Escare Youth Hip Hop Project (2004)

Hip hop is a music culture that began amongst urban youth in New York. The four main elements of Hip hop are Rapping, DeeJaying, Graffiti Art and Breakdancing. Some people consider ‘Beatboxing’ a fifth element of hip hop.

This long term project kicked off with a ‘Hip Hop and Rap’ workshop facilitated by DJ Fallout (alias Damien Keitel) at Lotteries House.

Workshop Program 1 – 26th June 2004

• The origins of Hip Hop and Rap Music, starting with the original artists right through to the current ones.
• Watching the Hip Hop movie called ‘8 Mile’ plus the previews of the movie, which gave an insight into what Hip Hop was about and the process of elimination that is an inherent part of Hip Hop ‘Battles’ or Contests.
• An ‘8 Mile’ Movie Quiz.
• Local Hip Hop enthusiast, Johnny Ratcliff, who has written and performed many of his own songs, was invited to perform a couple of them. This was very inspiring for workshop crew and made them feel and realise that they could achieve in this field too.

Future Project-ions

All the workshop crew agreed that they would like to develop this project further and:

1. Learn to write down their own rap lyrics based on their own stories.
2. Learn to put music to their rap lyrics.
3. Record their own rap tunes , with music and lyrics, onto a CD.
4. Design a CD Cover themselves.
5. Design Hip Hop logos for their own range of Hip Hop clothing!

In Conclusion..

This was a totally successful workshop that stimulated positive thoughts and ideas that laid the foundation for reaching achievable goals in the future.