This Program Is Reclaiming Hip-Hop As A Tool For Success

On a dilemma of Holt and Gary Avenues in downtown Pomona rises a massive, 24-thousand-square-foot cobblestone building. It once stable a assets and investments of Pomona residents, though now it serves a opposite purpose.

Spray-painted graffiti and images of hip-hop moguls adorn a walls of a former PFF Bank Trust. A life-sized bang box has transposed a teller-counter. Walls that read, “Poppin’ Lockin,’” and “Radiotron” were built from blemish to support state-of-the-art dance floors. The usually snippet left of a former bank is a steel-door protected renamed “The Hip-Hop Library.” The Hip Hop School of Arts has incited a aged bank into a new home, anticipating to make a opposite kind of investment in a city of Pomona.

Near a entrance, an ocean-blue, spray-painted picture depicts Julio ‘Lil Cesar’ Rivas mid by his signature b-boy head-spin, among images of front jockeys, rappers, and other dancers.

A hip-hop picture decorates a extraneous wall of a Hip Hop School of Arts on Garey Avenue.

Rivas founded a propagandize in 2012, opening doors for a children in Pomona, a approach Radiotron, a girl core in a MacArthur Park area of Los Angeles did for him when he changed from El Salvador during a age of 12. He sees it as a approach to chip divided during Pomona’s crime and offer a retreat from problems that mostly entangle girl in his community. His dream is to open identical centers in Los Angeles, New York and other tellurian cities.

Radiotron became a refuge for Los Angeles girl to attend in all elements of hip-hop enlightenment including graffiti, breakdancing, emceeing, and front jockeying, in Los The South Bronx is called a hearth of hip-hop enlightenment that grown among Black and Latino girl in a 1970s. Hip-hop became a apparatus of countenance for Bronx natives, and fast widespread around a country. Radiotron was a initial West Coast girl core that catered to a hip-hop generation. Despite a popularity, a core ran out of income and was demolished in 1985.

Cesar Rivas leads a one-on-one breakdancing category with one of HHSA’s youngest students.

“Everyone who used to go to Radiotron went behind to a streets,” says Rivas. “We had no other place to go. We were no longer dancing. We were only using for a lives.”

Rivas, who has danced and choreographed for hip-hop legends like Kurtis Blow and Run D.M.C., was no foreigner to a ominous behaviors that consumed a streets of his Los Angeles upbringing. After his possess run-ins with a law, he motionless a West Coast indispensable another core that could act as an educational protected breakwater for those who adore hip-hop culture.

Rivas satisfied his prophesy after a million-dollar concession from filmmaker Charlie Evans. The core functions as a volunteer-based, after-school module that offers classes on any component of hip-hop, trimming from hip-hop choreography to song prolongation and entrepreneurial classes.

Community members and tighten friends of Rivas have donated many of a technological apparatus and paintings. The owner was tender by a support he perceived from Mayor Elliot Rothman, a Chamber of Commerce and internal businesses. He pronounced that any of these organizations saw a need for a place like a Hip Hop School of Arts in a neighborhood.

Saul Ochoa, HHSA b-boy instructor, freestyle dances during b-boy practice.

Of 270 neighborhoods, Pomona ranks 59th this year on a Los Angeles Times list of deadliest areas. Rivas says that a village saw a special need for a core like a Hip Hop School of Arts, due to a high rates of harlotry and aroused crime.

In 2013, over 21 percent of Pomona residents lived next a misery line, according to a U.S. Census. Most of a students during a Hip Hop School of humanities validate as low-income. These families compensate $75 a year for total entrance to classes. Hip-hop was innate in a low-income sourroundings in a South Bronx, and Rivas and his mother do not wish finances to extent entrance to a art form.

Although a school’s grave goal is “to yield a singular technical trade module to renovate any student’s artistic appetite by commercial skills, education, superintendence and self-expression,” what is many critical for Rivas is that a immature people of Pomona have a place to learn a elements of a enlightenment that saved his life instead of being on a streets.

“When we stop entrance here and when we stop sportive or eating right, all only seems unfit again,” says Josue Martinez, 20.

Martinez is an speaker tyro during a Hip Hop School of Arts. He grew adult on Magnolia Street in El Monte, Calif., that he describes as a trailer park area ridden with squad activity. Martinez never participated in a squad enlightenment that surrounded him, though he began to examination with drug use after befriending those who did.

“I was a meth addict for like a year,” says Martinez. “I attempted cocaine, ecstasy, even LSD and those are things I’m unequivocally not unapproachable of.”

Martinez incited his life around by music. He detected a propagandize after researching places where he could demonstrate himself by rap. His instructors saw untapped intensity when they began operative with him during a center.

“All we had to do was listen to him, adore him, and caring for him, and uncover him that there is hope,” says Rivas. “We don’t tell them, ‘Stop, don’t do that,’ since afterwards we’re selecting for them.”

Mike Cook, a prolongation and outspoken instructor, saw so many intensity in Martinez that he motionless to assistance a immature speaker build a recording studio during home. When Martinez is not operative during Target, or picking his siblings adult from school, a author sits in his home studio, penning lyrics about his many perplexing moments.

