Nathan Tokunaga is fundraising
New Orleans Musician's Clinic - Ida Relief Fund
Please Watch Our Concert and Donate!
Hi! My name is Nathan. I’m a freshman at Carlmont High School in Belmont, California. As a young New Orleans-style jazz clarinetist, I deeply appreciate the roots of Jazz, its birthplace, New Orleans, as well as its musicians and tradition-bearers.
I, together with a few friends from the Carlmont Jazz Band, would like to raise funds through a live concert for New Orleans Musician’s Clinic and Assistance Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization (Tax ID: 20-8139539).
The New Orleans Musician’s Clinic (NOMC) provides comprehensive medical care for nearly 3,000 local musicians and culture bearers who are historically not a part of the American health care system. They have been greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic since March 2020, and have been further strained by Hurricane Ida recently.
My friends and I share the same vision as NOMC that health care is a human right. Underserved New Orleans musicians and cultural bearers deserve more than poor health and an early grave. Together, we can make it better, one day, one musician, one family at a time. Please join me in the effort to be part of an equalizing force. Your donation makes a difference!
Please also enjoy some of my New Orleans jazz videos here.
Thank you for your support!
Sincerely,
Nathan Tokunaga
together with
Emily Mannion, Lorenzo Wolczko, Aiden Chan, and Victor Madrigal
NOMC's Mission
Founded in 1998, The New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic & Assistance Foundation keeps New Orleans culture alive, as the city’s only organization focused on providing low- or no-cost access to comprehensive and preventive health care, wellness education, mental health services, and social services to local musicians and culture bearers in need.
New Orleans is the birth city of America’s only indigenous art form, Jazz, and has remained a cultural mecca for centuries. With few exceptions, New Orleans musicians are independent contractors working in a cash-based economy, never having a bank account. While the city’s tradition-bearers are celebrated across the world, at home most of them hardly have enough money or food to live on. Musicians rarely benefit from employee benefits (in particular health insurance) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration does not regulate their working environment. They are frankly a class excluded from the American health care delivery system. The story of New Orleans musicians has too often been one of tragic, premature death from preventable causes.
The Clinic provides low-cost, reliable, patient-centered care to more than 2,600 local artists, including comprehensive medical care, disease management, specialist referrals, electronic medical records, labs, and screenings, and more. Unlike other clinics that can only provide episodic care, our concierge approach means we are continually keeping close tabs on our patients’ physical and mental needs (providing anything from food to transportation to housing assistance if necessary).
The Foundation expands the Clinic’s mission to include factors impacting performers’ wellbeing such as health literacy, social services, and mental health, with an emphasis on suicide prevention. We operate several large community programs that focus on health advocacy and self-care to bolster immunity, connection, and resilience among the local culture-bearing population.
Pre-COVID, New Orleans artists entertained more than 18 million visitors annually. While our city’s tourism industry cleared $10 billion in 2019, local performers suffer perpetual economic hardship and poor health resulting from low pay (culture bearers earn $17,500/year on average), limited access to affordable care, and lifestyle-caused stressors. Due to the pandemic, most artists and musicians have been unemployed/under-employed since March 2020, and the Musicians’ Clinic has received more patient calls than ever before, many dealing with increased levels of depression, stress, anxiety, and substance abuse.
The pandemic shed further light on the overwhelming obstacles to care, food access, basic needs, etc. faced by the performer population- ranging from economic hardship to health issues to technological hurdles to lack of transportation or local resources. We break down barriers standing between musicians and access to the care they deserve.
Currently, the New Orleans cultural community faces a new set of challenges in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida - damage, displacement, and much more. Musicians are feeling the strain of 18+ months of canceled gigs (on the heels of COVID) and are out of work indefinitely as recovery efforts continue.
The NOMC believes health equity is a human right. Its mission is simple: to overcome health disparity and uplift the performers who are the heartbeat of the community.
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