A helping hook

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This article was published 16/09/2022 (1132 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Lost among back-to-school challenges brought on by COVID-19 are the difficulties students have long had to confront when returning to classrooms in September.

Among those are bullying, and a new song out today by Leah Janae, a Winnipeg vocalist and Grade 9 student, aims to bring awareness to an issue that is often one of the worst parts of school and that, for some, has become a barrier to learning.

The song is Queen of Mean, which is accompanied by a new video that was shot at the gymnasium at Collège Churchill High School, where Janae attends classes.

“I think it’s a big deal, that bullying is not OK, and people should know they’re not alone in their experiences with bullying,” says Janae, 14. “I’ve faced it, and my friends have faced it, and it’s not a good thing to be put through… it’s not something you would wish upon anybody.”

The video of the song, which has lyrics such as “Ain’t no brand of vaccine gonna cure her strain of mean,” has Janae playing a bullied student who lashes back, becoming a bully herself. Only when she recognizes what she’s become does she reach out to her victim and tries to make peace.

“We worked very hard on it, and it was a fun song to record and make a video for,” she says of the two-day shoot, adding many of her friends going all the way back to kindergarten took part in the shoot.

A phone number for BullyingCanada’s hotline, 877-352-4497, is posted at the end of the Queen of Mean video. BullyingCanada is a national anti-bullying charity based in Fredericton, N.B., that has a 24/7 support service with more than 350 trained volunteers that welcome youth, parents, coaches and teachers to contact them by phone, text, online chat and email (Support@BullyingCanada.ca) for help.

“Any message offering support to victims or visibility to the issue of bullying is helpful,” says Rob Benn-Frechette, BullyingCanada’s executive director, in an email interview.

Benn-Frechette was 17 when he co-founded the charity in 2006 with Katie Neu after both were bullied during their elementary and high school years. The hotline received 787,035 requests for service in 2021, a 279 per cent increase when compared with 2020, Benn-Frenette says.

Janae has sung in school and really got into it at a musical-theatre camp and at classes at Shelley Shearer School of Dance. Recording her first song has been a big next step.

“It’s a really fun thing, and one of my favourite classes,” she says, noting she has been inspired by hit songs on the radio, especially by artists Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, as well as songs from Broadway musicals such as Hamilton and Beetlejuice. “I’ve been singing for my whole life; it’s pretty much what I want to do. Whether I’m singing through musical theatre or through recording music, I think it’s what I want to do.”

Behind the project is Winnipeg songwriter and producer Danny Schur, who has been helping her work on songs for the last year. Janae says there are plans in the works for future songs and an album.

“We have about an album’s worth of material, so you can expect to hear more songs from me in the future,” she says. “It was really interesting to see how the songs were put together, and how Danny worked on it. He showed me a little bit and I thought it was pretty cool,” she says.

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @AlanDSmall