appropriate way … He caught me cutting class, sat me down in an empty classroom and talked with me for 15 minutes. I was a wreck that day. I was crying. I was hysterical. I was not ok. I was fixin’ to … you know … get the hell outta Dodge. And he saw, he recognized, a very wounded human being. And changed the course that day.”
Magness emphasized, “That was a 15-minute conversation. You never know when a really simple act of human kindness is gonna change, actually change, the lifetime of a child.”
After her parents’ deaths, Magness was in and out of foster homes (12 in all). She finally landed on the doorstep of an unlikely source of security, a single mother with five children on Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), who was working and going to school.
“She would end up being my final foster placement. It changed everything for me,” said Magness. “A loving, kind human being that was brave enough to love me, a loving, kind human being that had boundaries.”
When they met, Magness had just been released from a hospital after a suicide attempt. She called a youth center to find a place to spend the night.
“This woman took me in because she happened to be name number seven or something on a list of people willing to take in teenage girls for one or two nights, let them sleep on her couch so they wouldn’t have to sleep on the streets. She was a name with a phone number on a list at a youth center.” said Magness.
Pregnant, panicked, holding a plastic bag with all her earthly belongings, the teenager found a permanent friend in the mother who took her in. “She and I really, really bonded. She was not willing to kick me to the curb again. She wasn’t willing to let that happen to me again. So she applied for foster licensing — and got it.”
Magness gave birth and then put her daughter up for adoption. Years later they reunited. Today, Magness is a proud grandmother as well as mother.
“So, how did I survive?” Magness summed up. “I’m a very, very, very stubborn woman. I don’t give up very easily.”
When she visited extended family in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, Magness discovered this was a family trait. “My dad was from the south, a big family. He was a preacher’s kid, the ‘Grapes of Wrath,’ that’s what my daddy came out of.”
Magness visited with her father’s family as an adult, meeting distant cousins for the first time. “The men were really strong. But the women were like steel magnolias. And, I ain’t kiddin.’ Rock. Hard. Women. It was a mind-blowing experience. Mindblowing.”
These days, Magness uses her strength, resilience, and celebrity to help others. For the sixth consecutive year, Magness is proud to be a spokesperson for National Foster Care Month’s “Change a Lifetime” Program, www.fostercaremonth.org, with resources for helping children in need of foster care.
Magness also serves as an ambassador of Foster Care Alumni for Foster Care Alumni of America, an organization that provides resources to the adult alumni of the foster care system in the United States, an estimated 12 million people.
Magness also sees her job in a new light. “I understand what my job is today. I feel very lucky that I finally am clear about what my job is. And the job, as I understand it, is about human connection. The gift is the music. For me, the vehicle is the music. But, the job is about connection.”
Nearly half a million children and youth need foster care.
For information on fostering a child in Taos County, contact Child Youth and Family Department at (575) 758- 8871. For more on Janiva Magness, visit www.janivamagness.com.
Tickets to the show are $10 in advance, $15 at the door. The KTAO Solar Center is located at 9 State Road 150. Call (575) 758-5826.
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News Article – Life after Foster Care
January 17, 2011
18 and on her own – Life after foster care
ORLANDO —
Jaleeca Dawkins is determined not to become a statistic.
She turned 18 in December, during her senior year of high school.
At first, she celebrated, but reality soon set in — Jaleeca was on her own.
“The day I turned 18, I got my first rent notice,” she said.
Jaleeca was in foster care for nearly five years. After living in an abusive home, then group and foster homes, shelters, and finally transitional housing at 18, she said she finally has a support system helping her grow up.
“You pay rent, you get your own room, you have cable and stuff like that,” she told me. “You have a curfew. It’s a big help for kids that are about to move out into their own apartment, so when they move, they’ll know what to expect.”
She still has to cook, go grocery shopping and pay her bills, all while trying to finish high school.
Jaleeca, though, is not your normal foster child. She’s doing very well, but many others in her shoes are not as lucky.
