July 31
The Top Five Featuring Benjamin Alfaro
Welcome to the Top Five.
It’s Monday and that means it’s back to business. If you’re looking for inspiration, we got you covered. Every Monday, we invite some of our favorite artists to share five links that inspire them. Tune in to find new music, poems, and more.
Today, we have Benjamin Alfaro sharing his Top Five.
Check out Detroit icon Waajeed’s 2012 video series called Bling47 Breaks. This series asks close colleagues of J Dilla to discuss specific samples used on popular records. One part hip-hop history, one part crate digging, and a whole lot of personal stories abound. Here’s the breakdown for “The Look of Love” from Fan-Tas-Tic, Vol. 1.
Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King, and Ray Jackson were the starting lineup for the 1991 University of Michigan basketball team. They were all freshmen and true originators. This video shows a taste of how they became the catalysts they did in sports culture.
Speaking of Jeedo, he’s one of the members of Complex Movements – an artist collective supporting the transformation of communities by exploring the connections of complex science and social justice movements through multimedia interactive performance work.
Assemble Sound is a collaborative arts space repurposed from a vacant church and sitting directly underneath the giant abandoned train station in Detroit. With multiple public-use studios and performance space, Assemble also offers licensing services, music supervision, brand partnerships, and script consultation.
The brainchild of poet and activist Natasha T. Miller, Artists Inn is a hotel for artists from around the world that exchanges community involvement for reduced lodging rates. Think Soho House meets Boys & Girls Club. Keep an eye out for big news around this project in the coming months.
Benjamin Alfaro Bio
Benjamin Alfaro is a writer and educator from Detroit. He is the co-author of Home Court (Red Beard Press, 2014). His writing has appeared in The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, Union Station Magazine, Acentos Review, Freeze Ray Poetry, Red Cedar Review, and elsewhere. He was a featured artist on the HBO Original Series Brave New Voices (2009) and has performed, lectured, and led workshops across the United States. Benjamin has been a teaching artist with InsideOut Literary Arts since 2008, where he is serves as the Youth Leadership Coordinator.
