As an awkward kid with ADHD who didn’t like school, Chad Bernstein found focus, confidence, and a sense of self through trombone. More than that, music gave him profound joy.
“The first sense of identity I had was being a musician,” said Bernstein. “There is a power, a feeling from playing music that intoxicated me.”
The Frost School of Music alum has devoted himself to enabling thousands of kids to find that same sense of identity and joyful power through the Guitars Over Guns Organization, or GOGO. Since Bernstein launched the non-profit music education and youth empowerment group in 2008, it has helped 15,000 children in Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City not only learn to play, perform, and even compose music, but also build crucial, often transformative, life skills.
“The best things in life are to be shared,” said Bernstein, who grew up in a Chicago suburb. “I can’t be the only one to experience this. I’ve watched so many kids step onstage and meet that moment of uncertainty and doubt and trust themselves to forge through it and emerge on the other side knowing they can trust themselves and bet on their own voice.”
Bernstein created GOGO while earning bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in jazz trombone at the Frost School between 2006 and 2012. Former Dean Shelton G. “Shelly” Berg, who had conducted a teenage Bernstein in an All-State jazz ensemble in Illinois, gave him crucial support. When Bernstein introduced himself and his idea, Berg, who had just become dean, remembered him and was immediately enthusiastic.
“He was like, ‘This is really important; how can I help?’” Bernstein said. “Shelly was in the first board meeting at my house, sitting in a white plastic lawn chair. That meant a lot to me. He gave me a green light to leverage what I was doing in school, and the network and community and resources there, with what I was doing outside school.”
Bernstein came up with the idea for GOGO through Miami’s vibrant music scene. As an undergraduate, he was part of Suenalo and the Latin GRAMMY-nominated Spam AllStars, who created a vital new Miami sound blending Latin, funk, jazz and improvisational music. In 2007, Bernstein and a Suenalo bandmate visited a juvenile detention center to talk about music as a career, but hit a wall of teenage defensiveness—until they started playing.
“Music was dismantling this wall between us,” Bernstein says in a TEDx talk. “They were connecting with a deeper part of themselves. As they let the music in they allowed the joy to come out.”
The encounter inspired Bernstein to start GOGO with a single weekly after-school class at North Miami Middle School, as public schools were cutting music programs and a wave of youth violence was alarming the city.
“I'm looking around at a generation of kids who have no physical outlet, no musical outlet,” Bernstein told the Miami Herald in 2010. “If I hadn't had that… I'd be lost."
Bernstein shaped GOGO not only to teach music, but to foster social, academic, and emotional skills that empowered young people to build better lives. He recruited Frost School students as well as Miami music friends and colleagues as teacher-mentors.
“Frost played into GOGO in a couple of ways,” he said. “One was the network I built while I was there and the network it afforded me from having gone there. Another was having examples in Shelly and others. I give a lot of credit to the mentors in my life.”
Berg gave Bernstein the go-ahead to do his dissertation on GOGO’s impact, establishing a research-based methodology that has significantly aided the group’s success. “Shelly greenlit my dissertation before I could even get the title out,” Bernstein said. “He said 100% you should do this. It was another really important moment.”
(Less important is the title that came with his degree, partly thanks to his wife, a pediatric nurse-practitioner with whom Bernstein has four young children. “I won’t let anyone call me doctor, and she will not let our kids call me doctor either,” he said. “There’s no issue with staying humble in my house.”)
Bernstein’s father, an investment professional on the board of directors, helped him incorporate GOGO and grow the organization into a $6.5 million operation serving about 1,200 kids annually, with thriving partnerships with schools and organizations and a strong donor base. GOGO and Bernstein have earned a host of media attention, including Bernstein being honored as a CNN Hero in 2015.
In June, GOGO students collaborated with legendary Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder to compose and perform the original song “Better Believe” for the opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. The song, which is on all major streaming platforms, is positioned to receive a GRAMMY nomination in the Songs of Change category, which honors songs that create meaningful social change.
GOGO’s stability and effectiveness have fostered generations of students, mentors, and alumni, some of whom become GOGO teachers in what Bernstein calls a student-mentor pipeline.
“There are a lot of kids who credit the organization with allowing them to still be around and make different choices,” he said.
Among them are recent GOGO graduate Jeffrey Gerald, who’ll be honored at the program’s annual “Choose Your Sound” fundraising gala in downtown Miami this Saturday. Gerald began with GOGO as a 6th grader at North Miami Middle School, and the GOGO network and support helped him earn a rare full scholarship to Berklee College of Music, where he is flourishing.
Gabriel Pierre, one of the first GOGO alums from that same school, flourished as a young musician and is now working in private equity and is a member of GOGO’s board.
Bernstein still loves playing music. Over the years, he has met legends like Stevie Wonder and Ruben Blades, and performed with the likes of Shakira, will. i.am, Natalie Cole, Frank Sinatra, Jr. and John Legend.
These days, he is most inspired by how music empowers GOGO’s expansive, multi-generational matrix of students, alumni, mentors, and the communities they touch.
“Playing music with other people allows you a depth of experience that is so much greater than what you can do on your own,” Bernstein said. “That is worth pursuing a life around. To watch someone realize they can give and change someone’s life and, in doing that, change their own. The unintended consequence of having done that for 18 years is the most outrageously beautiful and joyful community of people. The GOGO community will bring you to your knees with the understanding of how beautiful life can be.”
