Music In The Schools Benefit, Friday May 30

[May 28th, 2008]

[ECLECTIC BENEFIT] Galia Slayen is a very busy girl. The 17-year-old Lincoln High senior has spent most of her waking hours lately planning, replanning and generally fretting over the second annual Music in the Schools Benefit show, featuring Blue Scholars, members of Sandpeople, Yacht and the Shaky Hands, among others (Friday at the Crystal Ballroom). She’s even missed a few classes because of it. But getting wrapped up in extracurricular activities is par for the course for Slayen—a blond-haired ex-cheerleader who’s lived independent of her parents since she was 15—and who’s spent most of her high school career embedded in political causes, on and off campus.

This year alone she’s logged heavy hours on awareness projects involving AIDS, Darfur, eating disorders and the environment—all while serving on student council and interning with Steve Novick’s U.S. Senate campaign. After graduation, working around her yearlong internship with Ron Wyden, Slayen plans to turn Music in the Schools into a full-on nonprofit organization. WW recently stole an hour of Slayen’s precious time over bubble tea.

WW: How did you get involved with Music in the Schools?

Galia Slayen: The guy that was doing it dropped it, he didn’t tell anyone, and I was like, “Yo, did you seriously drop this?” It just kind of came to me, and I thought it sounded like fun. But it’s not just my thing, now a lot of other people are involved.

The show was originally supposed to be at Lincoln High, right?

Yeah. The school district didn’t want to be liable for a hip-hop concert…but production-wise, we would not have been able to pull it off. I had planned five-minute transition times [between acts], because I don’t know (laughs). I’ve never done anything like this. And the people at the Crystal are so good.

As a student, how bad is the state of music programs in Portland’s public schools?

Well, in my four years [at Lincoln], they never had a music program until last year—until parents raised money to get one going. The other day we went to Grant and I heard the choir singing and I thought, “That’s so pretty. We don’t have that.” That’s their passion, that’s so important.

Do you feel like most people your age…

Are apathetic? I’ve led a totally different life, just living alone and moving so much, so it’s hard for me to be exactly on the same page with everyone else. But I think that the biggest problem is that people do care, they just don’t know what to do about it. We brought a speaker from Rwanda, and it was the first time in my history of being at Lincoln that someone got a standing ovation. It really affected kids…but everyone is so involved in their own thing, especially in high school. One of the problems with the international causes is that they’re too intangible. You don’t see global warming. But [Music in the Schools] is something kids can really connect to.

What do you want to do when you grow up?

I’m going to go into public service. I want to be a U.S. senator. That’s the goal. But there are a lot of things about politics that are hard to like. The year with Wyden is basically the litmus test to see if I want to go the grassroots or government road. To see how it actually works.