Shiloh House - Longmont Campus

We made a visit to Longmont this week, and we tested out workshop that we will conduct with La Escuela Tlatelolco on December 19th.  There were five students from our previous program and five new ones.  We began the class by collectively selecting ten samples, one for each student, that were arranged into a song.  While Cody finished the arrangement, the students were asked to write two or four lines that rhymed to record over the class track.  For many of the students, this was their first time recording on a microphone, and we were very impressed with the attitudes of most of them.  Here is what the boys at Longmont created on Monday:

Shiloh House Longmont - Class Song

We felt like it was a lot to do in an hour and a half, but we were successful in finishing the program within the allotted time.  The lessons we learned will carry well into the workshop in December.

Devereux Cleo Wallace

Monday

This was Jared's last week in class, and we are both happy for his advancement through the stages of his treatment and sorry to see him leave.  He and his girlfriend recorded this wonderful song together on Jared's last day of class:

Kiara and Jared - Swagga Boy

We also had a really explosive recording session between Chad and Dylan on the acoustic guitar and mandolin.  They had built up a lot of excitement by the time we were ready to record, and it was a great experience watching them process the song structure on the fly.  Listen to this:

Dylan and Chad - Hands On Fire

and, one more:

Dylan and Chad - Reyna Waltz

The other students were working on producing new content and preparing for their turn to record next Monday.

Tuesday

Video for Class Discussion:

Dead Prez is a well known hip hop group that has highly politicized lyrics.   We used one of their videos to fuel a discussion and asked them to interpret what they saw.  Some of the student feedback:

• It is disrespectful to display gang colors in a context that the gangs would not support.
• The video used gang symbols in an ironic sense as a way of supporting their critique of corporate-media and the mainstream vehicles of expression of black youth in America.
• The creators of the video were being hypocritical by depending on a system that they were criticizing.

Our intention for showing this video was to use media that the students can understand and relate to in order to engage a discussion about subjects that are important but often at the margin of public discourse.  We felt like it was a good exercise, and we were impressed by the students' willingness to form their own opinions and attempt to vocalize them.