detroit's mosaic youth theatre — proof positive DETROIT'S MOSAIC YOUTH THEATRE - PROOF POSITIVE
VIDEO BY JEFF BURTON
THURSDAY JANUARY 12th, 2012

Proving that an investment in the arts yields positive, measurable results is a hard thing to do. A multi-year research project from UofM followed the lives of young people involved in Mosaic Youth Theatre has done just that. Watch this video for proof straight from the kids involved who are achieving "excellence on stage and in life.

4th CULTURE STUDIOS BRAINCHILD OF PAINTER/PROFESSIONAL
VIKI LORRAINE
THURSDAY JANUARY 12th, 2012
Benjamin Duke had just finished undergrad when he landed a spot at Poor Yorick, an artist’s space in Salt Lake City run by Brad Slaugh. “I got absorbed into this wonderful community,” said Duke. “The people were focused on creating new work. There was a constant creative energy, a sense of accountability. We regularly had Open Studios where artists welcomed the public into their studio space. Sometimes we had as many as 300 or more people coming through.” Duke’s experience at Poor Yorick provided the vision for 4th Culture Studios. “First you have culture, and then comes counter culture, then the reactionaries, and then there’s us.” That’s how Duke explains the meaning behind 4th Culture Studios. “It also relates to the concept of third culture kids,” said Duke, “someone who has a parent from one culture, another parent from a different culture and he or she lives in a third culture. The kids end up having all of these tendrils into all these points of reference.”

Duke, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art & Art History, arrived at MSU six years ago. “I thought ‘the community’ would spontaneously arise,” he said. He soon realized it would take some effort on his part to get it going. For Duke it all started with the right space. “I’d been in other studios, but it felt like I was working in isolation. I like having other artists close at hand. It’s important for me to share resources and ideas.” He eventually found what he was looking for in the John Bean Building in Lansing. Duke describes the warehouse space as raw. “I wanted something big and flexible and the owner of the warehouse was willing to work with me. He didn’t care if I got paint on the floor.”

Duke got the space almost two years ago. “It was just me for the first year and a half,” he said. Then in September of 2011, he made a push for artists. “We now have a broad mix of artists and the space accommodates each one of them.” The goal was to create a space that was communal enough to create what Duke calls art energy. It’s an energy one can palpate when you visit the 4th Culture studios of painter Stephanie Palagyi from Montana, multi-medium artist Marissa Tawney Thaler from Grand Rapids and Shontae Collins from Detroit who uses reclaimed materials in her work.

“We’re not sure what it will become,” said Duke. “It’s a definite leap into the unknown. The character of the space is still forming. It can become whatever people want to make it. We’re relying on each other to create the space.” They had their first Open Studio in October of last year with another one planned for this spring. “It’s a great opportunity to allow the broader community to share our experience,” said Duke.

According to his artist statement Benjamin Duke has a unique approach to gaining inspiration for his paintings. For Duke, art is a lot about trying to understand his experience of the world. “It happens through reading and looking at works of art and the simple experience of living,” said Duke. “That’s what creates my images. I often end up working in a series. When an idea captures me I run with it. The making of the work is richest when I’m not exactly sure what I’m making.” That, in many ways, describes Duke’s vision for 4th Culture Studios.

Duke uses the metaphor of flow in describing how he hopes the space and an art energy can continue to evolve. “Like flowing water, it can leak into cracks and open things up, And like water, if the work keeps coming, it also has the power to break loose solidified ideas, shift the energy.”

“We want to create something that’s vibrant and resonates,” said Duke. “People want to be around people who have that.” If the universal law of likes attracting likes holds true, no doubt the energy flowing from 4th Culture Studios has the power to transform a city.

RAP VETERAN USES HIP-HOP FOR YOUTH POSITIVITY
WILLIAM E. KETCHUM III
THURSDAY JANUARY 12th, 2012
Many rappers spend their entire careers hoping to become the next big thing, but Grand Rapids’ Victor “Governor Slugwell” Williams has already passed that point. After performing around the country with groundbreaking acts and working at a record label in New York City, he’s focused on using hip-hop to do something completely different: empower and educate. After all, he says, that’s what hip-hop was meant to do in the first place.

“We are naturally activists because of the conditions that our music and most of us were born into,” Williams laments. “When we stop being that, we stop being hip-hop. That’s what makes hip-hop different from any other genre of music that has ever been created.”

