Have an old guitar lying around collecting dust that you’ve been meaning to play but somehow just never get around to actually playing? Yeah? How about putting it to use?
As the year comes to a close, please consider making a holiday gift to Flobots.org. With your support, our programs will thrive in 2012 and beyond.
Need plans after Not So Silent Night? We’re throwing the official after party with Flobots, Air Dubai, Calibrate Me, DJ Cavem and other surprise guests! $5 for ticket holders, $10 for everyone else. Proceeds benefit Flobots.org. Come on down! TONIGHT. 9pm. Larimer Lounge!
Tickets are on sale at 1st Bank Center Merch Booth AND online at http://larimerlounge.com/event_details.cfm?blogid=647
We have announced our Celebrity Teams for the Bowling Ball 3! Check out who you have a chance to play against!
Check out this great story about Lee England, Jr., a classical violinist who enteratined kids at the Boys & Girls Club on Wednesday afternoon. England will perform at the Vail Soul Music Festival coming up August 20-21.
Flobots.org is partnering with Vail Soul to present the Vail Soul Music Festival Youth Day on Saturday, August 20. More than 150 youth from across Colorado will meet in the mountains to learn about the history and impact of soul music. Suzi Q. Smith, Adrian Molina, Melissa Ivey and DJ Cavem are among the professional artist mentors who will make it a day to remember.
See the story here:
http://www.9news.com/news/article/202772/339/Artist-makes-the-violin-cool-for-kids
For more information on the Vail Soul Music Festival Youth Day, visit www.vailsoulmusicfest.org
Amidst various artistic projects in the works and teaching at the high school and college level this month, I’m hard at work developing a model for Flobots.Org’s Emcee School, an idea that originated with Stephen’s (Brer Rabbit of the Flobots) intention to create an accessible yet challenging instructional program for aspiring young emcees.
Emceeing is a discipline. It is a legitimate art form that can be taught, and lessons should be passed down by experienced emcees. The voice is an instrument. The art of emceeing is a craft. Great emcees study, strategize, practice, revise, and grow with each performance, each recording. We are constantly schooling ourselves. Should we also be teaching the craft?
People take piano lessons, guitar lessons, drumming lessons. Hip-Hop heads take dance lessons and sit in on graffiti and DJ workshops. Spoken word artists workshop with each other on a regular basis. The equivalent for emcees is the cipher, where you learn by example and practice, but there is rarely an instructional or mentorship element. Not to mention that fewer emcees are ciphering these days.
Rappers are modern-day griots, storytellers, transmitters of ideas and culture. Emcees paint the streets, the clubs, and community centers with lyrical representations of reality. Words manifest. We create realities through our flows.
Lyrical mentorship, breaking down the craft, is something that has been missing from Hip-Hop, not entirely, but notably. As Hip-Hop evolves and changes, what do we need to pass down to the next class of emcees? What rituals do we sustain?
Emcee School
Pilot program coming Summer 2011
Molina
Molina Speaks
Serafin Sanchez and I teach the flobots.org music program at the Denver Children’s Home. The DCH music therapy program is the longest running at flobots.org. The Program started in 2007, and continues to this day. DCH is a residential treatment center. It also has a day treatment program and a school. In the music classes, we see 30 kids a week. 3 group classes on Wednesdays, and individual lessons on Fridays.
We touch on various aspects of music. From playing musical instruments and basic music theory, to recording. We are currently working on group projects where each class is going to create, and record their own song. We chose group names. “The Telepaths”, “X Kids”, and “The High Road”. This week we are going to work on lyrics with Jonny 5 from the Flobots. It’s going to be a great day!
I attached a video of Kevin G. the math rapper doing his thing in one of the group classes. We recorded stomps and claps to make the beat in the background, and recorded Kevin’s freestyle about school.
He totally rocked it!
Here is the link! Art2Action Live @ DCH
There will be more good stuff to come!
Christopher Guillot
Art 2 Action Program Coordinator
I have been teaching weekly after-school classes at Rachel B. Noel in the Montbello neighborhood and Lake Junior High on the Northside. January through May, we talked about the history of Hip-Hop, wrote poetry, discussed popular music and community responsibility, made beats, and wrote raps.
This week, Youth On Record joined me in both classrooms to record the songs we have been working on the past few weeks. Both student groups, Montbello and Lake respectively, wrote to the same Hip-Hop/Dub-Step beat, produced by Red-5 (2 different takes on the same beat).
Below are several pics from the recording session at Lake.
Mp3s of the tracks will be posted later this month.
Adrian H. Molina
Lead Instructor for Art 2 Action, Flobots.org
