Tou SaiKo Lee is a spoken word artist, mentor, hip hop emcee and community organizer residing in St. Paul, Minnesota. He teams up with his grandmother Youa Chang who does the traditional Hmong art of kwv txiaj (Hmong Poetry Chanting) to form the group "Fresh Traditions." He has a passion for working with and mentoring youth at schools and community centers across the country. He is also the co-founder of "The H Project" an Arts for Social Change effort of a national music compilation CD to raise awareness about the Human Rights Violations of Hmong people in the jungles of Laos. Along with emerging Hmong teen he created the Blackbird Elements music project for In Progress to give opportunities for upcoming Hip Hop artists to represent their stories and struggles through songs. Lee received the Jerome Foundation Travel Study Grant in 2008 and is a 2009 Intermedia Arts VERVE Spoken Word grant recipient. He organizes an annual Hip Hop event that includes a huge b-boy jam in July called Boom Bap Village to coincide with the Hmong Sports tournaments . In 2008 he was featured in an online video documentary in the New York Times called "Hmong Hip Hop Heritage."
1 comment:
The collabo was inspiring. Hope to see it again live.
Post a Comment