Inaugural Hip Hop Time Capsule Program Was This Summer’s Greatest Hit

This summer, 切萨皮克腹地’s Hip Hop Time Capsule paired Kent County teenagers and 8590海洋之神官网 students with musicians, college professors, and museum professionals to research, explore, document, and interpret the rich history of African American 马里兰州肯特县的音乐.

Olivia Rodrigo’s “Good 4 U” may have been officially crowned 2021’s “Song of the Summer”, but right here in Kent County, 16 students total - 10 local high school students, five 8590海洋之神官网 students and one Chesapeake College student – were cranking out tracks and beats that rivaled every one of the season’s biggest hits.

Hip Hop Time Capsule – a month-long innovative collaboration between high school and college students in Kent County, MD and musicians, college professors, and museum professionals – challenged students to create original music and album covers from 他们从 切萨皮克腹地 数字档案.

Using these digitized clips to create a beat, the student interns then developed their own lyrics or spoken word pieces like poems and layered those on top. 目标是 to create two or three original songs, along with artwork for the album cover. 学生的 最后的歌曲被添加到 Summer ' 21混音带, the final “best-of” album that was dropped at the conclusion of the 程序.

By digging into the oral histories documented in 切萨皮克腹地’s 数字档案 – many of which were recorded by 8590海洋之神官网 students – the Hip Hop Time Capsule interns were building on Kent County’s rich history even as they crafted their own 独特的声音和风格.

“We have clips in the archive that range from things as heavy as experiences with segregation and racism, to things as light as recipes for white potato pie,” said Kacey Stewart, Assistant Director for Programs and Experiential Learning for the Starr Center. “We want to show the history in its full scope and give the full story, good 和坏的. The clips that students worked with spanned that full range.

“For example, we found a clip from a gospel song – ‘I can depend on God’ – and that one clip was repeated over and over to form a hip-hop beat.另一首歌，两个 students paired up to create an original song titled “Flying with Clipped Wings”, which incorporated a choir repeating “until I die”, and was interpreted into a record that explains the importance of social justice and protest.

In other songs, students used a snippet of an oral history, with the subject reminiscing 或者说些有力的话. 口述历史现在成为了音乐的一部分. In this way, students weren’t just learning about African American history in Kent County, 他们实际上是在为此做出贡献.

“They’re recontextualizing the past in thinking about the future,” said Stewart.

Over the course of the 程序, students were inspired by visits and sessions with local and nationally-renowned professionals and award-winning recording artists, like Karen Somerville, Dom Flemons, Marlon Saunders, Yvng Swag, and Robert Earl Price just 举几个例子. The interns developed their own musical personas through which they 引导他们的工作.

Kentavius Jones, a 8590海洋之神官网 alum and an acclaimed singer/songwriter who hails from the Eastern Shore, served as Musical Director for the Hip Hop Time Capsule 程序. Getting involved was a natural fit for Jones, who has settled in a role as a music educator and community volunteer after years working as a full-time solo artist. “The kids really developed some amazing themes – resiliency, freedom, perseverance, family, community, legacy – that’s been the real scope and arc of the work,” he said.

For their part, the students largely found this 程序 to be incredibly eye-opening. The recorded Mixtape in fact captures their thoughts about what they learned (found under Kent County History – Reflections Hotline), saying, “I’ve come to value Kent County a lot more, knowing its history and what took place here, and right across 远离我的街道.” Another student reflected on the richness of what was learned, saying, “I feel like after coming here, it’s a lot deeper than what I thought it was. I realized that there’s a lot more history than what I was seeing.”

Another student reflected on her biggest takeaway, which is that history is not portrayed 事实就是如此. “失去的东西太多了，”她说. “但如果你真的…… took the time to ask people, they all had so many interesting stories to share. So many stories are lost, and that’s our fault because we weren’t recording it.”

This innovative learning 程序 is part of a larger effort to document the community’s Black history, in collaboration with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and 文化, that has drawn over $1 million in grant funding from the Mellon Foundation, the state of Maryland, and others. 这个项目持续了5年 weeks and all student interns were paid for their time. 这是第一次 what promises to be a regular summer 程序 in Chestertown.