Rhyme Writing | Art of Voices #ZHill

Rhyme Writing

"Writin' in my book of rhymes...all the words pass the margin..."

#Nas ((The World is Yours)) #Illmatic

This illustration really captures the essence of what the Voices Behind Walls program was all about.  On this particular evening we had one of the most talented rhyme writers in the prison visit the workshop.  Prior to his visit I had a difficult time encouraging him to be consistent with his participation.  Most of the time I remember our workshop schedule conflicting with other activities that were going on at the prison that he chose to participate with instead.  On another occasion participants that showed up noted that he simply didn't feel like participating.  They mentioned, "hey man, we tried... he just didn't feel like coming."  All the other youth knew he had rhyme skills.  We got the chance to hear him spit a few rhymes once before and right away I knew we had an eMCee in front of us.  In previous workshops, youth that did show up would talk about this guy like he was a myth and how they were going to try to get him to visit so that I could see how good he was at rapping.  

In this illustration, Zachary Hill does an incredible job capturing the experience of attending a VBW workshop and the pensive listening that takes place when youth get lost in the music and take time to write.  The youth standing in the background listening and observing is how some participants start off in our workshop.  For many youth it was a matter of working through the fear, trust, or lack of confidence because of what others would think about what they had to say.  For anyone else not familiar with what was going on, they might look at a youth standing against a wall and think they were not engaged.  But often times those were the ones that would surprise us a few sessions later and arrive with their own book of rhymes or songs that they wanted to share with the other participants.  I recall one of our participants who ended up recording the programs first double disc CD...it took him several months to find his voice.  I remember months later mentioning to him that I didn't realize how long he'd been visiting the workshop because he was so quiet, often in the background, observing, listening, and nodding to the beat.  Eventually he'd grow to become one of our most accomplished participants and song writers in the program.  He was sentenced to the juvenile prison for the remaining teenage years of his life so we got to work with him for a while.  In that time he developed leadership qualities promoting the program's purpose and encouraging other youth to get involved.  It was incredible to see others improve because of his guidance through rhyme.  I saw him as a literacy peer.

Both of the figures in the 'Rhyme Writing' illustration reflect the same person.  The youth standing is a reflection of how the process starts when youth take the time to visit the workshop and see what our environment is all about.  For them to see the equipment, the books, the collaboration, the pencils/pens, composition books, the musical equipment, and other technology. Through their observation and experience they'd eventually arrive to that moment where they were the ones composing songs about their own lives. While some have reason to believe that popular rap music has a tendency to beget negativity to a point where every "rapper"  is a carbon copy of the other, this does not reflect what it means to be an eMCee. Especially when a platform (in our case the workshop) is able to provide space for everyone's truth and/or stories. I thought of their voices and rhymes as their own bar codes.  Even among the hundreds of incarcerated youth I recorded for the VBW program, I never mistook one voice from another ..especially one connected to its own story, its own song.

Special thanks to Zachary Hill for the exceptional artwork and the vibrant and colorful pallets that capture the truth of the original photograph.  It's a scene of many and tells a story you'd have to listen to to believe.

#Lee

Art of Voices is a Voices Behind Walls (VBW) project supported by Community Solutions of El Paso to recruit illustrators through Volunteer Match to help recreate VBW workshop photographs into art.  The photographs were taken during workshop activities in juvenile detention between the years of 2006-2014.  Artistic remakes of the photographs protect the identity of workshop participants by changing details of face and other identifiers.  The purpose of this project is to document the VBW program's history and the creative expression activities incarcerated youth were engaged in.  This project also offers the VBW photographer and illustrators an opportunity to reflect on what the images say about the juvenile justice system and the importance of creative expression activity for youth as a means of education, therapy, self-improvement, community engagement, rehabilitation, positive Hip Hop activity, and mentorship.