ALLI 2018 Throwback

Photo by: Amy Piñon

By Amr Awwad

Summer of 2018, I had just wrapped up an awesome month-long program with The Residency as I got into ALLI, the Arts, Leadership, and Liberation Institute. It’s a two-week intensive summer program put on by Arts Corps, Youth Speaks, Massive Monkees, and Totem Star where 28 youth are trained in artistry, social justice and organizing. Youth leaders develop as cultural workers in four arts pathways: spoken word poetry, music production, visual art and breakdance. This cohort of youth hones their arts and organizing skills, while deepening their understandings of race and social justice issues. They collaborate, build community and create art that challenges oppression and envisions a more just world. Personally, I chose the music pathway, as I wanted to learn more about how to be a DJ. But anyways, that article isn’t about me. I’m here to talk about the program, and boy, was it dope.

Photo by: Amy Piñon

At the beginning of each day, we’d have everyone in one room to partake in different activities, meshing social justice and art in our work. For example, on one day, we were split into different groups and had to work with a quote that was given to us by the teaching artists. My group’s quote was about Revolution, and we had to create a performance piece that included all 4 pathways and perform it in front of the other groups. Overall, the activities were really good at giving youth the inspiration and creative path to fuse art, in its various forms, with elements of social justice.

Photo By: Amy Piñon

In each pathway, youth would practice on refining their craft but also delve into unknown territory in terms of new skills to learn. For me, before ALLI, I had ZERO knowledge on how to DJ and what it takes to mix music. By the end of the two weeks, I was able to DJ a 30 minute set in front of over 100 people. I also grew a passion for DJing and now get to DJ at other events.

Photo By: Amy Piñon

The day of the ALLI showcase, we had many people from the community come to see what we’ve been working on. They got to see a gallery of paintings made by the visual art pathway, and also attend an open mic that was hosted by two of our poetry pathway students, Bitanya and Suraya. For the show itself, which was hosted by Kid LIO, every ALLI participant got to shine on the stage and share their unique experience through their art.

Five Tips On Expanding Your Audience

Image via crowdinvest.com

Written by Jahlil (Jawzilla) Kirby

I know the struggle of having a dream, putting in the work, spending hard earned money on studio time, then posting it online to receive ... 50 views. It's even more frustrating seeing other artists have more ease getting support and more views than you. Here you will learn the business side of making yourself heard. 

1. Be ready to expand. Have a catalog of content ready and really polish yourself up the best you can before you try to promote yourself. Remember, you're going to have a much harder time promoting what doesn't exist yet and you have to think about if the listeners might want more. It might not be a bad idea to see what successful artists are doing to promote themselves that you aren't. This can be artists as big as Macklemore, who performs around the world, to artists that are local. Every artist offers something you can learn from. One of the reasons OFWGKTA (Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All) and Tyler The Creator blew up is their originality and their amazing energy that goes along with their performance. Developing your skills and raising the quality of your music helps a lot. There are a lot of people that won't give artists a break and expect artists to have professional quality and be up to par before they even give them a chance, so keep that in mind. 

2. Social media offers tremendous opportunities to network and market yourself. Instagram is a great tool to use. Through the power of hashtags you can find people anywhere on Instagram that might be willing to work with you, creating opportunities to collab, share shows, and give shout outs to get to audiences you didn't have before. Join a group on Facebook! There's tons of groups you can join that allow you to network with people from all over the globe. There's definitely more social media platforms you can use but Instagram and Facebook are two solid platforms to start off with. You just have to stay up to date to find newer platforms and see what works for you. 

3. A solid way to expand your audience is to reach out to your community! This can be going to open mics and building yourself up from there if you're making zero noise at the moment. Working with other people builds a group that will give as much as you and others put in. A major example of this is the BEASTCOAST movement in NYC. A$AP MOB, Pro Era, and the Flatbush Zombies are the 3 top groups coming out of this movement and major artists today like Joey Bada$$, A$AP Rocky, and A$AP Ferg are a few of the artists that came out of this collective that all do shows together, do songs together, tour together, and show overall support of each other openly. You can't deny the success they've received from it. 

4. Using promotion isn't always a bad thing. More things than you know actually fall into this category. This may be free or may cost some money; but be careful not to get hustled. Ensure that the promotion technique is legit and gives you real results that don't just look good or give you numbers that aren't really there (like buying views). If you're still in school, this can be performing at your school assembly and gaining the support of your friends and peers. This could be sending your music to radios stations (e.g. college and local radio stations) to hopefully get played on air. This could be sending your music to blogs to try to get them to promote it on their page.

Tunecore is an example of a service that helps distribute music but it is NOT free. And of course theres the face to face word of mouth technique that if done correctly works really well. Building a street team is one example of this technique and can work great if the strategy is well thought out and the team is managed well. Even Tech N9ne has a street team and it's success speaks for itself. This means that you don't need to be signed to a label to gain a following. Other resources like a manager or a publicist aren't one hundred percent necessary, but they can be amazing tools to help you grow if you find the right people and can afford their services. There's a lot of options you just have to find them and experiment with what works for you and the audience you want to attempt to make your fans. 

