Learning Action Beat Buffet
The Learning Action Beat Buffet (LABB) engages creative individuals who have an interest in beat-making and hip-hop arts, arts entrepreneurship, and individual and communal healing.
The LABB program is a series of 11 beat creation and performance sessions for borderland youth ages 15-25 years old.
Sessions are guided and supported by local and national beat producers and will focus on reviewing the history and culture of contemporary beat-making, tracing beat-making’s connection to traditional drumming techniques, and engaging beatmaking as a healing tool.
Equipment and snacks are provided for our students, and participants must commit to attend, at most, 1-2 sessions per month for the program period.
Outsourcing
Go on field trips to discover local beat-making resources & artists.
Beat Making
Receive hands-on instruction and practice on beat hardware in a supportive and focused environment.
Learn the history of drumming and beat making for healing and community building.
The Past.
The Present.
Presentations from local and national Beat Makers & Community presentations.
Our students learn...
The Team
A. Billi Free - a multi-hyphenate music artist and community organizer of Black and Samoan heritage. Surrounded by gospel, soul and R&B in her youth with a background in choral chamber music and musical theater, she discovered hip hop and jazz as a teenager working at her local music store. A. Billi Free has spent the last decade on the desert frontier of southern New Mexico, west Texas and northern Mexico fusing elements of both the city and the border into her sound and work via live performances, musical collaborations, international cross-cultural arts diplomacy and community advocacy.
T. Cruz - Antonio Cruz is a first-generation Mexican American Music Producer/lyricist from Las Cruces, NM. Raised by a mother who is an activist/community leader. Has taken part in social justice work since a young age which has led him to continue that kind of work as a Youth Mentor, Video Editor, and Radio Hour Producer for the Learning Action Buffet.
