Muskegon Heights High School Talent Show

By: Emily Guiles

Muskegon Heights high school was the recent host of a talent show on Saturday May ninth, put on by WUVS radio station and Mike Thompson. WUVS has put on talent shows before but this is the first one in over three years.

The talent in the show was top notch and showed the highly artistic side to both students and community members. Not all participants were students or alumni from Muskegon Heights high school. The open competition allowed talent from various background and places in west Michigan to perform and compete for a chance to win the 1,ooo dollar grand prize.

The talent pool consists of a diverse group of singers,  rappers, dancers and artists of many kinds, including the surprise spoken word poet, Mike Lee.

Lee’s poem depicts him as “the system” and was a controversial piece about our culture and society. He performed with a robotic voice and character that made the performance more notable.

This year WUVS had one of its own perform, although Desi Brown did not compete for the grand prize she still sang her heart out. Brown is part of WUVS’s mentorship program and has been since August, Brown is also a junior at Muskegon Heights high school. She writes songs for gospel, loves R&B and the Blues. A musician to her core Brown also plays four instruments; the clarinet, piano, saxophone, and guitar. For the talent show Brown was one of the artists who performed and original song, her’s was titled So in Love.

Among the other talent was Christopher Smith, who graduated from Muskegon Heights Highschool in 2014 also performed. Smith sang a mix of songs including Lovers and Friends by Usher. This show was his first performance and just like Usher he surprised the audience by showing off his dancing skills as well as his singing abilities.

Also in attendance was Breadman, who is a producer, ghost writer, performer for Left Field Music. Breadman chose to perform and participate in this talent show in order to give back to the community, since he grew up in Muskegon Heights. Since he is also a producer Breadman was also looking for new talent that he could possibly work with.

The contestants were being evaluated by three judges, one of which was The Connection’s TV talkshow host Angie Mathews.

A Muskegon Heights high school graduate of 1983 Mathews said that she came back to judge this talent show because she, “love(s) community,” and young people. Mathews also said that she is not the type of person to forget where she comes from, and even though she now lives in Lansing, Mich. Mathews still makes an effort to be a part of her community here in Muskegon Heights.

The winner of the talent show this year was Grand Rapids native Janae Abrey. Abrey sang her own rendition of Frank Ocean’s Thinking About You.