For nearly a decade, Gabriel Dominguez, a pastor and Mission Waco high-risk youth director, has reached out to high-risk youth in the community through music. And the program has offered kids more than an opportunity to fine tune their musical prowess – it’s also given them an outlet to express the issues and problems they face day-to-day.
On a typical midweek day, Gabriel Dominguez, a pastor with Life Church Waco and high-risk youth director for Mission Waco, meets with kids to talk hip hop. The kids all affectionately refer to him simply as ‘Pastor G.’ On this day, he’s talking with 17-year-old Teriontie Griffin about a new verse Griffin wrote for a song the group is working on. It’s all happening inside a makeshift, yet well-equipped studio inside the Mission Waco Youth offices. For years, high-risk youth have visited Dominguez weekly to work on songs, some writing their verses down with pen and paper, others methodically typing it all out onto their phone. Dominguez says that sessions like these, where kids come to craft songs,can be a means of positive reinforcement.
“When we get to record a finished product and they hear their mom, mom has tears coming out of their eyes," Dominguez says. "Their brothers, the people in their community. As you can imagine, it’s affirmation through the roof. And quite frankly, it’s, for a lot of these guys it’s the first time they’re being affirmed for doing something that’s actually positive and that also matters.”
Inside the studio, you'll hear kids practicing their rhymes.
It's through these songs that these kids – who have faced trauma, from the death of parents, to the troubles of the juvenile detention system – are able to work their frustrations and filter them through rhyme. For 24-year-old Thomas Walker, the process of writing and producing a song is therapeutic.
“To be honest, I just want to get the people what they need to hear," Walker says. "I know it’s a lot of rap, a lot of stuff going on out in this world, but I feel us as a group, we got a message that we trying to get people to reach. Either our testimonies or our stories, you know, from what we’ve been through. Most of all, we just want to touch those that’s lost.”
And that includes them.
Any of these kids will tell you ‘Pastor G’ has pushed them to become better, not only in the studio, but outside of it as well. Music, Dominguez says, is a lifestyle and it’s also the best way to reach out to and encourage troubled youth.
"Working with these kids, developing them; helping to develop them musically, as artists. Even developing them with the engineering part of the training," Dominguez says. "But develop them as humans, help them develop their critical thinking skills. We do life skills with these guys, we teach them, oh man, how to just function."
The kids that go through the music program here are also exposed to Mission Waco’s many support programs. That helps with the holistic approach that Dominguez has set out to use with these kids – it’s not just music education or recording songs and albums – it’s also food, shelter, and job training. For, 17-year-old University High student Gabriel Salinas, this and the mentoring he’s received from Dominguez has been invaluable.
"No negativity, no more. Just stay positive and stay on the right path. ‘Cause it only gets greater from here, it only gets better," Salinas says. "There’s no reason to take any steps back. When you’re walking somewhere, you don’t walk backwards, you walk forward. That’s how it is."
In the coming weeks, this particular group of kids will release their first album together. And yes, they’re already working on a follow up.