August 24, 2008 | Tags: none

Note: This writing/hip hop stuff tends to put me in contact with some very fascinating people. The following words are those of Lee Rhyanes – a man who loves hip hop, cares about his community, sets goals, and makes them happen. Anybody reading this that is striving to make some positive change should take notes. Lee was generous enough to share with me the steps it took for him to create an amazing program called Voices Behind Walls which uses hip hop to reach out to incarcerated youth in the Southwest. Gotta love people who have good hearts and the determination needed to make things happen. Check out the links he dropped at the end to find out more about Voices Behind Walls and his various undertakings. And to think, the media (well, mostly just Papa Bear) is really trying to convince us that hip hop is always a bad influence. Pshh…anyway, here’s Lee’s story:

The ideas for my involvement in this program started in 2002 with my mentor Dr. Bejarano at New Mexico State University (Las Cruces, NM), and over the next couple of years it worked its way into creative writing workshops and activities that I taught for a youth violence prevention program. That program was provided by the NMSU Family Life Center which was being directed by Dr. Bond-Maupin and provided educational services for youth that had been attending alternative school or that were caught up in the juvenile justice system. I led these workshops for about 3 years during my undergrad studies and also started getting the youth involved with radio broadcasting at KRUX 91.5 fm, which is a student run college radio station at NMSU. I'd been hosting a Soul and Hip Hop radio program since 2000 and was also a staff there, so any time we could extend participation with the radio station and have youth from the surrounding community visit and create a show of their own, or recite a poem, a freestyle, we announced that opportunity in the workshops and got them involved. Unfortunately, the violence prevention program was no longer operating due to funding, so I started reaching out to other places that needed volunteers to work with youth.

At a writing conference in Austin, I met up with Emmy Perez who at the time was conducting poetry workshops in El Paso, TX at a juvenile corrections boot camp program, and she invited me to come in and co-teach the workshop. Since I had some experience with helping youth get their voices recorded and broadcasted, I brought in a portable recording studio set up and we began recording poetry and Hip Hop lyrics that the youth inside the detention center were creating. We were limited to the amount of time we could spend with them inside the detention center (around 45 minutes to an hour with each; 1 female group and 3 male), so while I was setting up the recording equipment, Emmy would lead the workshop and help them get some writing down on paper. By the end of the workshop we'd record. Emmy also was able to organize events outside of the detention center and so instead of just providing the services inside, she'd also put together events and workshops at local happenings in El Paso or at a library, and youth would get the chance to perform their work.

I think it was about a year or two into the program when Emmy had to move to Southern Texas after getting hired to teach at the University of Texas-Pan American, so it kind of put things on hold, temporarily. At that time I had just started working on my Masters Degree but found time to continue conducting the workshops in El Paso that Emmy had started. So every Saturday morning, I would commute down to El Paso, TX from Las Cruces, NM and conduct the workshops. Once a month, I'd bring the laptop and microphone and we'd record. And to give an idea of how the workshop was organized, the youth had to express themselves without profanity or the explicit promotion of drugs, gang activity or disrespect towards males/females. A lot of them were incarcerated because of drugs, violence or some issue they didn't have much control over, so the point was to provide that little bit of time to enhance their literary skills as readers, writers, thinkers and teachers, and it also provided the time for feedback and input amongst the group on their creative writing skills or their vocal performances, whether it was through poetry, rhyme, singing, etc. At the same time, any resources I had, I was bringing them in. So we'd learn about everything from the Blues to Hip Hop (Billie Holiday, James Brown, Tupac Shakur, Percy Carey aka MF Grimm, etc.), Chess, film, literature (Helena Maria Viramontes, Luis Rodriguez, Piri Thomas, etc,), photography books (Luis Urrea and Jose Galvez; Vatos text, Jamel Shabazz; A Time Before Crack text), news and any kind of local issues that were going on that affected youth. We were incorporating all of that into the workshop and we discussed it and sometimes they allowed it to inspire what it was they would write about. Eventually we'd also learn that the recording component (and hearing their vocal recordings played back) helped to improve the presentation of their vocals by finding better ways to project. So with just a pen, a writing pad, basic recording equipment, soul/jazz/hip hop instrumental CD's and our own voices it became a classroom/program that we always looked forward to. Even if it meant we had to be up at 6 am every Saturday morning to get it started.

Meanwhile, Emmy Perez also continued to conduct workshops in Southern Texas with young adults at a detention boot camp there. As a professor, she also got students from her classes involved with teaching the workshops and the success of the program would eventually bring them local news coverage and they also were able to create a CD project, a chapbook and had organized an event to celebrate their accomplishments.

Back in El Paso, I had decided to get the program online. Joseph, a youth from the Delta workshop came up with the name, Voices Behind Walls. This led to the creation of the website, which became a platform for networking and the self publishing of our audio/literary pieces.

Since I was residing and going to school in Las Cruces, NM I also found out about a detention center out there where youth were serving much longer sentences. So along with the workshops in El Paso, TX, Voices Behind Walls started conducting workshops in Las Cruces, NM. During this time we've had a poet by the name of Michael Gomez publish in The Beat Within, which is a publication of art and writing from the inside based out in California. They're also a national organization that publishes twice a month and hosts workshops inside detention facilities around the country. We also received funding from the Writers in the Schools (WITS) program at New Mexico State University and an endowment award from the NMSU English Department which helped us open up our own bank account for programming costs and donations.

After graduating in 2008 from NMSU and relocating back to El Paso, TX to work full time, the changes put the workshop on hold until everything gets situated for the new year. At the present moment, we plan to build onto the online component and start providing more ideas for curriculums to share the idea with people that might want to lend their time and provide some form of creative arts programming for youth wherever needed (whether in public schools, detention centers, youth recreations, group homes, etc.) And being that El Paso, TX and Las Cruces, NM are university communities, with respect to everyone that is already got something going on, the possibility of finding more students/educators that could volunteer and provide some educational services is there. So one way or another we're still building on providing information and will also be using the time to post writing and audio that's been collected over the past few years with many of the youth that were at one point involved with the workshop inside. With the funds we've accumulated we're also planning to use the online platform as a reference point where students that have been involved with the workshop in the past can follow up and see about putting their writing together in the form of a chapbook publication.

The website is also a research base for information on other educators and programs that are creating alternatives and/or responding to the incarceration rate in this country. From the staff at the Beat Within, Luis Rodriguez, Piri Thomas, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Ms. Dale Davis, Jim Brown, Bruce George and Louis Reyes Rivera, Richard Shelton, Sara Flores and the Artist Inside program in Las Cruces, NM... also just read about Kevin Clayton and the Chess instruction he's providing behind bars... the list goes on… so while bringing light to the incarceration issue we also hope to forward you to other people and established programs that got something going on.

Below I've included some primary links to our site, some of our recordings that have been posted, and information that's been included in the text above. The site is updated frequently. Peace.

http://www.voicesbehindwalls.org/ (Homepage)

http://leehiphopshow.ipbhost.com/index.php?showforum=110 (Message Board)

http://leehiphopshow.ipbhost.com/index.php?showforum=120 (Audio recordings (beats included) | Currently being updated)

http://www.leehiphopshow.com/ (Radio program)

http://thebeatwithin.org/news (The Beat Within)

http://www.hiphopalumni.com/ (Lee Rhyanes and Justin De Senso)

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the writer and not necessarily those of HipHopDX.com or Cheri Media Group.

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