Bomani Brings Hip Hop Poetry to smARTbeats on Young At Heart!
smARTbeats returns to WTMD this Saturday, July 8, during our weekly children’s music program Young At Heart. On this month’s smARTbeats segment, Young At Heart host Lisa Mathews sits down for a chat with Bomani. A seasoned performer, teaching artist, Director of Poetry Events for the Busboys and Poets restaurants, CBS Radio personality, and head audio-engineer for Urban-Intalek Studios, Bomani describes himself as a poet with a Hip Hop style.
During the segment, you’ll get a taste of Baba Bomani’s Hip Hop poetry as well as hear about his experience in the classroom as a Young Audiences teaching artist. Bomani teaches creative writing and prose through the exciting world of Hip Hop songwriting. By first creating a fearless, supportive and collaborative environment, he instructs children to use elements of creative writing including simile, metaphor, and rhyme to structure a song written in the pattern of a well-written essay. “Young people need to have freedom to develop an idea out loud without self-doubt and to not fear right or wrong answers,” Bomani says.
“One of the reasons I love group creative-writing sessions is because the conversations that go on in a group setting are the same internal conversations that go on in a writer’s head. Showing that process to young people in a physical way, where they are acting out how ideas are communicated — ‘what about this idea, what about that idea, we should take this back, we should add that in there!’ — helps them to better understand complicated topics.”
Tune in from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. as YA teaching artist and composer Bomani joins host Lisa Mathews in the studio! You can now listen to previously aired interviews on our SoundCloud page.