Stick to your vision
By Nicki Bahrampour, Young People's Press

The buzz emerged. Maestro was in the house.

This was not just a regular assembly for Northview Heights Secondary School's several hundred students. As the Canadian rap artist walked on stage with a slight, yet purposeful hip-hop limp, a deafening burst of screams erupted.

With a black fedora covering his eyes, Maestro launched into his motivational speech.

Curious eyes hung on his every word. "It's all about perseverance, and believing in yourself," says the charismatic Maestro. He took off his black and red hockey jacket. He was just getting warmed up.

"In life, you are going to come across all kinds of negativity but you've got to stay focused...and most of all stick to your vision."

This was one of the stops on Maestro's new project, to speak to youth in Canadian high schools. Three years ago, the hip-hop icon began to mix his touring schedule with speaking engagements to talk about issues that young people today face.

For Maestro, speaking directly to youth is a logical extension of one of his biggest hits, Stick to Your Vision.

"It speaks about what I've been through, talks about perseverance, and it's universally applicable. Those four words are applicable to anybody."

Maestro has grand plans to involve the hip hop community in his Stick To Your Vision campaign. He has successfully sought the endorsement of the federal government's Multiculturalism Program and plans to make anti-racism one of the campaign's central messages.

Maestro relates one of his own experiences with racism that motivated him to start the Stick to Your Vision campaign. "I remember one time, I think it was in kindergarten. The teacher said to draw a picture of what you want to be when you grow up. So I drew a picture of Bobby Orr, but I made him black. I had my brown Crayola and I gave him an Afro."

To Maestro's surprise, his picture didn't go over well. "The kids said you can't play hockey, you're black. They jumped on me and beat me up." Maestro pauses.

"I'll never forget that...I'll never forget that."

It made him stronger.

"I'm Canadian but at the same time, if someone asked me I'm Guyanese too. In Canada, based on what we talk about all the time, multiculturalism [means] respect. I think that's a benefit."

The students at Northview reacted enthusiastically to his half-hour talk and asked him questions about how he got started and managed to stay focused on developing his talents.

So far Maestro has visited high schools in Vancouver and Toronto, but he plans to make these visits a regular feature of all his Canadian concert stops.

"I talk about growing up," he says. "I talk about how I felt making my first record, the obstacles I had to go through to get to that level, to get a record deal, all those things. I show them all the stumbling blocks that happen along the way, that I could have just turned away, but I didn't. I stayed focused and it turned into something big."

Maestro attributes his strong will and confidence to his parents who immigrated to Toronto from Guyana in the 1960s. "They took a BWIA airline and came all the way over here to try and make a better life for their kids," says Maestro to the students listening intently to his every word.

Maestro, then known as Maestro Fresh Wes, got his first big break in 1989, the second time he performed at Much Music's Electric Circus. "My manager at the time said, you know what, let's do it one more time. The label from New York City, LMR records ended up signing me on. It just so happened they were there at the performance."

His debut album, Symphony In Effect sold more than 200,000 copies across Canada in 1989 and his first single, "Let Your Backbone Slide," was a huge hit.

Maestro doesn't want to be just another celebrity. "I want to have songs that last forever," he says. "I don't care if I make records, I'm trying to make history, a positive history."

Nicki Bahrampour, 18, is a contributor to Young People's Press.