top rankin' TG

this afternoon we finally got a chance to go to tivoli gardens high school to do a digital music demo and workshop. we have been looking forward to getting into another school, and tivoli gardens appeals for a number of reasons. it is a downtown (inner-city) school, and it is in JLP territory (so as to balance our involvement with the PNP, or better, transcend it). moreover, t.g. has a kind of fabled quality about it. it is the compton of kingston. an awesome site of violence and deep poverty--and also of character and spirit. arthur mckenley, our denham town connection, feels that a certain richness necessarily emerges from that kind of life experience. the multicast guys use the name as their symbol for jamaican reality. mak once told me he was hoping multicast's music would illustrate that TG was the same as QB (queensbridge--home to nas, mobb deep, etc.). the name elicited oohs and aahs from slightly jealous peace-corps workers (but we hope to hook them up in denham town soon). becca and i were both excited to do our thing there.

great as the hype may be, however, i also knew that tivoli kids would basically be like kids everywhere else. a bit rough on the exterior, perhaps, but also open, excitable, fun-loving, self-conscious. i was not at all intimidated to work there, even when i heard "whitey" called out behind me as i walked through the halls. (the word has a different ring here anyway--not as epithetic, though certainly somewhat pejorative.) teaching in roxbury last summer, never mind growing up in cambridge, had taken down the imaginary walls of difference for me long ago. (later, studying music, anthropology, and critical race studies were instrumental in helping me to think beyond the old, unproductive categories so strongly upheld by well-meaning multicultural curricula. cambridge has its disads too.) and i grew up in humble enough circumstances that i am not ashamed, surprised, or grossed-out by poverty. at this point, i see myself as someone who has something legitimately good, and cool, to offer to people, especially young people in urban areas. i have done my homework. i know what music these kids like (i like it too). i know their language (for the most part, anyway--though definitely more so in boston). i know how to make beats and rap (convincingly and, dare i say it, "authentically" [we'll have to unpack this one later. it's central to my dissertation]). i know that if i can get a kid to give me 20 seconds, i can impress and interest him enough that he will choose to stay after school in order to keep making beats (as many students did today, girls included).

the lab was quiet when we walked in: perhaps 10 students in all, sitting at individual computers working silently and productively. quite a range of activities, too. i saw some visual art, some pie charts, some word documents, some programming. maxine had several computers set aside to be used as work stations. she asked a student to round up some people he thought might be interested, and he came back with a half dozen other young men. i connected a projector and some speakers to my laptop and got a dancehall beat going. (after some technical difficulties, of course. one of the frustrating things about trying to work with computers is how rarely they seem to work.) more students, including girls, began to crowd around as i switched to a hip-hop beat. i gave a full demonstration to a constantly growing group of students. by the time i was done, they were piling up four or five to a computer to make music of their own. (the software was not installed on all the lab's computers. we are still trying to negotiate more licenses from fruityloops, who make great software, but, in my experience, are a bit flaky on the business/support side of things.)

despite weak speakers and barely functioning headphones, several students (and groups) were able to build rhythms they liked in the time i was there. many of them were excited by the prospect of producing their music themselves, being able to rap and dj on their own beats. (mr. seaga expressed interest in linking the digital music creation at tghs with the studio across the road. it would be great to actually enable these kids to create high-quality songs, and to learn about the craft in the process.) the lab was really full of energy: boys and girls buzzing from computer to computer, sampling the beats; bystanders eagerly offering affirmation or advice; rhythms playing off each other across the room. even the school's music teacher got into the act. he sat at my laptop and played around for at least half an hour. i mentioned that i have been working on some lessons he might be interested in. he had his own ideas about incorporating the tool into other musical activities, using it, for example, to create rhythm tracks for other instruments to play along with (electro-acoustic is all the rage these days). i am always glad when i am able to connect with a music teacher (and they don't seem too stodgy or protective). sometimes music teachers can be difficult people to please. "digital music" can have the ring of trendiness and superficiality for some. how can it be proper music education without solfeg and staves?

as always, it was fascinating from a research perspective to observe the workshop in progress: to hear the kind of rhythms the kids came up with, help them with their requests for particular styles or particular songs they wanted to recreate, hear the cds and mp3s they were listening to on other computers (wayne marshall, sean paul, and 50 cent were favorites). [(sean paul, by the way, appears to be a much bigger hit among younger people here (15-25); older folks--over 25, but usually under 35--sometimes disdain him as a tad inauthentic, a bit too crossover, a likkle too ip-op, a shade too light).] most of the students wanted to make dancehall and hip-hop beats. some were disappointed with the lack of deep, bassy drums fruityloops provides (though frequently it was the speakers' fault). one student, after successfully building a dancehall riddim and then a hip-hop beat, decided to create a techno track just to see if he could. interestingly enough, no one was really interested in making a soca beat, though i had demonstrated how to lay out this popular dance style in my demo. (i recently stumbled upon soca's basic rhythm while playing around in fruityloops. as it turns out, at least the way i hear it and see it, soca basically takes a dancehall pattern, speeds it up about 40 beats-per-minute and adds techno's four-to-the-floor drumbeat on top of it--a pretty good formula for dance music.)

often young people like to gauge my knowledge of their world, either out of curiosity or to challenge me, to figure me out. one pair asked me if i was familar with wayne marshall and elephant man. "of course," i told them. they must have come in late and not caught my name or my imitation of the other wayne's "tr-true-true." i showed them my driver's license. they asked if i knew of a dj named vybez kartel. (i know him well enough to misspell his name correctly.) i know that mr. kartel is one of the present djs whose style owes much to hip-hop. i mentioned this, and the fact that i am writing a book on the link between hip-hop and dancehall, to the boys, who specifically said that they "rapped" when i asked them if they dj'ed. since they gave top-ranking dj honors to wayne marshall, elephant man, and sean paul, i asked them who was the best "jamaican rapper." "jamaican rapper?" they shot back at me. their faces and intonation expressed it well enough--no such thing. "soon come," i said.