Day4Women & All-Female Soundcloud Collaboration Album

Helloooooo! I am so sorry it is been over a week since my last post!  I have been extremely busy working on a new and exciting project that I’d like to share with you all today.  For a while now, I have been thinking about ways in which I can could combine my love for music and my love for people.  What I came up with, finally, is an event I am organizing called Day4Women to be held on December 8, 2012.  It is going to be an online campaign geared towards women.  The goal of the campaign is to inspire, inform, and involve women in helping to raise awareness of organizations that are already out there helping women in the following ways:

– Teaching job skills to women in war-torn countries

– Providing services/counseling to women who have been abused

– Providing assistance to women caught up in the sex-trafficking trade

– Providing mentoring and building confidence in women

This event is going to be my priority for the next couple of months, so you may be hearing less from me as far as the music goes. BUT…..

That brings me to the other half of this post, the all-female SoundCloud collaboration album that I am also working on at the moment.  The album is going to be with a group of talented, wonderful women on SoundCloud.  The plan is to use the album as another way of spreading the word about the struggles women face and to encourage women who are in tough situations to be strong.  The people who visit the Day4Women site on the launch date December 8, 2012 will be able to download the album to use for themselves or to give to another person if they so choose.  This album is one of the SoundCloud Heroes collaborative projects that I chose to initiate with the SoundCloud community.

So all that said, there are many things on my plate right now.  Exciting things!  And I cannot wait to share more with you as these projects progress.  Please keep checking in as I will continue to post updates here and on the Day4Women temporary blog site as well as on the Day4Women facebook page.

Take care all! Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

My first EVER poetry performance/collaboration (with Bao7891)

Helloooo! This is my new friend Bao. He is an artist, musician, poet, and all around creative kinda guy. He contacted me about doing a collaboration and I had wanted to try something new, something different. So, we came up with the idea to do a spoken word/poetry collaboration that shared a love story from the perspectives of both the guy and girl.

So, he wrote a poem, sent it to me and I responded. Then, we decided to extend it and turn it into a 3-part story. Then, finally, we decided to add music. This is the very first time either of has have “performed” our poetry or have done a poetry collaboration. So, very risky, but what is life without risks? No matter how it is received, we both agree that we love the outcome and that we have stretched and grown from this experience. So, that’s what matters, right?:) Anyway, hope you enjoy it. And please check out his other stuff on his Soundcloud account too ( he has some music and other spoken word on there).

Enjoy and have a great Thursday!

ALSO!!! If you want to get involved in this month’s SoundCloud Community collaboration themed project put out by the SoundCloud Heroes, please go to this link to get all the details….there is still time to participate!

Feature Friday: Abramz Tekya

Helloooooo! Hope everyone is having a lovely start to the Labor Day weekend!  So, as promised, today is Feature Friday.  This time it is a guy from Uganda by the name of Abramz (doesn’t his smile say so much about him already?).  He is not just a rapper.  In fact, there are many hats that he wears.  He is a b-boy/breakdancer, community organizer, motivational speaker, and an all around agent for social change.  He is all about educating, empowering, inspiring, and doing it in a way that still has entertainment value.

That is why I decided to choose him for this week’s featured artist.  He gets it.  He sees that music and words can be used as a tool to “move mountains”.  Some people are putting stuff out there into the atmosphere that is just noise.  It is a completely self-indulgent endeavor for them.  But, more and more I have been coming across people like Abramz – a new breed of artist.  This new breed sees the world the same way my hero, Martin Luther King Jr., saw it.  Mr. King said, “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”  We are not real human beings, we are not real artists, if we are only breathing and creating for our own sake.  That is such a small and meaningless existence.  Before, we might have gotten away with that, felt ok about it.  But now, with the immediate access to images and news from across the globe about the condition of humanity, we can no longer turn a blind eye.  If we do, we do so at the cost of our own soul.  So, I send a BIG cheers to Abramz and others like him who have stepped up to the plate!

I could say a lot more about Abramz and his work, but, I think it is best for him to speak for himself.  Here is a video of an interview he did.

Also, he has a wonderful website with more information about his life, his work, and his music.  Please, I encourage you to check it out and see if there might be a way to show your support or at least give a word of encouragement to him so that he might not lose momentum towards doing good things in this world.  Also, check out his music on SoundCloud.  It is in another language (Bantu, I believe), but you don’t need to understand the language to feel the music.

Currently, Abramz is head of an organization called Breakdance Project Uganda (BPU) that uses breakdancing to promote social change (this was the organization mentioned in the video above).  Also, he is working on a collaboration album with two other rap artists (one of them is a fellow SoundCloud Hero named Ben Z) that I have been asked to contribute to.  It is going to be used for the purpose of inspiring  and motivating youth.  It is in the very early stages right now, but, as the project progresses, I will definitely post updates on it.  So, be on the look out!

That is all for today! Give Abramz a shout out, show your support, and may his work inspire you to think about how you can use your talents to promote change!