I have been volunteering as a music teacher at an Iowa City youth detention facility over the past two years. To be honest, I found it challenging to engage the youth. They would have loved nothing more than an hour of streaming their favorite hits. However, the facility does not allow internet access, and the music they were passionate about was not in my wheelhouse.
In comes MC Animosity, rapping to the Spotify instrumental of their favorites. Hitting the flow with his lyrics about taking a different path. Becoming the person you were meant to be. Not being defined by the path they took that landed them in detention. Freestyling with the words they shouted out, melding into the poetry he was unveiling. His presence was magical for our students.
Not your typical music education student
MC Animosity, AKA Derek Thorn, is a music education student at the University of Iowa. Derek has won the hearts and minds of his professors and fellow students at the School of Music. He is well-known in the Iowa City community as a solo performer and as a member of The Uniphonics. In mid May, he was the first music ed student to rap as part of his senior recital. Imagine–Schubert’s lieder followed by a Polo G instrumental backing up his clever rhymes!
Derek hails from Ohio. He frequently mentions the importance of his mom and pops, wife, family and friends in his freestyling. Derek ends every conversation with the most sincere wish for “peace and love”. He projects a positive and loving attitude. It’s easy to see how he brings warmth and wishes for good change into the rhymes he shares with the youth.
MC Animosity and Cece: collaborating with New Harmony Line
I owe my participation at the Youth Center to Dr. Mary Cohen, a Professor of Music Education and Professor in the School of Music at the University of Iowa. She led the Oakdale Prison Choir, “The Inside Singers”, along with community members from 2009 until 2020, when COVID closed the program. Unfortunately, after COVID restrictions ceased, the new warden would not allow the program to begin again.
As a passionate prison abolitionist, Mary found a new way to share the power of music in a local youth detention center. Her U of I students, including Derek, have participated in the weekly sessions with the youth since September of 2023. She invited me to join the group in March of 2024 with the goal of sharing an opportunity to create music using Hyperscore.
Mary begins every session with a check-in, an interactive word game to get everyone talking, and then introduces Derek. His section begins with posting his new lyrics and discussing the positive message within. Then he shares his highly anticipated reveal of a new rap with lyrics. He checks Spotify weekly. Making sure his backing beats come from a new or popular hip hop artist, Derek wins the hearts of these listeners.
When Derek learned that my contribution to the lesson was a breakout session with Hyperscore, we started to collaborate on having the youth make beats. This led to his position in the New Harmony Line team as our beat maker. His awesome prototypes are posted in the Hyperscore Classroom Community, where they are remixable and shareable.
MC Animosity and Cece: “Raps and Beats” at the Mercer Park Rec Center
In February this year, Derek and I received the good news that the Lauren Dunne Astley Memorial Fund would be giving us a mini-grant to teach rapping and beat-making with Hyperscore at a local rec center for youth aged 12-18. The fund’s board was intrigued by our proposal due to Lauren’s interest in the arts and community service. Tragically, Lauren died in 2011 at the hands of her former boyfriend, a victim of breakup violence. Since 2013, the foundation’s mission has been to “promote dynamic educational programs, particularly those in the areas of the development of healthy teen relationships, the arts, and community service.”
In April, we began our journey by teaching four sessions at a local high school. Many of the students are begging for Derek to come back.
This was quite different from our experience at the youth detention center, where the students wanted to make beats like their favorite artists but did not know how to notate the complex patterns. As we had not published Derek’s prototypes yet, most of them chose rap-making over beat-making.
In contrast, at our weekly rec center class, we found students (mainly 6th graders) who will leave the gym and gossip circles to help us remix Derek’s beat prototypes. He presents his rap with their beat mix and has even had a few students rap the chorus. A group of six friends recently stayed for 40 minutes and promised to be back.
I hope our story inspires you to introduce children and youth in your community–at school, recreation center, Boys & Girls Club, YMCA, and other youth centers–to the Hyperscore Challenge. Encourage them to share their compositions on our online gallery for International Make Music Day. Sign up here.
P.S. We hope to apply for another grant to visit middle and high schools for an artist-in-residence style project next year. We hope Derek can continue on our team, teaching youth to compose beats and flow with their awesome, positive lyrics.
Enjoy these recital pictures!
