Wayne Marshall ... I recommend that some kind of digital music training center and workshop be set up in Jamaica.

Makonnen Blake Hannah recently returned from a trip to Boston, USA. He was accompanied to Jamaica by Wayne Marshall, a Boston-based American electronic music creator who spent the early summer this year teaching kids, young adults, and staff members in Roxbury, MA community centres how to make music on computers. Using a user-friendly but powerful programme that allows users to create and arrange music loops, participants in the programme composed original songs in styles ranging from hip-hop to dancehall, reggae to pop and R&B. TeenAge spoke with Makonnen and Wayne last week.

Ques: What was Makonnen doing in Boston?

Makonnen (left) and Wayne at the Observer last week.

WAYNE: From August 4 through 9, Makonnen spent the week in Boston, MA as a guest of the Berkman Centre for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School at the invitation of HLS Professor Charles Nesson. His participation was funded by his prize-winning study grant from the website design competition ThinkQuest. Makonnen had several goals for his trip: 1) to observe and participate in a session of the digital music class I have been conducting; 2) to learn an important Cisco networking programming task; 3) to scout out the city with a future, larger trip in mind; and 4) to collaborate musically with me. Makonnen was visiting to share his dancehall and hip-hop tricks, learn more about the programme himself, and think about ways to create a curriculum that could be used in Jamaica.

Ques: What is so special about digital music?

Fruity Loops is one loop and song creation tool on the Internet.

WAYNE: Music has a unique and intensely attractive quality, but it is too often mystified as a realm of the preordained. Music-playing technologies have had a democratising and inviting effect on everyday music-making since reggae and hip-hop DJs began reorganising the musical materials at their disposal. Digital technologies, such as computers, magnify the degree of creative control one has over the music. And computers put much more at the tips of people's fingers than music. By drawing users into the computing environment, music can serve as another means of bridging the digital divide.

MAKONNEN: Creating music on the computer is a fascinating way to learn more and gain more insight into information technology. The way that we are presenting it to the students in a hands-on fashion, giving them things that are fun and easy to do, makes it easy to learn to make music. I did some of my growing up in my uncle's music studio and I've been making music with the computer for some time now. I have a lot of music in me, just like many other Jamaicans, so the computer gives me a chance to express myself musically without having to have a big studio and hire musicians. Since the last CME I've begun taking my music seriously. I and four friends have formed a music production and performing group, MultiCast. Listen up for us. MultiCast a di real-est.

WAYNE: With digital music production, people can not only work together when building rhythms and melodies but can remix each other's work, engaging in the time-honoured Jamaican tradition of 'version'-ing. Musical materials become a creative commons for riffing on reality and imagining beyond it. The World Wide Web presents a perfect space for facilitating collaboration across stylistic differences, national boundaries, and prison walls.

Ques: What was it like teaching students in Boston?

MAKONNEN: The sessions with students were very interesting. It was enriching to see how fast some of the students caught on to the hands-on curriculum. We taught them to use interesting methods like the placement of beats, helping them to use their ears to figure out what sounds worked and what didn't. We used a programme called Fruity Loops to show them that it's easy to catch on to because there is a system to it and once you understand the system of creating beats with Fruity Loops, it gets easier every time you try.

We went to three different centres in Roxbury, which is a part of Boston and worked with kids there. The youngest was 10 and the oldest were in their late teens. Most were Black and Puerto Rican youths. They were really cool and fun to be with. I made a few friends.

Ques: What else did you do in Boston?

MAKONNEN: Boston is a really nice place, especially in summer. This was my third visit and Wayne made sure I had some fun, went to a party and hung out by the river at night. But I also did some work on my own education. One of my objectives was to advance my knowledge of the Cisco networking curriculum that I started earlier this year. I was doing fine. My weekly test marks were sometimes 100 and never less then 89, but I couldn't sit the final test of the first semester because the teacher had not been able to make me understand how to 'subnet', an important part of networking. In Boston, Prof Nesson arranged for me to meet one of the technology centre instructors, Garfield, who showed me in just 15 minutes how to resolve subnet masks! Now I'm ready for the test!

Ques: What is Wayne doing in Jamaica now?

WAYNE: I am spending a month in Jamaica working with Makonnen to further develop a digital music production curriculum and to hold a demonstration of the digital music programme that the Berkman Centre will be conducting in the prisons. We are making arrangements to conduct a session of the digital music class for interested young music producers. At the same time, I am conducting research for a doctoral dissertation on the interplay of hip-hop and dancehall in Jamaica and the way that music is intertwined in transnational social, economic, and political workings.

Ques: How is it that you are interested in hip-hop and dancehall music?

WAYNE: I grew up listening to hip-hop and I've been producing and performing it for many years. More recently, I've been studying it as a social phenomenon. Hip-hop is the most popular music in the US now, and its cultural prominence and musical power bring out interesting things about race and society in the United States. I find dancehall similar to American hip-hop music in many ways. It is also connected to social issues-different ones of course, though they share many as well. Hip-hop and dancehall seem to have a very symbiotic relationship. There has been a lot of interaction between them in the last 30 years, and I think that studying the present moment of intense interplay can reveal much about the complex relationship between the US and Jamaica.

MAKONNEN: Wayne is also working with me and my music group MultiCast Entertainment, co-producing a number of tracks with our artistes. We began a very fruitful musical partnership during my visit to Boston. I also took notes for planning a return trip later this year. On that trip we hope to be accompanied by Maurice Thomas, one of the Jamaican trainers for the Berkman prison education programme, 'Scrum Dilly' of the MultiCast crew, and two other young Jamaicans who won gold at the Junior Games.

WAYNE: Makonnen and I expect to have much more to share after this month in Jamaica, and throughout the next year. We will be working with Professor Nesson to set up more digital music programmes in Kingston to serve area youths, as well as inmates in Kingston's prisons. Participants will expand their ability to craft their own stories and share them with each other, their loved ones and the world. The programme will be one that stresses interaction and collaboration, bridging divides, and enabling people to work collectively and creatively, online, with others.

Ques: Do you both have any ideas or recommendations for Professor Nesson and Minister Paulwell?

MAKONNEN: That a digital music workshop for young producers be organised in Kingston. We have already made this suggestion to the minister. He approves and is contacting the head of JAMPRO and HEART to get them involved. Earlier this year the minister of state for Industry, Commerce & Technology (Senator Assamba) announced that the Ministry would sponsor 100 young musical artistes to learn more about music as apprentices to older musicians. This could be part of this 'project'.

WAYNE: That some kind of digital music training centre and workshop be set up in Jamaica operating on a permanent basis, with an eye toward serving the prison population as well as area youth. I'm sure Professor Nesson and the Berkman Center will continue to support what we have started.

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