Annie O’Brien, 10, would kick and scream as her mother struggled to get her out of bed, to the bathroom, to the breakfast table and out the door to school.

But Marshall, a therapist trained to work with autistic and developmentally delayed children, found a musical solution to the family’s frustration. He tapped into Annie’s love of hip-hop and recorded a rhythmic set of instructions that captured the girl’s imagination and got her moving.

Annie, who is autistic, eventually memorized the song and cut her routine from two hours to 20 minutes.

“We used it every day for a year,” said Annie’s mother, Becky O’Brien of Oregon. “It would be on full blast every morning.”

Now Marshall and his partners in the non-profit organization and hip-hop group the Figureheads are bringing their musical approach to child development from the Madison area to Milwaukee.

In the three years since Annie’s transformation, Marshall, Jeremy Bryan and Dave Olson have performed at more than 20 schools around the state and reached more than 30,000 children. They’ve produced two CDs for kids, titled “You Come Too” and “The Movement,” and a book for teachers who want to bring the group’s messages of empowerment, cooperation and respect of differences into their classrooms.

And their music has broadened from its initial focus on children with special needs to youths of all ability levels. The songs that were initially written with developmentally delayed children in mind - songs that offered strategies for handling classroom distractions or staying calm in stressful situations - seemed to resonate with everyone, Marshall said.

“I saw things working with the (learning disabled) kids and thought, I could have used that,” said Marshall, 27.

Late last year, the three friends, who have been playing music together since 1999, decided they wanted to reach more central city youths. They briefly considered moving to Chicago or New York City, but national headlines about the Milwaukee Public Schools system and crime in the city caught their attention, said Bryan, a 2001 graduate of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

“We started feeling compelled to consider Milwaukee,” he said. “We want to develop a consulting relationship with anyone who needs help structuring their time with youth.”

Their move here this year coincided with the Parents’ Choice Foundation awarding “The Movement” its 2007 Gold Award. On Wednesday, the album received top recognition from the National Parenting Publications Awards.

The critical acclaim is great, said Andy Paulson, a Madison-based psychologist who distributes the Figureheads’ products through his company, Kiddo Publishing.

The problem has been finding a way to market the music, which lays messages of self-actualization over Olson’s danceable beats.

“It’s not what you might typically hear on a Disney or a Nickelodeon because it’s not sugarcoated,” Paulson said. “We’re not dumbing down the message to kids. We’re filling a niche that’s needed, but it doesn’t necessarily fit nicely on the shelf.”

Last year, through a grant from the Wisconsin Council on Developmental Disabilities, the Figureheads were artists-in-residence at Columbus Elementary School in Kenosha, Rose Glen Elementary School in Waukesha and Glendale Elementary School in Madison.

Fil Clissa, an agency staffer who administered the grant, said “The Movement” became the soundtrack to Friday afternoons at Glendale. The principal played the album over the loud speaker in the minutes before the final bell rang, while students and staff danced in the halls.

“It’s just such a pure and honest connection,” Clissa said. “It’s not just kids getting the message, it’s staff and adults getting the message. Everybody’s hip-hopping to it.

Source:
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel