"Been Through It Too": Exploring community development through collaborative hip-hop creation

Abstract

This chapter examines how the creation of music using modern production techniques can offer a robust opportunity to engage African-American men in social critique and therapeutic and transformative group work Washtenaw County My Brother's Keeper is an organization in southeastern Michigan that seeks to advocate for and engage in the concerns of underprivileged men of colour. Through my experience in My Brother's Keeper and an exploration of corresponding literature, I identified a few techniques and concepts best practices that can potentially inform this practice as a response to trauma and an opportunity for dialogue and growth. Accordingly, by using hip-hop as a lens of cultural production in response to social conditions, the resulting songs and ideas can be leveraged by educators and community organizations to appraise prevalent ideas perspectives and concerns about topics like income inequality, perceptions of fatherhood, mental health treatment, and police brutality. By using a reflective narrative method to reflect on my experience as an artist, producer, and engineer during the process, Formula 734 (sound track) provided me with a foundation to explore implications for future projects and further opportunity for clinical and practical exploration.