When asked how he first got into music, Williams recounts his childhood with the clarity of memories from days ago, not 30-plus years. He grew up in a neighborhood that had bands that would grow to become Motown legends Debarge and the Berry Gordy-signed Switch, but he ventured to find his own music once his older brothers began to move away from home. He saw hip-hop as “novelty music” that would never compare to the likes of James Brown, Parliament and Rick James.

“I was all in when I heard Whodini’s ‘Five Minutes of Funk’ One day I was standing on the corner of Franklin and Fuller and I heard what sounded like Godzilla’s footsteps,” he remembers. “I didn’t know what it was, or where it was coming from. It was the first time I had ever heard a booming Jeep. My cousin had told me about this record because he knew I would like the funk. I ran all the way back to his house to hear more.”

Williams had recently started to experiment with rapping to duplicate schoolmates’ success of impressing girls, and he showed an original rhyme to someone in his class. Later that day, Williams heard other kids talking about the rhyme—that classmate claimed it was his, but Williams recognized the lyrics as his own. From then, he laughs, “…my rhyme ego was born.”

The following summer, Williams traveled to Boston to try his skills in ciphers—impromptu gatherings of people showcasing free styled or written rhymes—and garnered kudos from other rappers and renowned poet James Baldwin. He cut his vacation short when his cousin called to tell him that Run-DMC, Whodini, and LL Cool J were performing in Grand Rapids. The concert changed Williams’ perspective: he decided not only that he was taking hip-hop seriously, but that he would be onstage with Run-DMC the next year.

He practiced every day, formed a group named New Concept, and bought his own studio equipment. The group performed local shows and built a reputation in the city, and true to his prediction, they opened up for Run-DMC slightly over a year later. The performance went so well that the crowd cheered for an encore—something that Williams says upset two thirds of the headlining act. Jam Master Jay congratulated the group, but front men Run and DMC gave them the cold shoulder.

“Not only did we open, but we blew their doors off…I was thrilled that Eric B and Jam Master greeted us at the stage and gave us [kudos] and hugs. But Run and DMC looked at us like we just stole something from them, which we did,” he laughed. “…The poster from that show is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with our name in bold letters. Run put it there because he said it made him rethink where he was in his career.”

New Concept continued to rock other tour dates with the likes of Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, Kool Moe Dee, and LL Cool J—acts who are universally lauded for shaping hip-hop during its definitive era. Bad financial decisions lead to hard times, but Williams still built an industry reputation for his songwriting skills. In 1997, he moved to New York City, where he was the lead A&R (liaison between artists and record label) and songwriter for a label called 76 Records and had Sean “Diddy” Combs as the direct advisor for his production camp. Despite having good money and a dream job, Williams disapproved of what he saw. He returned to Grand Rapids a couple years later, and an interaction with a clerk at a local record store got him fired up to give back to his hometown.

“I grew tired of the industry real quick. I felt as though there was no artistry involved. It was just a bunch of infighting and jousting for position, very reflective of what life is like in the streets,” he remembers. “…I would always go to the record store BeatNics to see what was [going on in my hometown], and this time I went in, the kid working behind the counter had a bold attitude with me. He was smiling but he was calling me ‘superstar’ and was condescending. It bothered me heavy, because I never wanted my peeps to feel like I wasn’t trying to help anyone.”

He immersed himself into the local hip-hop scene, working as a promoter and marketer for independent labels. After unsuccessful attempts to get local acts signed and seeing the same materialistic pitfalls he had left behind, Williams founded the Grand Rapids Hip-Hop Coalition, which he uses as a direct industry conduit for artists in the city, and landed an AM radio show called The Governor’s Mansion in 2006. He began to speak to teachers, politicians, and other community leaders about the importance of hip-hop awareness, and worked with them to organize Grand Rapids renditions of Hip Hop History Month and Hip Hop Appreciation Week. Both are holidays originally established by the Temple of Hip-Hop and Zulu Nation—entities founded by hip-hop pioneers KRS-One and Afrika Bambaataa, respectively—but before Grand Rapids, they were rarely celebrated as more than a day-long event. The celebrations are fueled by guest panels, live performances, and other youth activities that emphasize fun without drugs and violence.

“I found that when people know the truth, that’s all the difference in the world,” Williams insists. “If I can show them how hip-hop helped me and how it may be able to help others, they have to rock with it because it’s living proof. The culture is what kids relate to, and it works.”

