New subject: teaching black history through music - I'm so blown away

19 Feb 2015

I'm trying to work out some interesting ideas for the SudoKit project,
inspired and copying stuff from the Waldorf school.
Why not mix art and music?
This example just blew me away.

http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/02/19/young-gifted-and-black-teaches-oakland-…

Young Gifted and Black, or YGB, is a youth performance ensemble based in
Oakland. More than 50 performers — ranging in age from 6 to 18 — learn and
memorize compilations of historical black poems and contemporary raps,
which they perform around the Bay Area.

“We try to cover anywhere from 50 to 100 years of history in our
presentation,” said Hodari Davis, director of YGB. The program aims to
teach black students aspects of their history not taught in school, and to
allow the students to relay their knowledge to the community through
performance.

YGB <http://younggiftedandblack.org/index.html> has emerged in Oakland from
a strong family legacy. Hodari’s mother, Laroilyn Davis, was the original
founder of YGB in Ithaca, New York. She started YGB in 1981 when Hodari was
in third grade, as she recognized the lack of black history in her son’s
curriculum.

The Davis family decided to revitalize YGB in Oakland six years ago when
Hodari’s daughter, Ikera Davis, was in middle school. Ikera now performs in
the high school group and teaches the younger students.

Hodari writes original raps for the students to learn, combining them with
historical songs and poems he grew up performing. The high school group
incorporates more contemporary messages in their sets, with pieces about
today’s police brutality and discrimination. The younger students learn and
perform mantras from prominent black leaders such as Huey Newton and W.E.B.
Du Bois.

“They don’t perform like cute little kids,” said Hodari’s wife, Candice
Davis, who also teaches for YGB. “They perform like they mean it.”

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Romy Ilano
romy(a)snowyla.com