Santa Monica to Shanghai
Eight Crossroads high school musicians had a charity tour across Shanghai to provide music education in rural China.
By: Arabella Joaquin
A high school band called Jet Lag recently returned from their charity tour in Shanghai, where they performed at a wide variety of venues ranging from prestigious jazz clubs to nursing homes and children's hospitals, to help raise money for music education in rural China.
The eight student musicians in Jet Lag are Sissi Rao, Leo Rao, Shiv Munjal, Beckett Smith, Giovana Baker, Landon Hollman, Austin Washington, and Melese Light-Orr started their charity tour in hopes to support the “One Hour After Class” project. The “One Hour After Class” project is an organization that trains teachers and helps to build art classrooms.
“We come everyday and we’re like ‘yes, we have jazz.’” said Austin Washington “I think I’d be wrong to deprive people of that really good thing. Everyone deserves to look forward to music.”
Jet Lag’s week-long tour consisted of venues at JZ Club and Chair club where they shared the stage with Jasmin Chen, the singer from “Crazy Rich Asians” and even played the song “Wo yao ni de ai”. At Jazz at Lincoln Center Shanghai they opened for New Jazz Underground. "Lincoln Center was a real proper venue where you buy tickets ahead of time," said Austin, clearly still amazed by the experience. "The band we opened for came and saw us backstage and gave us a shout out on stage. That was the coolest thing ever."
Beyond the band’s fundraiser performance, Jet Lag also sold their own merchandise of T-shirts and tote bags helping to contribute to their still growing total of $1,600 raised for the charity. The funds are going directly to training teachers in music and building arts classrooms to children who would otherwise have no access to music education.
Aside from the glamorous venues Jet Lag also performed at a children’s hospital, where one of the nurse’s livestream of their performance reached over 2000 views. They also performed for a retirement home.
For band members who originated from Shanghai, the trip offered them the opportunity to bridge the cultural gap. "There's not a lot of understanding between these two countries," Sissi Rao said. "I've always wanted to bridge that gap."
To follow Jet Lag on their future journeys you can find their instagram @thejetlagband. As these students return to school, they carry with them not just memories of performing on and helping others on an international scale, but also the knowledge that music truly knows no borders.