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The Music Resource Center: 20 Years of Success Stories, Like Bernard Tallburtt

This year, Charlottesville will celebrate the 20th anniversary of a unique after-school program – a place where poor kids can master a musical instrument and the workings of a recording studio, learn to distribute their work and launch a career.  The Music Resource Center’s latest success story is a kid who arrived with too little luck but plenty of drive. 

Bernard Talburtt is a tall, skinny guy with a sweet disposition.  He lived with his mother and brother in Charlottesville’s public housing, and despite frequent exposure to violence, he has remarkable manners.

“Yes ma’am.”

He had always loved music and hoped, someday, to have a career in the studio and on stage.

“One day I was sitting with my friend, going over some CDs that we got from the mall, and he said there’s a local studio in town – we should go try it out.”

So after school, they took the bus to the old Zion Baptist Church in downtown Charlottesville, where the Music Resource Center offers five recording studios, a collection of instruments, and one-on–one instruction.

“We can teach you how to play an instrument and take you all the way to a professionally recorded album, help the kids set up gigs and stuff like that.”

Bernard Talburtt

  That’s Executive Director Pia Donovan who says 15-year-old Bernard Talburtt had a lot of ambition and a lot to learn.

“He came to us with a very severe stutter, not really looking people in the eye, pretty shy, looked at his feet a lot and didn’t do the whole interaction thing too well. But he loved rap, and he wanted to be the biggest, baddest rapper there was.”

Then, Talburtt was introduced to 38-year-old Damani Harrison, a seasoned musician and a certified member of the Grammy association, who mentors kids at the Music Resource Center. 

“I knew he had the drive.  I wanted him to have the tools to express the things that he was thinking.”

But Talburtt admitted his TV viewing was limited to sports, BET and cartoons.  Harrison ordered him to change.  For a month, armed with a dictionary, he should watch only the Learning Channel, Discovery and the History Channel.

“And then if he had any questions about something that he saw, then to come to me and we would talk about it.  So we just started talking about the world – what else is out there.  He hadn’t been much further than the block he grew up on, and that was really it.   Y’know it’s almost like the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  You know when you find the door, nothing’s going to stop you from going in there.”

Talburtt went to some surprising places – writing songs about everything from our government to the history of Egypt, and he brought his childhood friends Dash Giovanni and Maxi Galkin along. 

Bernard Talburtt, center, with Dash Giovanni

“I was really nervous.  I was sweating in the studio, and Bernard just kept telling me, ‘Don’t be scared, but I was like y’know what if I mess up and people laugh?  But as time goes on, you get over your fears We’ve been through ups and downs as friends usually do. Back then we was here every day.  It was like we was at work! “

Today, he’s written more than 1,100 songs.

Talburtt is the lead musician in a band called YoungKillaG, and Donovan says he’s a new man.

Donovan: “He left here at 17, got a job in a management position in a local restaurant, took his brother with him.

Talburtt: “When I first came here, I actually used to stutter a lot.  When I would record, I would have to pause and stop, because I would stutter or trip over words, but being here and coming here every day helped me with my people and communication skills/  Song after song, it just brought more confidence.”

Donovan: “And he’s just been signed to a SONY record deal.”

His first commercial effort -- Too Young to Stop – will be released May 26th.  

Sandy Hausman is Radio IQ's Charlottesville Bureau Chief
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