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Raging bulls at the 08 Teen Media Summit, a report from the trenches by Jamal Johnson
At Free Teens Media Summit this year, I had two duties, recording engineer and song writing assistant. In the song-writing workshop, I was working under Trife, a talented songwriter/educator from New York, who was explaining the various theories of good song writing, using literary devices and other techniques to make songs more interesting. A remarkable thing happened when our group discussion was joined by Kurt Garrison and Diego Costa. With a few flicks of the participating tongues, the room was transformed into a highly inspired discussion. Trife representing technique, Diego representing power and potential of music to unite humanity, and myself representing the communication made possible through music. Students’ minds were set on fire to the purpose and importance of what they were there to do.
We got to work on two fresh beats prepped by Trife that eventually became the songs “Aint Goin Out Like That” and “Wait For Me”. Utilizing the talent of the participants we were able to record two previously written songs “Krak’n Chick” and “A Peace Song” by students from Puerto Rico.
 Then Dame Grease, a nationally-known music producer who works with major rap artists around the country, came into our improvised studio and dropped a beat on us giving us permission to develop it into a song. So we started a project called “Precious Enough”. Over the course of the afternoon we developed the lyrics interspersed using the pockets of time between the production of other songs that were written earlier in the weekend
Then things got out of hand in the most incredible way! I started whipping out some beats from my library that started another round of songwriting. The songs written and produced during that round were “My future” with help from Monte Grayson and “Change the World” based on the guidance of Trife, myself and George Kazakos.Needless to say, the driving force in all of this was the passion of the teen participants. The truth is they wrote songs that we did not have time to record. But everyone could attest to the fact that the songs kept getting better and better, and then it all came to an end. So you can imagine what their thoughts on next year will be as Teen media summit 09 approaches. Anyone reading this article should keep in mind that this year we all were a witness to what was possible, to create music that has a mainstream sound and a powerful lovesmart message.
 I believe that the group assembled at this year’s song writing workshop was comprised of all-stars. Many of them lost there voices and still kept going. It was carnage. You could say they were “Lit from the git” (i.e. excited from the start). If the skills of Trife, Diego, Kurt, George and myself were fish, then the songwriting workshop was like being in a barrel with 12 kids aiming at you. It was a rodeo like “ride that producer” “ride em hard”.
I was so happy that they could enjoy themselves that much, and have their way, and all for the cause of making their contribution to the new media culture. So in short… how was the media summit? I’ve got one word. WHEW!
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