Martinez achieved some of his emotionally driven lyrics on interest of a Hip Hop School of Arts in Oct during a Choices Expo in Los Angeles.

“And we don’t know what to do,” he raps. “I am mislaid as good like you, oh no, no, no.”

Every word is filled with tender emotion, as he bounces adult and down with his eyes scrunched shut. His assured appearance captures a throng as they applause along to his insinuate lyrics.

The propagandize performs 6 times around a expo, showcasing several hip-hop elements. Student Kassandra Ramirez is tough to omit as she backup dances during a opening by outspoken instructor, Ariel Sweet. Ramirez, 17, wears a smart-alecky smile as she whips her hair and delicately hits any beat. She describes herself as an introvert, though her movements tell a opposite story.

“Hip-hop is special to me since it’s kind of who we am,” she says. “It only flows with me.”

Kassandra Ramirez, 17, stretches before her b-boy category during a Hip Hop School of Arts.

Ramirez is mid by her youth year of high propagandize during a open licence propagandize down a travel from HHSA. When she is not operative towards her dance concentration, Kassandra can be seen unconditional adult a floors during a Hip Hop School of Arts in a ponytail and sneakers.

“I kind of had a severe upbringing and where I’m during right now, we don’t unequivocally feel so gentle during my home,” she says. “I find time to shun here when we can to be comfortable. we adore being in places that let me feel free.”

Ramirez considers a instructors and a students during a propagandize to be a family. This is accurately a form of attribute Rivas hoped to encourage between a instructors and a students during a school.

“The instructors that we have here, we all come from that universe so we can describe to that kid’s life,” he says. “We got a best experience, not only by a grade though also by being there. You’re going to tell me that we can’t do and perform your dreams. How is it that we did it?”

Some relatives are primarily doubtful about enrolling their children in a propagandize that focuses on hip-hop. Many have questions about a form of song and behaviors that students will be unprotected to on arrival.

“I do consider that hip-hop is misunderstood,” says Tyrone Stokes, speaker instructor. “It’s since of a approach it’s portrayed in a media and also since of a kind of song a attention is pulling since they know it will make money.”

Stokes says that misconceptions about hip-hop are a reasons because a Hip Hop School of Arts in Pomona exists. Rivas wants to move a roots of hip-hop behind to a forefront.

“Hip bound is for change, it’s to make things better,” says Rivas.

The 1970s “Hoe Avenue Peace Meeting” in New York noted a vital eventuality in a commencement of hip-hop history. Afrika Bambaataa, a mythological front manoeuvre and former squad member, was among a attendees who called for assent between area gangs and eventually pushed for self-expression around hip-hop. Rivas recalls this chronological branch point, and wishes to surprise his students of other events that served as catalysts for moments of change in hip-hop history.

“Here we go again,” says Rivas. “Hip-hop reinvents itself and we’re here, servicing a community.”

Why did swat get so big? How did b-boying make it into a movies? Who are a first fathers of hip-hop? These are all questions that Rivas addresses in a school’s curriculum.

“It’s not only training we how to swat or training we how to breakdance,” says Stokes. “It’s training we some skills that we can take after on in life even if we don’t pursue hip-hop.”

“The kids who wish to turn rappers, they have to learn English and if they don’t like that subject, well, theory what?” says Rivas. “You’re going to have a plea apropos an emcee.”

An HHSA tyro pens swat lyrics during his “emcee” category with Tyrone Stokes.

Rivas and his wife, Norma Umana, put their careers on reason in sequence to safeguard a success of a school. One of his categorical concerns is creation certain that a propagandize gets adequate appropriation to keep a lights on.

“Some people competence consider that we’re creation this good income though that’s not a case,” says Rivas.

“Shoot, we’re not removing paid,” he laughs.

The volume of time and loyalty that is compulsory to make a change in a lives of a students during a Hip Hop School of Arts does not impact a goal of a volunteers.

“We come here, we’re volunteering all of a time and we’re assisting these kids in whatever it is they want,” says Stokes. “If they need food, we’re going to buy them some food.”

Rivas and his volunteers have combined a module that inspires students like Martinez and Ramirez, by their eagerness to go above and over their goal statement. The Hip Hop School of Arts of Pomona serves as a antecedent for what is to come. Rivas would eventually like to build centers in Los Angeles, New York, and other vital cities opposite a globe. In a future, ‘Lil Cesar’ hopes to perform dream jobs for a school’s volunteers. If all goes as planned, a volunteers will eventually transition into paid, full-time instructors as a core solemnly transforms itself into a full time licence school. The core now serves about two-dozen students, with room for scarcely 1,000.

The propagandize noted a dual year anniversary on Feb 27. What has grown in a former bank building is some-more profitable than income for all of those involved.

“This is what we was designed to do,” Rivas says.

This story is partial of a partnership with USC Annenberg to try what’s operative in Los Angeles and beyond.

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/26/hip-hop-success-program_n_7344566.html?utm_hp_ref=los-angeles&ir=Los+Angeles