The power of music
Musician and educator Ikechi Ojore offers a panacea during pandemic
Music kept me sane during this pandemic. The poetry of Stevie Wonder. The sweet piano of jazz great Joe Sample. The vibe of Prince. Their music, and that of many others, felt warm and familiar as I kept socially distant and dealt with the chaos of 2020.
Music has been the sunlight for many of us during the pandemic. Not only helping to soothe our troubled world but also bringing us together to smile and peel away the stress.
Virtual performances, celebrity music battles and DJ sets have gotten us through some hard times over the past year. No one knows that more than Ikechi Ojore, a Houston native, teacher and musician who turned to social media to share his talent when the pandemic began. He produced a series of videos, “Sunday Service,” in which he plays multiple instruments and sometimes sings or collaborates with other performers.
“Music is the medicine we needed while the world was in pain,” Ojore, 39, said. “It was the thing that made sense and took our minds away from all the things that didn’t make sense.”
For me, music has been comfort.
“Music is the medicine we needed while the world was in pain.” Ikechi Ojore
I danced to DJ D-Nice’s Club Quarantine on Instagram live while cleaning kitchen cabinets. I played ’90s R&B while trying to keep the pandemic pounds at bay. I even found the vinyls from my youth in a closet and bought a record player to play them. When I missed my dad, who died in August from cancer, I played “Green Onions” by Booker T. & The M.G.’s., one of his favorite albums. And because I had time to be still, I sat and listened virtually to the Houston Symphony’s “Bach to the Future” concert with a colleague.
“It was about healing, healing myself initially,” D-Nice said recently on “CBS This Morning.” “Once I realized that the music was healing so many people, I just wanted to give more of it. The fact that we’re still here a year later is a sad thing … but it’s still beautiful to know that we are still here just kind of uplifting each other’s spirits.”
For musicians like Ojore, the pandemic has brought out a different side of his creativity.
“We all had to look for ways to play music and to be heard. It made me want to be the best musician I can be,” he said.
Ojore grew up in Houston’s South Park neighborhood listening to gospel and R&B. His Detroit-native mother made sure he was versed on Motown, too. He dabbled with piano in middle school, then, at Worthing High School, he joined the band, hoping to play drums, like every kid wants to do. I was no different.
Instead, he played bass guitar and trumpet. I played flute and violin, but I didn’t get very far.
“I learned all of the instruments are related in some way, just different techniques,” said Ojore, who earned a degree in music from Texas Southern University.
Even though Ojore aspired to be a performer, most music curricula prepare students to teach, he said, which is what he did. He was the band director for more than a decade at multiple Houston schools. He left to study music at Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music, where Quincy Jones, Branford Marsalis and Diana Krall and other great musicians attended.
Ojore’s next move easily could have been Los Angeles or New York to find his fame in music. Instead, he returned to Houston to teach music at Worthing High School.
“It was important to me that the students saw someone who looked like them, also with a Berklee education, to teach them music. They deserved that,” he said.
A year into teaching, he decided to do what he set out to do initially, to perform. “I couldn’t tell my students to chase their dreams when I hadn’t chased mine,” he said. “Potential is an amazing thing, but it has lumps and bumps, and it doesn’t evolve as fast as you think it should.”
Ojore saved his money, became a part-time barber, started his own video production company and even wrote a book,
“To My Future #wcw: Letters to My Best Friend and Future Everything,” a love letter to his future wife.
Every step led him to music. He has been the music director for Houston’s Tobe Nwigwe and has performed with R&B singer Chante Moore, jazz musician Kirk Whalum and he toured internationally with Grammy Award-winning R&B singer Brian McKnight. He learned McKnight’s entire concert set list in just three weeks. Ojore is currently working on his own album.
A year into this pandemic, music seems more important than ever as the hope of returning to full-capacity live concerts may soon be a reality.
“Music is the way the wind hits the trees. And the way the trees sway. It is the soundtrack of life. It moves your spirit. I can’t remember every pair of shoes I’ve had, but I can remember every CD,” Ojore said.
Music just makes you feel good. So at night, when I’m quieting my mind, my request is still the same: “Alexa, play meditation music.”
It always works.