Brad Corrigan

The Original Changents Braddigan Story

Jun 2, 2008 06:31 pm

The first time Brad Corrigan drove through the city dumps outside Managua, Nicaragua, he locked his doors and observed life through the cross hairs of his camera viewfinder. He did not believe what his eyes were telling him. People were living - quite literally - on the bounty of mountains of smoldering trash. The songwriter and guitar player who performs as Braddigan (and whose college band, Dispatch, filled up Madison Square Garden after a good run as a Napster phenomenon) kept asking himself, "What do I do with this now?" He returned to the Managua dump multiple times that same year, but still was not about to leave the safety of his rental car. Brad stopped me dead in my tracks when he described the details of what he had seen – an inhumanity that I could hardly get my head around. The paralyzing mix of extreme poverty and visual horror. Endless hills of trash interrupted by crisscrossing garbage trucks. Children hanging off the backs of pickups, eager to forage for something valuable in the mounds of junk. Black vultures circling overhead. Wild dogs wandering through the rubble. "I've had plenty of trips to developing nations, but I’ve never, ever seen anything like this trash dump before. To see people mixing with trash... people and trash just don't go together." He states the obvious point that somehow still needs to be articulated.

But ironically, it was humanity that Brad found in the Managua dumps – a humanity that even thick windows and locked doors couldn’t keep out. Brad recalls the moment when a smiling girl, Ileana, knocked on the passenger window of his car. In that brief moment of vulnerability, he let his guard down, cracked the door and Ileana literally pulled him into her world.

Brad and Ileana spent the next three hours playing in the dump. "I've spent a lot of time with kids the world over and kids are the same everywhere you go. Their currency is how much fun they can have with you. So when you are having a good time with kids you just forget about your surroundings." The next time Brad came to Nicaragua, he brought friends. Ask Change Agents why you should support their causes and you typically get a long list of reasons. Not Brad. For him, compassion is personal. You don't have to care about the dump or the people living there. Just care about something. As for his commitment to a cardboard community in a landfill to which most westerners will never come within 1000 miles, he says, "I can't explain it to you anymore than someone can explain how they knew they were in love with someone. There’s a mysterious love and heart connection that I feel to this community." And there's the possibility of moving the needle in this place. According to Brad, 1000-1500 people make their living in the dump depending on the season. "It's small enough that I really feel like in my lifetime or even in a handful of years we could really effect change here," he says.

Enter Love, Light, & Melody – Brad and company's organization to help the families living in the dump. Love, Light, & Melody became official last March. The launch event, called Dia de Luz, or Day of Light, brought together hundreds of Nicaraguans from the community and more than 300 gringos (from college students to Brad’s personal guest list of friends and family). The day began with a march through the dump and ended with (what else?) a concert.

Clearly “out of their comfort zone,” Brad says the gringo crowd was mingling and celebrating with the Nicaraguans by day’s end. Coated with dust and grime from the dump, everyone looked the same – an apt metaphor for Brad’s approach to his work. Helping 100 plus families who live in a dump should be enough good karma for anyone, right? Wrong. Brad and the band can’t stop giving and play more than 30 benefit shows a year that give a lift to everything from national organizations to local causes. But there’s more to this Change Agent than a big heart. Brad sees his talent as “a gift,” his work in Managua as “a calling,” and feels compelled to use the “powerful language” of music for social justice – a morality that is based in his faith.

Brad’s bandmates are on board with the mission. Brad, percussionist Reinaldo (from Puerto Rico) and bassist Tiago (from Brazil) just released their first album together, The Captive. He says his work as a Change Agent definitely shows up in some of the tracks: “It’s the only way I could process the whole experience.” But the band that keeps on giving likes to mix it up too. Braddigan and his band combine laid-back songs about surfing trips with tunes that deliver a weighty message in their shows. “It can’t just be all social justice and no entertainment.”

Comments

Post new comment

Your name: *

E-mail: *

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Homepage:

Comment: *

Answer: *

To combat spam, please enter the code in the image.

Flag as spam/inappropriate