Springfield hops aboard ‘Hip-Hop Xpress’

Seventeen-year-old Kaylyn Steward and her mom, Kendalynn Jackson, were passing out campaign literature for Democratic Sangamon County State’s Attorney candidate Mike Drake Saturday on afternoon when she spotted a man in a Black Lives Matter T-shirt.

Thinking it could have been a protest, they stopped over.

But as it turns out, a different form of expression was being exercised — music.

What they came across was the Hip-Hop Xpress, a school bus that serves as a mobile recording studio, which made appearances at two Springfield locations on Saturday.

A collaboration between faculty at the University of Illinois Springfield and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the mobile recording studio is meant to give local artists a creative outlet to express “what’s going on” in their community.

For Steward, who had no prior knowledge of the event, it was a case of being at the right place at the right time. Just recently, the Lanphier High School senior wrote a song for a scholarship. She named the song, which had to be about the importance of the U.S. Constitution in her life today, “Extend Me My Rights.”

“There's a lot of backlash from people protesting and speaking up for their rights,” Steward said. “So it kind of made that song about that because it is like our right to protest and our right to freedom of speech to talk about our rights and how we feel. So we shouldn't be oppressed, or be scared to talk about something that we already deserve.”

Though she already uploaded a version to YouTube, Steward jumped at the chance to have her song be professionally recorded and produced.

“It felt unreal and very nerve-racking. I've never done anything like this before,” Steward said. “I don't really sing in front of people. I don't think I've actually sang in front of anybody really ever besides maybe at my church. But, I mean, we were just at the right place at the right time, I guess. And today was wonderful.”

Tiffani Saunders, a UIS instructor of sociology and African-American studies who helped create the bus, said the initiative is modeled after Marvin Gaye’s approach of going into the community to document what’s happening.

She said the bus is a vehicle for folks in the community to “just share whatever they've written to describe and document what's going on for them.”

On Saturday, the equipment was set up outside the bus. Though its exterior is decked out, the inside is currently empty, which Saunders said was a necessity at this point due to distancing requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But when it’s finished, the inside of the bus will be a full-fledged mobile recording studio.

“The long-term goal for the project itself is to just be a tool for community building, to be able to teach kids specifically some of the science, technology, engineering and math skills,” Saunders said. “The idea being that when the bus is completed — the inside is empty right now — the interior will become a mobile recording studio where kids will learn some of those technology skills by creating tracks themselves.”

On Saturday, the bus made stops at House of Music, 222 North Grand Ave. E., and HISO Music, 1401 S. Fifth St. Saunders said stops have already been planned in East St. Louis and Chicago. And yes, the bus will eventually return to Springfield.

Terrell Burns, a recording artist and engineer for HISO, was among those who recorded Saturday. He said it was amazing to “be able to come together and just work on music and to be able just to vibe out because music is universal.”

“I think a lot of us get confused and we're hurt because we don't know how to open up, we don't know how to express ourselves,” Burns, 21, said. “And I think we just need somebody to be their voice to express what's really going on where we come from in our communities.”

The bus was funded, in part, by a $150,000 University of Illinois System Presidential Initiative to Celebrate the Impact of the Arts and the Humanities grant. UIUC faculty members Adam Kruse, Malaika McKee and William Patterson played roles in creating the bus.

When the bus is completed, the creators plan on having it travel to communities and classrooms across the state, teaching youth about African-American history as well as cultural innovations spurred on by hip-hop through the use of music, dance, visual arts and technology.

Jackson — Steward’s mother — characterized the project as “a great opportunity” for her daughter and other young people to express themselves amid uncertain times.

“Music allows for them to be able to express their feelings, their frustrations, and of what's going on now politically, socially, and then also educationally in a safe environment,” Jackson said.

Contact Brenden Moore: bmoore@sj-r.com, twitter.com/brendenmoore13.