by Joe Seamons
Missed Part I? Check it out here.
With jam sessions and concert events taking place at the Hillman City Collaboratory1* while after-school classes continued twice a week at Washington Middle School, we started to have students who had moved on to high school coming back to their middle school so that they could keep playing the music with us. Our partners at Northwest Folklife took notice, and asked if they could help fund additional offerings outside of the school setting.
This provided us with the resources needed to pilot a new program, that we entitled Unbroken Circle. In bi-monthly gatherings at various community centers, our middle and high-school aged students had the chance to meet, interview, and witness the work of local artists and culture bearers. We would always provide free snacks (at the least), but sometimes one of the students’ parents would volunteer to cook a heritage meal for these gatherings. Having food included in that way was always very special, and we would invite the parent(s) who cooked to talk to us about how the food reflected their culture.
Meanwhile, students in our program were introduced to everything from the local poetry scene, to lutherie (the construction and repair of stringed instruments), from drumming traditions of West African cultures to dance styles and movement practices. The Collaboratory was not always available to host these sessions, so we ended up making connections with organizations that were stewarding cultural space: from Washington Hall, to the Ethiopian Community Center, to Northwest Tap Connection. While bouncing around to different places made promotion and logistics more challenging, it also gave our students a more well-rounded awareness of what other parallel opportunities were out there for them.
It was April of 2018 – roughly the same time that Unbroken Circle began – that we were able to host Lady A and her trio for a concert at the Collaboratory. These fabulous local musicians were slated to play a concert at the space right after we wrapped up a jam session for our young students – the students came, but the audience for the concert was non-existent. Happily, Lady A, John Oliver III, and Paul Richardson just dove into jamming with the students. This was really inspiring for the students, and delighted everyone involved, as the footage demonstrates:
In the wake of this jam session, both Lady A and John Oliver III began mentoring the young people in the program, coaching them on their performance skills, and generally just showing up for the organization in a wide range of roles that we’ll delve into later here. In short, this was the beginning of an ongoing, ever-evolving collaboration with Lady A Productions that continues to this day. Eventually, Paul Richardson also shared his skills and perspective as a featured artist in the Unbroken Circle program.
These kinds of recurring contributions allowed The Rhapsody Project to begin growing in ways that Ben and I had never imagined. Parents begin providing recurring donations – a form of supporter that we’d eventually give it’s own name: The Rhapsody Resonators – and the City of Seattle took notice by awarding us our first Department of Neighborhoods grant. The following year, we were contacted by an innovative City employee named Matt Richter, who asked me if The Rhapsody Project would be interested in becoming an anchor organization in a new project to turn the second floor of King Street Station into a hub for youth arts.
To learn what I said in response, you’ll have to tune back in for Part III of this story!
Take part in current evolutions of these inceptive events by joining our Spring Programs or Summer, signing your kids up for Summer Camp, or becoming a Rhapsody Resonator!
- *The space where The Collaboratory existed is now stewarded by another fabulous, local non-profit, Young Women Empowered, that you should definitely check out and support! ↩︎
