HIP HOP EDUCATION

In addition to spinning live and producing mixtapes, Trackstar has spent thousands of hours educating the youth through and about hip hop as the founder of the Center for Recording Arts, as well as lecturing and speaking on panels on various hip hop topics. He also offers DJ lessons to the general public in addition to the youth.

Riverfront Times cover story on the CRA (1/07)

More info on the CRA below.

Poster for a weekly turntable class taught with DJ Needles in Joplin, MO in the summer of 2006:

The Center for Recording Arts
Mission:
The Center for Recording Arts is a hip hop-focused not-for-profit recording studio and education center providing artistic and cultural instruction, career information, and recording services for youth throughout the St Louis area.

Vision:
Connecting to today’s youth requires speaking to them on their terms. The predominant youth culture in America today, across all demographics, is hip hop culture. Through hip hop-based instruction, the Center for Recording Arts provides an opportunity for youth to learn about the art, culture and business of hip hop, while gaining career and technology education and experience expressing themselves and learning new skills.

Through our interactive lessons and workshops, students also receive academic skills in the form of literacy and writing (lyrical analyses of songs, both popular and unheard, teaching alliteration, metaphor, and discussing themes), history (hip hop history specifically to provide perspective for the music our youth hear today, as well as exploring references in songs), and mathematics (students play a game breaking down sample record contracts in addition to learning the math behind the music—bars, beats, etc).

Process:
The Center for Recording Arts directs its efforts towards youth in public schools, juvenile detention centers, arts mentoring programs, and community centers, while directly serving a population of youth as well. Our program can be customized to the desires of the administrators at each location, taking into account class time available, but the overall process will be similar.

We educate our students about the history, culture and social aspects of hip hop, with an emphasis on career education, describing the many ways they could have a future in the music industry, as well as the paths to achieve those goals. Students will also analyze hip hop song lyrics, and build on the skills and themes learned to write, record and produce their own pieces. Recording equipment can be brought on-site or the youth can travel to our studio and a CD of their collective works is prepared. The students will be intimately involved in every aspect of the planning and design of this project.

History:
We have had 501(c)3 status since 2005, and programs have been completed at the Juvenile Detention Center, Vashon High School, Maplewood-Richmond Heights High School and Middle School, the Make-A-Difference Center, Nipher Middle School, and Fanning Middle School as well as our own in-house project. Program durations ranged from one-day workshops to meeting weekly with the same youth for almost four years. We have worked with over 350 students and the CRA was subject of the cover story of the January 10, 2007 issue of the Riverfront Times.