 "Photo: Emily Kinsolving/The Daily Texan")
 "Photo: Emily Kinsolving/ The Daily Texan")
Twelve-year-old Zechariah rehearses his opening lines with enthusiasm and confidence.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the moment we’ve all been waiting for,” says the young emcee, who asked that his last name not be published for privacy reasons. He is rehearsing for the upcoming performance “The Wow.”
This is Zechariah’s second semester in Destiny By Design, one of the program offerings of Citizen Schools, a national network of after-school education programs for middle schoolers.
The goal of Destiny by Design is to provide students at Austin’s Kealing and Bedichek middle schools the chance to develop technical and artistic skills while working side-by-side with local professionals in the hip-hop industry.
“I seriously just like going to the classes ‘cause I feel so welcomed by everybody and I like exploring music,” Zechariah said. “It’s an honor to get to emcee. I thought I was going to have to compete for it when all I had to do was ask.”
The small group of students currently enrolled in DBD has been preparing all semester for its upcoming showcase May 12. The program begins with lessons in hip-hop history and works up to creating beats and writing lyrics, culminating with the showcase where the students show off their completed songs and raps.
Zechariah’s mother Kim said she is grateful to the program for helping her son hone his social, academic and musical skills.
“Since he started in the program, he is much more outgoing and is more confident as a leader,” Kim said. “It has been such a positive experience, and I’m sure in the long run it will help him develop into a good young man.”
Destiny by Design was developed by Austinites Robert Gabriel and Jules Narcisse as a source of information, inspiration and tools for young adults interested in hip-hop culture
Today, Gabriel volunteers at Bedichek, where students are creating and shopping beats to send to their favorite artists for potential samples.
Narcisse, who has a bachelor’s degree in sound engineering and is working toward her doctoral degree in behavioral disorders at UT, works with the students at Kealing, whose final products include a CD of work from the semester and a performance like the one Zechariah is preparing for.
Gabriel said what makes the program unique are the professionals that the foundation hires to come in each week to work with the kids.
“They’re getting real experts in each of these areas and getting hands-on experience we couldn’t get ourselves,” said Gabriel, an ex-hip-hop journalist for The Austin Chronicle.
“We recognize that artists get short-changed so often in the work they do. Typically artists are happy to do community service but we decided to make it a job and maybe someday we will turn this into full-time jobs.”
Local professionals include Chamillionaire’s tour DJ, Rapid Ric, and Aaron “AC” Comb.
This is Comb’s fourth semester at DBD offering his music, production knowledge and advice to the kids.
When he was 13, Combs was sent to the Texas Youth Correctional Facility for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and possession of cocaine with intent to sell, but it wasn’t until a three-hour standoff with the Austin swat team in 2007 that he really committed to a law-abiding lifestyle. Now when he sees a student acting out in class, he pulls them aside to tell his story and convince them to straighten up.
DBD is run out of the Citizen Schools locations, but the organization hopes to acquire a space within proximity of an Eastside school equipped with a sound studio, stage, industry standard equipment and their collection of 5,000 records for students to sample from and experiment with.
“It is essential that kids get supporting instruction in the arts,” Narcisse said. “We study what has traditionally been known as urban music, but more than that we are helping them understand their place in the world through art. That’s what art is about. It ties us all together.”
The Wow performance will take place in the Kealing Middle School theater. The program will begin around 5:30 p.m., and The Destiny by Design students will take the stage around 6:30 p.m.
