Hip-hop music is a cultural institution of memory. Hip Hop is fundamentally Black Work created in response to a set of conditions. This program is designed to bring about a deeper listening to the art form. Listening takes care and the desire to understand. Summa School (De)program explores Black music geographies, the ghosts we walk with, story telling, discovering relationships through sampling and reshaping narratives. To love Hip Hop is to love its people. We’re here to listen and love differently. This program for deprogramming is an invitation to connectivity while exploring the nuances in what else is being communicated beyond beats and rhymes. Review the study guide here. 

Youth Matinee: Friday, April 5, 10:30 to 11:30 AM

• Free admission & transportation to selected schools and community based organizations
• Rolling Applications
• APPLY HERE 

ABOUT THE ARTIST | DEF SOUND

Def Sound (pronouns they/them) is an Afro-Caribbean conceptual word artist born and based in South Central LA. Def is a postbinary contemporary hip-hop artist, producer, poet, and award-winning academic. Def is Grammy nominiated for their work as a producer on aja monet’s debut album ‘when the poems do what they do’. 

Def’s work as a poet has been included in Saul Williams’ Anthology CHORUS, while their music has been featured in Season 4 of ABC’s Grownish, LA WEEKLY, LA Record, The L.A. Times, The Frieze Art Fair, LACMA’s Poetry series POETRY In Color, the art exhibition The Black Index curated by Bridget Cooks, the Emmy Nominated Television series Music Diaries, and the Emmy winning Artbound on KCET. Def is currently teaching Hip Hop/Black Critical Theory at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). 

Def is a word worker whose favorite medium is memory. When speaking about their practice Def spoke, “Every truth is a dare. Let’s dare to tell it. I believe that being a writer is a daily practice of deciding to be a better person.” Def is an oil and water combination of ambition, pessimism, absurdism, criticality, optimism, and effort. 

Def’s song I BEEN made KCRW’s list for Best Songs of 2022. Def synthesizes Hip Hop, poetry, Black critical theory and storytelling into healing mechanisms decorating time and space. 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/def.sound/

Website: https://defsoundla.com/

ABOUT PORTLAND'5 DEPARTMENT OF CULTURE AND COMMUNITY

The Department of Culture and Community initiates socially, culturally, and politically-relevant programming by rooting the department and its decision-making processes within the context of social need. This is executed through two main programs: the Youth Arts Program and the Community Arts Program. Additionally, the Department stewards and champions both internal and external social equity and culture initiatives that include staff competency development, recruitment and retention efforts, organizational culture analyses and development, and the facilitation of an overall just venue/public arts environment that fosters equity within access and accessibility, representation, economic growth, safety, and public engagement. The Culture and Community team (2 FTE) works with every department at Portland'5.  

The Youth Arts Program reaches youth ranging from 5 to 25 years of age from Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties, and has engaged with over 30,000 youth since its inception. The program has expanded to serving youth in and outside traditional settings: houseless youth, youth impacted by incarceration, homeschooled youth, K-12 graders, and college students. The program centers youth holding marginalized identities: BIPOC, Queer and Trans youth, youth with disabilities, youth experiencing basic needs insecurity, and youth with mixed status.

The Community Arts Program is the newest community-based program at Portland'5. The Community Arts Program offers events, artistic opportunities, and public engagement activities that center folks holding marginalized sociocultural identities (BIPOC, Queer and Trans folks, folks with disabilities, immigrants, folks experiencing needs insecurity, etc.). The goal of the program is to provide experiences to community members that reflect their stories and narratives, while also extending such events to the community at-large, extending economic and accessible opportunities to historically marginalized communities, and utilizing a community council to help curate events and guide social equity initiatives within and across Portland'5