UW-Madison freshman Adam Levin is familiar with the difficulties of educating people about hip-hop, especially on a predominantly white college campus.

Using the term "hip-hop theater" is particularly confusing to audiences who are unfamiliar with the elements of the genre.

"People think we're rapping Shakespeare," he said.

Starting in fall 2007, university administrators, teachers and organizers have teamed up with a diverse group of students to create a program that is the first of its kind.

The First Wave Spoken Word and Urban Arts Learning Community is made up of 15 students, including Levin, who combine the interactive form of poetry known as spoken word with dance, visual art and theater to inspire other young people throughout the U.S.While they live and take classes together, First Wave creates performance pieces that address issues of growing up, fitting in and dealing with the difficulties of life, which they then present to middle school and high school students around Wisconsin.

The program is administered by UW-Madison's Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives (OMAI), a unit of the university's School of Education.

"It's the first college program in the country that uses spoken word and hip-hop art as a tool for outreach, for campus retention, and for youth empowerment," according to Josh Healey, OMAI's program director.

Willie Ney, the executive director of OMAI, traced the roots of spoken word back to the African oral tradition of storytelling, but said that a more contemporary branch came out of the black arts movement in the 1960s with the work of Amiri Baraka and Gil Scott-Heron.

The contemporary youth movement, Ney said, was established in 1996 with the formation of Youth Speaks, a nonprofit presenter of spoken word performance and education in San Francisco.

"Spoken word is everything that you learned in class about poetry, just made modern and done with energy," said Danez Smith, a member of First Wave.

SEEKING PARTICIPANTS

Healey recruited First Wave students from schools and spoken word competitions in the Midwest as well as the East Coast before they entered the university last fall. Their applications to First Wave were separate from those to the university, according to Hardin Coleman, associate dean in the School of Education.

The students live together in Witte Residence Hall's Multicultural Learning Community, said Healey; they take classes together, too.

"It really provided me with a great community for coming into this huge school," said Kelsey Van Ert, First Wave's only sophomore.

Chris Walker, the ensemble's artistic director, is co-teaching what he calls a "multi-disciplinary arts workshop." His class combines dance, theater, and vocal elements to help the students create performance pieces that expand upon each person's individual strengths.

The result is a production of "hip-hop theater" that brings together every student's unique talent and background, Walker said. The ultimate goal of a performance is to tell a story that resonates with the students' generation using everyone's individual voice.

Walker believes this is something that has not yet been explored in the academic world.

"We depend on what we grew up hearing and what we grew up reading," he said. "Hip-hop breaks that down altogether. It's about creating new ways to express yourself."

Walker gives credit to last year's artist in residence, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, for helping to initiate the program. In the spring semester of 2007, Joseph facilitated discussions about the meanings of hip-hop.

Levin said the group takes pride in counteracting the stereotypes that are associated with mainstream hip-hop, like the image of the unintelligent "thug."

"The main goal of hip-hop is to raise awareness about the situations of people who are struggling in this country," Levin said.

PLANS FOR OUTREACH

First Wave has already visited many middle and high schools, mostly in Madison but elsewhere in the state, where members will assist younger students with writing and performing in hopes of encouraging better attendance and grades at school.

Healey said this outreach is beneficial because it shows students that they can do what they love and still attend college.

Additionally, Healey said First Wave will visit juvenile detention centers and use writing and spoken word to help incarcerated youth tell their personal stories.

Van Ert said she usually discusses a variety of subject matter in her poetry, including youth suicide, and alcohol and drug addiction.

"My assignment this year was to have a tough issue, but to make it funny," Van Ert said about her piece on body image.

Levin said he writes a lot about his experiences as a hip-hop artist in a predominantly white suburb of Chicago.

He hopes to improve his writing abilities, as well as become more comfortable with his body while performing on stage.

First Wave has already traveled coast to coast to share their poetry and performance skills with students from other schools and Healey said they will continue to be busy with events for the remainder of the school year (see sidebar).

During the next school year, Ney said this inaugural First Wave group will continue to tour and perform in addition to recruitment outreach as another group of freshmen enters this four-year program.

Ney is looking into study abroad options in places such as Panama, South Africa and Jamaica for the group's junior year, and upon graduation, the students will receive a certificate for the First Wave program in addition to their chosen majors.

According to Ney, the program is "a pioneering art form in American life" even though he believes it hasn't been given the credit it is due. The multicultural nature of First Wave will encourage students to join the program, Ney said, and it will continue to grow and to represent the diverse nature of the nation as a whole.\ \SPREADING THE WORD

This year, First Wave is one of 15 projects being funded by a grant from the 2008 Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Idea Endowment.

According to Peyton Smith, assistant vice chancellor for campus outreach, projects selected to receive the grant are meant to extend beyond campus and share the University's resources with people around the state and further.

Smith said one strong objective of First Wave's work will take place in middle schools and high schools mostly in the Madison and Milwaukee areas.

- Devin Rose

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