Williams is now launching Bread Breakers Unlimited, a multifaceted lifestyle company that uses hip-hop as the foundation for music, media, artist management and more. BreadBreakers.TV has already completed music videos for veteran Michigan rap staples like OneBeLo and Phat Kat, and Williams says that more content with Wu-Tang Clan, Warner Bros. rapper XV, and the Rebirth of Detroit posthumous J Dilla project is on the way. The new project is much more than Williams’ original stage shows and promoting, and a necessary progression.

“Anybody can rap, but that doesn’t make you hip-hop. Living out the principles through peace, love, unity, and safely having fun, that’s what makes you hip-hop,” Williams insists. “It’s a way of life.”

NORTHERN MICHIGAN STRINGS PROGRAM NOURISHES YOUNG MINDS
MARY KATHERINE QUASARANO
THURSDAY JANUARY 12th, 2012
Nurturing actions give people permission to flourish and it’s the energy behind the Gerber Strings Program in Petoskey.

Funded through the Dorothy Gerber Music Education Foundation, the Gerber Strings Program has been uncovering musical gifts in Northern Michigan for the past 12 years. Its origins, however, can be traced to Dorothy Gerber’s innovation in 1927.

Dorothy’s daughter Sally was a sickly baby, and when Sally was seven months old, the family doctor prescribed a daily diet of hand-strained fruits and vegetables. Dorothy prepared them faithfully and grew weary of what was undoubtedly a tedious process. She turned to her husband, the owner of Fremont Canning Company, for help. By 1928 the canning company was making five products for babies: strained peas, prunes, carrots and spinach, and beef vegetable soup. Gerber Baby Foods has been nurturing babies since, and decades later, a Michigan-based business’ success led to the establishment of the Dorothy Gerber Music Education Foundation.

Funds from the foundation are granted annually to the Crooked Tree Arts Center in Petoskey. The funding supports two full-time and five part-time positions that comprise the program staff. Jennifer McAndrew, Music Education Assistant Director at Crooked Tree, holds an MA in Music Education from Central Michigan University and leads a team of five dedicated string educators cultivating and encouraging musical talent in over 400 children in 20 Northern Michigan schools.

The strings program fosters development beyond musical participation and appreciation. It serves as a wonderful means of promoting and achieving right and left brain balance in developing students. According to McAndrew, “Music education is one of the few classes offered to students that force the left and right sides of the brain to work together. Let’s break down everything that happens to create music on a stringed instrument. 1) The child reads the music, 2) places the fingers of their left hand on a certain spot on the string to create notes, 3) moves the bow independently with their right hand, and 4) all while listening to what everyone else is playing with them. It can seem a complete brain overload for most people! Once the student’s brain learns how to work harmoniously, connections are created between the right and left sides of the brain that can make playing a string instrument as easy as breathing.”

Two women played significant roles in encouraging McAndrew’s artistic formation. “The first time I ever held a string instrument I was 10 years old. The elementary orchestra teacher, Mrs. Johnson, invited our class to come listen to the orchestra play. Each student had the opportunity to sit with a member of the orchestra and play a song on their instruments. I remember the older student teaching me how to hold a cello and telling me how good I was - at that moment I was hooked. I went home and told my mom I wanted to be in the school orchestra. After some clever negotiating, she agreed to let me play the violin. My mom drove nearly four hours a week to take me to violin lessons and orchestra rehearsals.”

This story’s nurturing thread comes full circle with the string program experiences. Every teacher wonders when and how their work might make a difference. Four years ago a third grader expressed a great desire to become a fiddle player. This past summer she played several fiddle solos in a group McAndrew assembled to perform at Boyne City’s ‘Stroll the Streets’ event. She looks forward to performing in the state’s Middle School Solo & Ensemble Festival in April 2012.

In her first year with the program, McAndrew began working with a student now in her fourth year of music education studies at Wooster College. One of McAndrew’s current students is raising funds through musical performance at nursing homes and other venues to attend Blue Lakes International Music Camp.

When this student plays, her teacher [McAndrew] brings the moment she first placed the violin and bow in her student’s awkward hands into her mind and heart, and McAndrew knows she’s right where she belongs, doing what she is called to do. These wonder-filled moments happen frequently.McAndrew has become the kind of music teacher that extends the invitation to experience orchestral music, as well as the musician whose encouraging words inspire growth to flourish. Through the Dorothy Gerber Music Education Foundation, the passionate educators that lead the Gerber Strings Program in Petoskey have given thousands of children, and a region, opportunities to flourish on so many levels.