Graham students explore their identities through hip-hop

“Who R U?” leaps out in black expo letters across the corner of a whiteboard. A semi-circle of about ten Graham Middle School students who are sitting at tables consider it, and, at the direction of Anthony Pineda, they begin writing reflections in notebooks, puzzled but focused.

Words are tossed around the room: “Student. Child. Humorous. Catholic. Alien. Man. Compassionate. Mexican-American. ADHD.”

Over the next few hours, Pineda leads the students in a lecture and discussion about identity: what it means, how they can find and build one, and how they can express it — through hip-hop.

Pineda is the founder and head of an after-school program at Graham called Creatrix Institute, which centers around hip-hop music and culture, and the positive, formative role it can have in one’s life and identity.

During a recent session, the students listened to “False Prophets” by J. Cole, “Home” by Locksmith and “The Solution” by Abstract Rude. During these meetings they are instructed to read along with and annotate the lyrics, and afterward they work as a group to discuss lines and themes of interest. Then they listen again, this time analyzing the accompanying music videos, and noting what is done well and what they dislike.

The students dissect complex themes of idolization, prejudice and self-love, among others, and connect these to their own lives and experiences.

When listening to Locksmith’s “Home” they focus on the lyric, “How come we always down play our strengths and embellish all of/our blemishes,” discussing how they sometimes find themselves similarly frustrated with insecurity and self-deprecation. One girl noted how especially prevalent the struggle of self-acceptance is in the social media age.

Pineda focuses on teaching the students about hip-hop culture and how to actively listen, analyze and connect music to their emotional states. His aim with the curriculum is to give them the tools to engage on a more meaningful and complex level with the music they consume, and eventually develop a depth of understanding such that they can create their own music with similar levels of complexity and meaning to be engaged with by others.

“The background of the program starts with my life,” Pineda said. He cites hip-hop as foundational to his identity growing up and recalled, “Growing up in some pretty sketch situations and environments family mental health issues, violence and substance abuse I turned to music really early on.” He describes music as both an outlet and an enormous passion.

While studying at the University of California, Davis, he poured this passion into research about neuropsychology and behavior as they are influenced by hip-hop, and began to realize the potential of the music and culture as a tool for other struggling kids. “I started to kind of think, there’s a correlation and there’s a connection here, and how can I tap that,” he said.

After graduating from UC Davis with a degree in social sciences, Pineda began working as an educator in Santa Clara County. It was then that the idea for Creatrix emerged. “It was born out of the personal work that me and some other educators were doing just to kind of help cope with our situations, because we worked in a non-public high school with youth who are very high-risk and gang-impacted.”

He saw an opportunity to teach kids to use hip-hop in the same ways he had learned to: as a tool to help them think through and understand issues they may be dealing with, as well as better engage and express themselves. As he worked as a consultant and educator in various public and community schools and juvenile halls, he began to solidify the Creatrix curriculum.

Because many of the students involved in Creatrix are economically disadvantaged or face other challenges, Pineda emphasizes the importance of a holistic approach. “The biggest impact has always been when the teachers are invested with me,” he said.

He works closely with teachers and administration at the school, as well as students’ parents, to help them understand the struggles some of their children are facing, and what they can do. He notes that these two combined approaches are hugely effective. “Kids are being heard so it changes the way in which they feel responsive to you. It’s a different kind of relationship,” he said.

The students have spent the last few months studying classic hip-hop culture closely in preparation to write their own music and record it in Pineda’s industry-standard mobile studio by the end of the year. Last year, the first year that Creatrix was implemented at Graham, some students recorded and produced music which they showcased at an event called “The Graham-ies.”

One such student, an eighth-grader, said that the music she wrote and recorded last year through Creatrix helped her to work through some of the family issues she was struggling with. She remembers being nervous to record — as another student said, “You sometimes eat your words, you can’t pronounce them right, you get shy, sometimes you go past the beat or you’re off-beat” — and nervous about sharing her music, but said that she is glad to have done both.

Another student whose work was displayed at the Graham-ies wrote a song detailing the frustration and loneliness she experiences as a result of her father’s struggle with alcoholism. But even through her pain, the chorus of her song is characterized by a fierce, wise optimism: “It don’t make sense./Life is good if you make it./Don’t quit/only you can make it work.”

So, what identities do these students feel they’ve built so far through Creatrix? As they put it themselves, they are “more caring,” they “think more about the future” and they “see more things.”

“We look up to the people that are there for us, caring for us, and trying to help us do better,” said one eighth-grader.

“We open up our minds to go places where we haven’t been,” said another.

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