When the 11th edition of NFL Honors kicks off Thursday, the stars of the 2021 season will be center stage. But the musicians providing the soundtrack will be celebrating their own triumphant moment.
The Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles (ICYOLA) is the largest majority African American orchestra in the country. ICYOLA played at the unveiling of the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in 2011. It performed in the short film Cap (2019) and the Oscar-winning animated short film If Anything Happens I Love You (2020).
Thursday, though, will mark a new benchmark: while acting as the house orchestra for NFL Honors, performing the instrumentals of several different pieces throughout the show, ICYOLA will appear for the first time on national television.
"It means a lot," said Hannah Innis, a cellist in the orchestra, last week. "I'm very happy that ICYOLA is being recognized for what it is."
When Charles Edward Dickerson III founded ICYOLA in 2009, the group started as nine instrumentalists who asked Dickerson to help them put together a summer workshop centered around playing music. By the end of the workshop, it had grown in numbers, and the artists wanted to continue playing under Dickerson's leadership.
Music has been a driving force in Dickerson's life since he was a kid. His father, Charles Edward Dickerson II, directed a church choir, and his mother, Ethel Hartie Dickerson, was a choir member. At the time that he started ICYOLA, Dickerson was the conductor of the Southeast Symphony, the longest continuously performing primarily African American orchestra in the world.
"I had the privilege, at that time, of conducting a professional orchestra, and I wasn't sure that I necessarily wanted to be bothered by a bunch of high school kids," said Dickerson last week. "The things that convinced me most were the dedication and the stick-to-it-iveness that the young people who came to me to start this organization brought with them." Since then, the orchestra has given inner-city youth ages 10-25 the opportunity to perform various orchestral compositions.
Innis is a freshman at Howard University and has been an orchestra member for five years. Innis revealed she was hesitant to join because she was not yet advanced. Additionally, she spent her life going to music schools where she came in contact with few Black musicians or teachers, if any. With the help of Dickerson and other orchestra members, Innis said, she has received the necessary support to grow in confidence as a Black female cellist.
Last year, Innis performed at the Grammy Awards with country singer Mickey Guyton, who will be performing the national anthem at Super Bowl LVI. "Working with her was such a blessing. Playing that song, Black Like Me, definitely touched me a lot. ... It's so crazy to think that I played on the Grammys."
Emmy-winning producer Dave Chamberlin said the idea to have an orchestra at NFL Honors originated right after last year's show. Chamberlin and his colleagues felt the music would be powerful coming from an orchestra.
The NFL worked previously with the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles for the halftime show of Super Bowl 50 in 2016, and the producers of NFL Honors had the same vision for their program. They aimed to identify orchestras outside of the ones commonly seen. Once they discovered ICYOLA, they decided to look deeper into the group and its work.
"[Dickerson] was so passionate about the idea, and he's so passionate about what he does," Chamberlin said this week. "When I spoke with Charles, his warmth and passion for it just really cut through in addition to just having seen what they were capable of online."
For Dickerson, conducting the orchestra is about much more than the music. Dickerson says his mission is to create inner city youth orchestras around the country. He expressed a desire to see Black youth orchestras wherever an NFL team is. In 2019, Dickerson started the South Side Chicago Youth Orchestra on the campus of Chicago State University. That same year, ICYOLA started the Youth Orchestra of Tsakane, South Africa, at the African School for Excellence in Tsakane.
"That's our objective. To build strong young people who are ready and well prepared in so many aspects of life that they can lead in any of them," said Dickerson.
Sarah Jones-Smith is a journalism major at Howard University and Rhoden Fellow whose work can be found at The Undefeated as well as the school's student-led news wire, Howard University News Service. Follow her on Twitter.
NFL Honors will air on ABC at 9 p.m. ET on Thursday, Feb. 10.