Musician Gregor Amadeus Böhm helps disadvantaged young people – Munich

The change is barely noticeable. The back is a little less arched. A little more body tension. A little more self-confidence. Prosper, a young man from Uganda, is sitting in the homework room in the youth center in Schwabing. His hair is shaved off the side, he wears a gray hoodie, jeans, red socks and white Nike sneakers. Two other students are in the room, but Prosper doesn’t notice them. Headphones shield him from the environment. There is a keyboard on the table in front of him. He is playing a melody with his left hand. Listen to them, add them to the beat he just created with César Jara, 25. Prosper smiles.

A Tuesday in January. Gregor Amadeus Böhm, born in 1983, is also in the youth center in Schwabing. It’s the second day of the Beatbag project taking place here. Böhm watches Prosper and also smiles. Because he notices the joy it brings to young people to make music. “It’s motivating to see someone who can learn to put together a beat in a very short time,” says Boehm.

Gregor Amadeus Böhm is an important figure in young Munich music. At 22, he played guitar in the indie rock band, which was well-known far beyond the state capital Five!Fast!!Hits!!!, which was managed by Christian Heine, then head of the Atomic Café. Three years later Böhm founded his record company Flowerstreet Records, where he mainly worked with young, inexperienced bands and even paved their way into the music business. The band EXCLUSIVE about. The musicians came to Böhm at the age of 16, and later they signed a contract with the major label Sony.

Gregor Amadeus Böhm has been helping young musicians for more than ten years

A few years later, Böhm founded his music publishing company, which sometimes led to jealousy debates in the music industry at the time. Today, at 39, he still makes music, works with young artists – and he now volunteers as a board member of the “Chancen für Kinder” foundation for socially disadvantaged children and young people. It enables them to make music.

What drives him? Gregor Amadeus Böhm is sitting in the foyer of the “Silver Stage” recording studio in Obersendling. The Foundation has rented rooms here by the hour. Böhm – shoulder-length hair, small d’Artagnan beard – has to think for a moment. He leans back. Why is he involved? He doesn’t have helper syndrome, he then says, and now he doesn’t feel the need to give anything back either. He simply enjoys “giving the kids the opportunity to develop talents right from the start”. Exactly what he has been doing for years – only that the young people who are helped by the foundation are dependent on such an opportunity.

“I bring people together,” says Böhm, “and that’s something I’ve been doing for the past ten years.” Looking back is important to Böhm. When he started working with extremely young bands with his record company, he was smiled at by veteran doers in the music business. Tuo, Stray Colors, EXCLUSIVE – what should Böhm achieve with these artists? Success proved him right. It annoys him, says Böhm, when people claim that music is an unprofitable art and that one cannot make a living from it. It annoys him because it’s often said by people who pick up an instrument for just an hour a week. So how are they supposed to know?

Böhm has a different point of view: Only when you put as much time into the music as into a “normal job” can you judge whether it’s profitable or not. And that brings him back to his commitment to the foundation. “I love helping people discover and develop their passion,” he says. “We live in a society where, unfortunately, many fictional boundaries are placed in people’s minds that prevent people from realizing and realizing their full potential.”

“You just have to show the children and young people that it’s possible.”

And of course that also applies to the music. “The earlier you can start with children and young people, the better chance you have of counteracting existing ideologies and self-doubt,” says Böhm. “We see that every day in our work. You just have to show the children and young people that it’s possible. Then they won’t believe anyone who says it’s impossible.”

This work is made possible by the “Chancen für Kinder” foundation, founded in 2005 by Charlotte and Rüdiger Wilbert. As a student, Wilbert had a company that developed and marketed software applications and other information technologies in the inpatient healthcare sector. In 2005 he sold the company for business consulting and IT – the cornerstone for the foundation.

“The health, education and upbringing of children shapes the future of our society,” says an information sheet from the foundation. Her vision: “The purpose of the ‘Chancen für Kinder’ foundation is therefore to encourage and support children and young people in these areas. In particular, we want to contribute to an enlightened, tolerant, undogmatic and ideology-critical world view of the growing children and only want such Support organizations that share this view.” Among other things, the foundation supports groups of children and young people in the Lichtblick Hasenbergl care facility and a mobile music project run by the district youth council. Since Gregor Amadeus Böhm and his partner Patricia Wilbert (the daughter of the founders) took over the chairmanship of the foundation at the beginning of 2022, they have also been developing their own projects.

Beat bag for example. This is a mobile recording studio that enables children and young people to record their first songs, rap or learn how to make beats free of charge. Gregor Amadeus Böhm developed the idea together with Konstantin Molodovsky, 25. Molodovsky is a musician, has completed his studies in architecture, but then realized that the common good is more important to him. He is now studying social work and wants to work as a music teacher later – he is currently running Beatbag as a working student.

What matters is that they have a passion for music

The project is aimed at socially disadvantaged children and young people. You do not need to have any previous musical experience. What matters is that they have a passion for music. You can decide which instrument you want to try. Beatbag then looks for suitable teachers in the area – Gregor Amadeus Böhm has met enough musicians over the years. “Experience has shown us that the motivation is completely different when the participants can decide for themselves what they want to learn,” says Konstantin Molodovsky.

Molodovsky developed the project’s website and produced an image film. The video features 16-year-old rapper Mattia. Molodovsky worked with him in the youth center in Garching, produced beats and recorded his first songs. “I make music primarily for myself,” says Mattia in the video, “because it helps me in difficult times. My problems are gone then. Others compensate with alcohol or drugs. I do it with music.”

The opportunity to make music should be an island for young people, a refuge, says Gregor Amadeus Böhm. For her, music could be “a way out of the milieu in which she doesn’t want to be”. Making music, writing lyrics, all of this can have a positive influence on young people, Böhm is sure that all of this affects their self-confidence. As with Mattia: “If only one in 1000 can solve their problems with music, everything has been worth it.”

Boxing is being offered in the adjoining room, which is also an important compensation

Back to the youth center in Schwabing, located on the border to the district of Milbertshofen. On the wall of the homework room hangs a reminder to pay the meal allowance – together with the note that unemployed parents can get a certificate from the employment office so that they do not have to pay this fee. Boxing is being offered in the adjoining room, also an important balance – and very popular with young people, which is why the demand for the music project is manageable. Two younger teenagers try out the beats but quickly lose interest.

A student sits on a table in another room. She has a microphone in her hand and looks full of curiosity at singer-songwriter Sarah-Sophie Jakubsche, 34. She has her guitar with her and helps the young woman with her singing beginnings. Nobody is allowed to watch and listen except Sarah-Sophie Jakubsche. The girl is still too shy for that, too little self-confident.

Anders Prosper. He has loaded his self-produced beat onto his mobile phone. Konstantin Molodovsky asked him if he wanted to rap. Prosper nods. He picks up the microphone, stares at the floor, and starts chanting. Freestyle, in English, anything that comes to mind. About his situation. About friendship. Very emotional, very shy. He gets up for the next song. He holds the microphone with both hands. Close your eyes. Forget everything around you. And begins to sing in Swahili, the language of his homeland.

Prosper looks at his watch, startled. He spent far too long in the youth center. He has to go home. as soon as possible He hastily says goodbye to the others and runs outside. He will come back next Tuesday.