Howe Branch Albany Library “Mic Drop”
Our youth is our future especially in this day and age of 2019. Young people have proven that their words matter, are strong, and moving. Music is one of ways people express their feelings, the environment which is around them, their pain, happiness and fears. Since the beginning of time music been a outlet and bought people together. Does it matter - the color, religion, or race music is life - everyones life.
Morris from Howe Branch Library seen to agree. He been running the "Mic Drop" program for the last 2 years since it originally started 5 years ago at Delaware Library. Morris tells, TimesUnion - "Mic Drop" is "a place where teens can freestyle, read rhymes, perform spoken word pieces, and play with musical instruments including a guitar, keyboard, looping pedal and more."
Neighborhood kids “can be free and be themselves – and meet different people of different cultures, and talk to other people, and learn from each other. It’s very important that we have rec centers, because if they don’t have a way to express themselves, they’ll be out on the streets, moving around aimlessly,” tells Morris.
The library get about 50 kids weekly to take part in "Mic Drop" like 15 year old, Nykale Burbridge. "Like, how I feel is what I wanna put in my music,” Burbridge says. “And it makes me feel better, because I stress a lot, sometimes. I want other people to have my message.” He wants to inspire listeners – to show them how he feels, how he works to improve himself, how they can feel better, too.
“I want people to look up to me as, like, a good person,” he says.
Session starts at 3:30pm for kids of all ages with something to say. After the kids are done recording, Howe will released music on a CD, sold by the young artists and available via library loan. Early tracks are being uploaded on thenewscene.org, a community periodical covering the South End recently launched by the library and the Center for Law and Justice with funding from the NAACP.