A Celebration of Culture: Hip-Hop Canvas black history event at Ciné
As a celebration for Black History Month ATHfactor Liberty Entertainment hosted a hip-hop canvas at local movie house Ciné. To celebrate Black art and excellence, local Black creatives gathered on Feb. 8 to perform poetry, step, music and live painting.
“I tried to have it really diverse, even within the Black community, to try and show something different that people don’t normally see,” Cedar Shoals teacher and Chief of Operations (COO) of AthFactor Montu Miller said. “We had a little bit of everything.”
Much of Miller’s work focuses on encouraging artists to seek out venues that will host them, but also venues to seek out a more diverse range of performers. He wants to create platforms for emerging artists to push for momentum with their careers.
“I’m very grateful for spaces like these, for people like Montu and the organizers of this show, who give space for Black voices and for Black artists. We’re uplifting the voices that are already there but we’re also illuminating and giving space to new voices,” Athens Poet Laureate Mikhayla Robinson-Smith said.
Robinson-Smith performed poems about Black love, her experience with God, the church and hip-hop. Robinson-Smith seeks to show off her pride in being Black and the collective beauty and strength that people display.
“People like J Dilla, Sean Seal and Paul Quest really introduced me to the power of words and music and how to like to play with sound and words, but also how to tell a mess or story and to send a powerful message through lyricism,” Robinson-Smith said.
Jeremy Mango, a member of Athens based step team The League of Step, and senior at Cedar Shoals joined the team after trying out at Hilsman Middle School. He now has opportunities to perform for events like the hip-hop canvas. As he finishes high school, Mango looks forward to taking on a coaching position and aims to compete nationally one day.
“If you want to try something new, you just gotta try it. Don’t be afraid of it. It’s just like any other sport,” Mango said.
One of the first performers, recording artist Frank the Eagle, first got into the musical community as a part of the Cedar Shoals band playing percussion. He later signed with Atlantic Records where he composed for artists like Young Thug and Frank Ocean, now working with an Athens record label, Tribe House Records.
“When I got into music, I thought the first thing I had to do was leave Athens, but now I’ve come back to help people get into the industry and get their music out,” Frank said. “I came to perform tonight because I love Athens, I love music, and I really do it for people who didn’t have access or didn’t have the things that I had.”
Growing up in Minneapolis, Miller was surrounded by a tight-knit and supportive community centered around black culture and hip-hop. Miller wants to cultivate that same sense of community that he grew up with in Athens.
“I wanted to be in and have created a really welcoming audience to look at to the point when you look out you see young, Black, white, all kinds of different socioeconomic levels. That’s what you would call a real community,” Miller said.