Tara Hormell, executive director of the Children’s Home Society of Florida, said cutting foster kids off at 18 is setting them up for failure.
“Know how to budget wisely, make sure you pay your rent on time, go to work, make sure you show up on time – have all those skills that sometimes it takes even a normal youth to the age of way past 25 to learn,” said Hormell. “They’re expected to learn by 18, and it’s not very realistic.”
Here is the reality, according to the Children’s Home Society:
- 33 percent of youth who age out of foster care will become homeless within three years.
- 60 percent will have a child within four years.
- 25 percent of men who age out of foster care will end up in jail or prison.
Jaleeca, who plans on becoming the first person in her family to graduate high school, has seen the faces of those statistics.
“Right now, one of my friends, she has two kids. She’s 17, and she’s behind in school,” said Jaleeca.
But she also sees her future, which she says is success.
“It’s up to me to do what I got to do,” she said.
Groups in support of extending the foster care age to 21 said by reallocating funds and using federal dollars, it doesn’t have to cost Florida taxpayers anything.
The Florida Department of Children and Families said it is working on legislation to change the age requirement. The agency just needs a lawmaker to sponsor it.
We are waiting to hear from Gov. Rick Scott on his position on the proposal.
In 2008, then-President George W. Bush signed the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, which allows states to extend the age of foster care to 19, 20 or 21.
The Children’s Home Society of Florida says the law highlighted the need to improve outcomes for older youth in foster care.
Some other U.S. states have already extended the age.
In Illinois, for example, 58 percent of young adults who stayed in foster care until age 21 attended college.
According to a Chaplin Hall study, extending the foster care age would double the percentage of former foster youth who earn bachelor’s degrees, from 10.2 percent to 20.4 percent.
The study said those who remain in care until age 21 are 65 percent less likely to be arrested, and 38 percent less likely to become pregnant shortly after aging out than those who age out at 18.
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New Article – Hanover County recognized as one of America’s best communities
January 9, 2011
Hanover County recognized as one of America’s best communities
Submitted by Iva Radman, Community Web Producer Friday, January 7th, 7:21 am Share:
Hanover County has been recognized as being one of America’s “100 Best Communities for Young People”. One of the programs cited by the America’s Promise Alliance and ING in the most recent award was the “Hanover Care for Kids” program offered by the County’s Department of Social Services, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary.
Established in 2001, the Hanover Cares for Kids program helps meet the day-to-day needs of children and youth in foster care. Karlyne Snead, coordinator of the program, notes that the program’s goal is to make the foster care experience as normal as possible and ensure children have the basics.
For example, children coming into foster care may need such items as shoes, clothes or toys. Children about to leave foster care and enter the world of young adulthood may help with such items as class rings, school pictures and furnishings for their new apartment.
“Every child deserves to know their needs will be met and to feel comforted that they fit into our community and have the support of caring adults,” Snead says. “That’s what we’re all about.”
Because financial resources are limited, Social Services solicits both private and corporate sponsors to help provide some of the ‘extras’ that many see as basic. “Being able to see a movie, get the must-have toy of the year or participate in extracurricular activities may be out of reach for children in foster care,” Snead explains.
On average, the program receives $8,000-$10,000 in donations and sponsorships per year. Currently, 20 sponsors are serving 23 children and sponsors are needed for six other children.
“We want to offer smooth transitions for young people experiencing change – whether it is moving into foster care, or moving from foster care into the world of young adulthood, and ultimately into the world of work and becoming productive, contributing members of our community,” Snead says.
In addition to “Cares for Kids”, the Hanover Department of Social Services also provides Independent Living Training. Topics include academic support, career preparation, employment and vocational training and life skills such as how to budget, pay bills and find housing.
Anyone interested in volunteering to mentor or sponsor a child should call Karlyne Snead at the Hanover Department of Social Services, 365-4165.
Hanover’s Care for Kids program also won an Achievement Award from the Virginia Association of Counties in 2003
This article originally appeared on Ashland News
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