Using talents to capture talents

By Kensei Tsubata

On the weekend of March 23rd-25th, Dan Burton, George Burton, and myself went to NJ for the weekend for the Free Teens 4th Annual Media Summit. We went to assist Diego Costa and Kurt Garrison of CultureMachine in recording the positive songs, spoken word, and music of youth attending. Free Teens USA, which provides character education and HIV/AIDS & STD prevention education, has a weekend workshop that has expert, yet caring adults and older youth hold workshops and creative sessions of video, art, dance, music, drama, to teach empower Free Teens from all over the US & Puerto Rico to positively affect the media.

 

 

This year, Uncle Diego wanted us to be part of his section of music recording. We were excited to be heading up a whole recording music system, since Dan and I only last year was learning from them at the summit. So, we packed equipment and materials departed on friday afternoon. After 7 hours of heavy rain, traffic, and missed highway exits, we arrived at the cabins of the beautiful fairview lake YMCA camp in Newton, NJ, at around 1:30am, exhausted but grateful of being well taken care of in bed arrangements.

 

 

 

On Saturday morning, after having arrived late in the night and eaten a hearty breakfast early morning, we helped Diego setup for his presentation for the informational group breakout sessions of the meaning of music and the power of using it to promote positive change. He gave a very candid and personal story of his realization and affirmation of abstinence, service, and development of talents to help others in his life. He explained Culture Machine and WAIT as the embodiment of those ideals and introduced Dan, George, and myself as youth really using our talents for this purpose.

 

 

 

That afternoon, we held the first recording session. Uncle Diego and Uncle Kurt helped us start out in the familiar yet different audio program on the laptop with which we were recording, and we started miking and capturing the magic. We had great talent come to record songs that they either had just created in a songwriting session, or songs that they have been performing and making music videos with. We had a Free Teens partner group from Puerto Rico, “Street Dancers” come to record a popular song to a positive rewritten lyrics. We also recorded original Songs from NJ Free Teens, “Reach”, and “Sweet Abstinence”, to name a few. Another highlight was the music recording staff even recorded a blues music act, except with a positive twist of optimism, hence we coined the term “singing the yellows”. With Uncle Kurt on lead guitar, Uncle Diego on bass, George Burton on a wailin’ harmonica, Karina Carmichael(of NJ WAIT) on vocals, and myself on beatbox, we had a really good jam.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That evening, all of the participant of the weekend gathered after dinner for the “open mic night”, to share our talents. Quite a few WAIT team members from New Jersey WAIT and Jacksonville, FL WAIT attended the media summit, so together we shared several acts to the participants, We stared out with the energetic Hip Hop song “Wait For Me”,which Alex D. of FL WAIT, Eunhwa M. and Karina C. of NJ WAIT, and myself sang the verses while the whole team, not to mention the hyped up crowd, sang the chorus. With a relatively small amount of people and little WAIT equipment, we managed to perform “Rose” excellently, without fans and only two dancers out of the usual four! We wrapped up our performance with the open and inviting act “You Can’t Hurry Love”. Audience members creatively joined us in coming on stage. We had drum line instruments, powerful hiphop dance, and even a Brazilian-martial-art Capoeira duo come up to join in the freestyle finale. The night’s acts continued with continued high energy, and overall, virtually every participant performed in an act, and the amount of power and meaning from each act, be it spoken word, dance, music, or singing, was really empowering and hopeful.

 

 

 

After some attended a Sunday service and we ate breakfast, we continued our music recording sessions. By this time, Dan, George, and I had been flying solo as a recording team, with the miking, mixing and capturing tasks of making the music had been totally entrusted to us, since Uncle Kurt and Uncle Diego had split up to take all the number of youth requests to record their music. It was challenging but really great working with the youth to make each song. Trife, a hiphop artist from NY, helped the songwriting aspect of the summit, and we worked with him to create the desired sound and message “Love Myself”, and “Reach”.

 

 

 

We had a short lunch and then started the final working on the final touches of the recordings, as all the creative media sessions of the various fields were going to present their creations at the end of the summit that afternoon. We worked on the songs, and in a rushed haste we mixed, equalized, and got the fresh songs on a ready to go in a presentable form to show to all of the 70 some-odd Free Teens youth and staff.

 

 

 

It would’ve been a grea t to tell you how the event ends, but we had to leave early to get on the road back to DC. Nevertheless, I can say that I learned so much, as I am planning to be an Audio Engineer, on behalf of Dan and George Burton and DC WAIT, Thank Free Teens, Culturemachine, NJ WAIT, and FL WAIT for working hard to make real, meaningful media and a positive future for all of us. Check out the songs, music, video, and pictures created we created on:

 

http://www.culturemachine.com

 

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