5. Understand your audience's vibe and meet them halfway. Some of you decide your own line between selling out and appealing to other audiences. The most important thing about spreading your music is knowing who to spread it to while staying true to your craft. If you make Punk or Hip Hop, you'll more than likely have more success promoting at a skate park than your grandmothers bible club. One method could be finding some artists that you sound like or have a similar vibe to and reaching out to fans in that field. Instagram is a great tool for this. When you know who's listening to your music or who you want to listen to your music, you can better form your sound to their liking and have better success with the outcome of your music.

Jahlil (Jawzilla) Kirby is a regular at Totem Star and is interning with us through the SPOKES, the youth leadership body of Youth Speaks Seattle, Totem Star and the Arts Corps Teen Leadership Program. Check out Jawzilla's music HERE.

ALLI 2017

L to R: LIO, Mirabai Kukathas, Zora Seboulisa, Monica Elenes, and Daniel Pak. Photo Credit: Amy Piñon

Written by Mirabai Jyothi Kukathas

The first week of July 2017 was one of the best weeks of my life. Totem Star, Youth Speaks, and our awesome mutual sponsor Arts Corps put on the Arts Leadership Liberation Institute (ALLI) for the second year running. ALLI is a weeklong art intensive for poets, musicians, and visual artists. We spent the week building community, partaking in social justice-related workshops, and creating pieces of art to share at the end of the week.

When I applied to ALLI, I didn’t think I would actually get in. I knew some of the people involved and didn’t think I was accomplished enough to spend a week with such talented artists. When I did get in, I was both excited and incredibly nervous. However, my nerves melted away almost as soon as I walked into Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, where ALLI was held. One thing that cannot be said enough about the Youthspeaks/Totem Star family is how kind and welcoming it is.

We spent the majority of the first day getting to know one another. We began with everyone putting an object of emotional value in the center of the circle we sat in, summing up the object’s significance in one or two words. We went back around the circle and everyone took an object that symbolized something they needed more of in their lives. I put in a statue of the goddess Saraswati, symbolizing ancestry and inspiration, and took a picture which represented resiliance. At the end we gave the items back to their owners, thanking them for the characteristics they embodied. It was so nice to fill up the room with love and strength, and doing so really set the tone for the supportive environment of ALLI.    

LIO wows the crowd with her poetry. Photo credit: Amy Piñon. 

For the rest of the week we’d spend the mornings together, still getting to know each other, learning about outreach and organization, and even taking a workshop led by Anakbayan. In the afternoon we would divide into our three pathways (spoken-word poetry, music, and visual art) and get working on our pieces. I loved catching glimpses of half-finished paintings and hearing snippets of poems when I popped out into the hall. The whole place seemed alive with art and excitement.

During the course of the week, my friend Zora and I wrote a song. It started off as just a baseline and a short poem of hers, but together we expanded the lyrics and wrote a melody. For the most part she did the lyrics and I did the melody, but worked together for the entire process, bouncing ideas off each other and getting excited after our eureka moments. At the end of the week we had created something I was really proud of, something I never thought I’d be able to to do. For me, that was the best part about ALLI: doing something I never thought I could. Proving myself wrong. Gaining some confidence.

The song-writing process. L to R: Zora and Mirabai. Photo credit: Amy Piñon.

At the end of the week we put on a block party, open mic, and showcase. A bunch of people from the community showed up (some even brought food!), got to know each other, performed at the open mic, and partook in the general awesomeness. The showcase itself was electric; I could not believe everyone created what they did in just five days. It’d been a long time since I’d performed in front of people, but when I was singing up there everything felt right. I owe a lot to ALLI for getting me into the Youth Speaks/Totem Star community, building my confidence and skills, and for a truly amazing week I will never forget.

To see more ALLI stories, click here.

To see all performances from the ALLI showcase, click here

Video: Winter Magic

Nothing captures the magic of The Stage like being there to witness it in person, but if you missed the last one, check out this beautiful sizzle reel of the Winter Magic youth arts showcase shot and produced by Darien Brown! Features the instrumental for “M.O.M.” produced by Totem Star alumna Shakur Washington!

Special thanks to our partners and supporters Arts Corps, the Office of Arts & Culture, 4Culture, the Jubilation Foundation, the Satterberg Foundation, and Youngstown Cultural Arts Center.

Photos: Winter Magic

4 bands, 5 rappers, a dance crew, a DJ, 5 poets, and 6 singers lit up the amphitheater stage at Youngstown Cultural Arts Center on December 4, 2015 for the second annual Winter Magic youth arts showcase. Totem Star produces quarterly showcases, this time around through a partnership with the Office of Arts & Culture, 4Culture, Arts Corps, Youth Speaks Seattle, and Youngstown Cultural Arts Center. All photos by Paul Laughlin.

Justus White

Torren Anderson

The Rush

Close To The Sun

Samone Thomas

The Black Tone

The BCs