What's Up South Texas!: Youth group drums up inspiration for the community

SAN ANTONIO – For one group of San Antonio youth, music is more than life itself.

“The world is your instrument just like the world is your canvass,” said a musician who goes by the name Youth.

This musical group of individuals from all backgrounds are not known by a name, but by their beats in the streets.

“We don’t have a name because we just represent the youth of America,” said Youth. “It is all about freedom of expression and for everyone to understand that you don’t have to be like the societal norms. You can be creative and pursue that for the rest of your life.”

The group uses any and everything it can to make beats, such as buckets, sticks, park benches and more.

“We go back to the roots of music in Africa when they were beating on everything,” said Will Anderson, one of the musicians. “We are all about jamming.”

Enrique Zurita, another one of their band members, agrees saying it is a way to escape as well.

“In a world where there is a lot of hate and dishonesty, through music we are trying to express that that is not the way to go,” Zurita said.

Another part of their message is to never give up on what you want to do.

“There was kind of a moment where I thought ‘I can’t do this,'” Anderson said. “’I can’t make music. I am not going to be a musician,’ but you just have to push through that. I think I came to realization while I was playing that this is totally possible.”

“I have thought about living in my car,” Zurita said. “The struggle is real. That is the struggle but I love it. I wouldn’t have it any other way. It is what makes music sad. It is what makes music angry. It makes it happy and all of that.”

The group gets together multiple times a week to play in front of crowds walking around downtown. They said the goal is to inspire others to freely express who they are and want to be.

“Some people when they see us will come up and rap or they would even ask to play along and we give them an instrument and let them get down,” said Anderson.

“They will start dancing or whatever and when you have a group of people releasing that free energy it just creates this wave of like ‘Oh my gosh! Let’s do this all the time,'” Zurita said.

Now, they group says it is confident and hopes people will follow, not their dreams, but their realities.

“There is art in being a lawyer,” Zurita said. “There is art in being a scientist. There is art in everything because it is about being true to yourself.”


About the Author:

Japhanie Gray joined 10 News as an anchor in March 2022.