Electronic music-based nonprofit Give a Beat launched the Prison Electronic Music Program in two California correctional facilities in July 2019 as part of a contract awarded by California Arts Council’s Arts in Corrections (AIC) program. The goal of Give a Beat’s year-long program—which focuses on the fundamentals of DJing and beat production—is to help students develop their own sound expressions and technical acumen while also learning business development and music history. It is designed to help students return to the workforce with valuable technical, social, and entrepreneurial skills. Led by passionate DJs and music producers, currently the course is being taught at California City Correctional Facility (CAC) and Kern Valley State Prison (KVSP). This first Prison Electronic Music Program will run through June 2020. It is Give a Beat’s most expansive and long-term music production offering/course to date.

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Highways turns 30! The performance space presents Behold! Highways’ Queer Fest 2019 May–June, its annual queer performance arts festival, which appropriately collides with the enduring creative space’s 30th birthday. From May 3rd through June 30, 2019, two months of new LGBTQIA work will be presented by Highways’ extended family of artists, writers and performers such as solo-theatre legend Tim Miller (a founder and original co-artistic director), eminent artist-activist Michael Kearns, the nation’s first out transgender modern dance choreographer Sean Dorsey, and Black Lives Matter Co-founder Patrisse Cullors. Look for specific Dirty 30 anniversary events that bookend the festival (5/3, 5/4 and 6/29). Behold! will also feature such emerging performance artists and curators as Tyler Matthew Oyer, Marval A Rex, Celeste XXX, Moises Josue Michel, Kyoko Takenaka and Shruti Purkayastha. 

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Give a Beat is proud to announce A Positive Spin: Remixed, the new non-profit organization’s global launch event in Downtown Los Angeles, on Saturday, October 24, 2015. The inspirational event starts with a daytime electronic music production/DJing workshop for youth from 3:00pm to 6:00pm at Impact HUB LA. Scratch DJ Academy will provide gear and instructors for the workshop. The main event will follow, from 6:00pm to 9:00pm, featuring performances by Pleasuremaker (aka Joey McGuire) of Afrolicious with the legendary Sandra Izsadore (the Queen Mother of Afrobeat) and Gabriel ‘Gato’ Ferrer on percussion. Alex Simpson, the Associate Director of California Innocence Project, and exonerated football player Brian Banks will also make moving presentations. Moving to nearby Pattern Bar, A Positive Spin: Remixed will culminate with an after-party from 9:00pm to 2:00am, featuring DJ Garth, Wiseacre,Tamara, Sascha Lahti, and more. Read the rest of this entry »

Give a Beat is proud to announce A Positive Spin: Remixed, the new California-based 501c3 non-profit organization’s global launch event in Downtown Los Angeles, on Saturday, October 24, 2015. The inspirational event starts with a daytime electronic music production/DJing workshop for youth from 3:00pm to 6:00pm at Impact HUB LA. Scratch DJ Academy will provide gear and instructors for the workshop. The main event will follow, from 6:00pm to 9:00pm, featuring performances by Joey McGuire of Afrolicious with the legendary Sandra Izsadore and Gato on percussion. Alex Simpson, the Associate Director of California Innocence Project, and exonerated football player Brian Banks will also make presentations. Moving to nearby Pattern Bar, A Positive Spin: Remixed will culminate with an after-party from 9:00pm to 2:00am, featuring DJ Garth, Wiseacre, and more.

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As angry protestors across the country demand an end to police brutality, nationally syndicated African-American cartoonist Keith Knight has increasingly become a sought-after speaker on U.S. race relations, a frequent topic in his storytelling cartoons. Knight, the creator of three comic strips, The Knight Life, The K Chronicles, and (th)ink, is scheduled for a number of U.S. speaking engagements in 2015, including a special guest presentation on police brutality at the inaugural Black Comix Arts Festival in January and a civil rights panel discussion at the California School Library Association Conference in February. In his provocative speaking engagements, a unique blend of lecture, activism, and comedy, Knight addresses issues of race, politics, media, censorship, and the importance of social activism.  Read the rest of this entry »

Nationally syndicated African-American cartoonist Keith Knight has become a sought-after speaker on complex social and political situations through the perceptive and hilarious lens of his storytelling cartoons at college campuses, conventions, festivals, and fundraisers across the US and beyond. Knight has been tapped to tour five German universities, in November 2014, for a series of provocative comic strip slide show presentations, They Shoot Black People Don’t They?, on the topic of police brutality in the US. Knight is the creator of three comic strips, The Knight Life, The K Chronicles, and (th)ink. Read the rest of this entry »

In conjunction with Detroit’s Movement Electronic Music Festival, Give a Beat and Notes for Notes® launch Music for Music, a fundraising campaign featuring an online auction and a SubPac sponsored story sharing contest. Music for Music showcases the transformative power of music and taps into the love and energy booming within the EDM community to raise funds for the construction of a Notes for Notes’ after-school music studio at a Detroit Boys & Girls Club location. The campaign runs from Wednesday, May 14, 2014 through Thursday, June 5, 2014.

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ARTScorpsLA/ACLA Emerging Producers presents Beat the Drum‘s second annual drum festival, Beat the Drum: East Los Meets West Los, to be held on Sunday, July 15, 2012 at 8:00pm, at the Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood.  Doors open at 6:00pm for picnicking, drum technique demonstrations from South Mexican and Central American traditions, live screen printing and painting, and dancing by the Capoeira Collective in the Ford Theatre Plaza.  At 8:00pm, audience members will be ushered into the venue in a percussive, celebratory parade led by Aztec drumming.  The main event features performances by Atabey (traditional Puerto Rican Bomba), East LA Taiko (Latin, Afro-Cuban, Japanese fusion) featuring drummer Fredo Ortiz of the Beastie Boys, and CAVA (Bolero/Tropical with primal Taiko & Cajon drumming).  Joining East LA Taiko in a groundbreaking collaboration will be Lysa Flores (Alice Bag, El Vez, Jonathan Richman) who will merge her sultry vocals and feminist Chicana lyrics with the power of Japanese Taiko drums.  Tickets are $20-$40; some discounts apply*.  The event will be held at the Ford Amphitheatre located at 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Hollywood, CA 90068.  For tickets and additional information, please call 323-461-3673 (323-GO-1-FORD) or visit http://fordtheatres.org/en/events/details/id/362 and https://www.facebook.com/BeatTheDrumLA.

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