The President's Corner

Welcome to the Alternative Directions Music Industry Training (ADMIT) Program's very first quarterly newsletter!  

If you haven't heard about us already, you will very soon since we are expanding at a rapid rate and touching the lives of more and more children. The ADMIT Program is special in that it uses the same hip-hop, Latin and other popular music styles that are denigrated in many circles for their lyrical content. However, instead of giving in to negative mass media stereotypes of our youth, we teach kids to gain control of their own destinies by writing and producing quality positive songs to learn from and strengthen each other.  

In addition to providing young people with recording studio experience (no music background is required), the ADMIT Program also teaches them about the many unrecognized business and technical careers and practices in the music industry. We remind young people that they are all special, and can make a difference in the lives of others. We also emphasize concepts like self determination, entrepreneurship, and social responsibility to ensure that the children know that they can begin the process of taking control over their own lives.  

This busy summer has seen the creation of the final five songs by different ADMIT Program groups sponsored by The Children's Trust to round out our first annual participant compilation CD. This 17-song CD, assisted with seed funds from Miami-Dade Commissioner Barbara Jordan, has messages from our youth about many topics that affect them and their community. It will be passed out (for free!) to over 10,000 students in Miami-Dade County over the first 2 months of the new school year.  

With assistance from Miami-Dade Department of Human Services, the Office of Community and Economic Development, and Miami-Dade Commissioner Dennis Moss, we also opened up our South Miami-Dade County recording studio and training facility in the West Perrine area. Finally, we just received support from Tavette Entertainment Group in writing a textbook to be used for the ADMIT Program and for other music programs and classrooms across the country.  

More on these accomplishments are discussed below. We encourage all of our readers to visit our website at www.theadmitprogram.org and share it with others who can help us to make a difference in the lives of our young people. Thank you for your support of this innovative and worthy program, and for your efforts to help the children of this community. Please feel free to contact us with your suggestions for improving our services and ideas for collaboration with your organization.

Sincerely,

Thomas W. Demerritte
President

We've Expanded Into South Miami-Dade County!

To compliment our well established program on the North end of Miami-Dade County, the ADMIT Program has just completed and opened its new South Miami-Dade Training and Recording Studio facility in West Perrine.

The address of the facility, which was requested and supported by District 9 Commissioner Dennis C. Moss, is at 9966 West Hibiscus Street, Perrine Florida, 33157. This studio will serve ADMIT Program participants, aspiring artists, and church choirs in the South Miami-Dade area from Florida City to South Miami.  

In addition to the latest in computerized music technology, it is equipped with a ProTools recording system, several keyboards, a digital mixing board, a complete drum set, and plenty of space to record choirs and live bands. The teaching component features several workstations where students can learn the latest in music technology and create the tracks for their positive songs.  

This month, the very first ADMIT program group to train and record at the new South Miami-Dade facility was a group of 10 middle school and high school students from the Vision Academy of Excellence in West Perrine. Their group project song, "It's Not For Me", focused on teen abstinence and featured thought provoking singing and rapping by the students, including one whose mother recently died from AIDS. A sample of their song may be heard on our website and will be included on the upcoming compilation CD.

The next ADMIT group from South Miami-Dade, that will be beginning their recording on July 31st, are youngsters from Homestead's You + Me Mentoring Program. Their song will address gun violence and feature the hidden singing, rapping and spoken word talents of the participants.  

For information about the new studio or the South Dade ADMIT Program, you may contact (305)235-7100 or (786)287-1184, or email tdlite@aol.com.

We're Serving Youth Groups Through Lifelines Consortium!

As a partner of Lifelines Consortium, which is funded through the Children's Trust's Child Violence and Youth Murder Grant, The ADMIT Program recently began providing classroom music industry and technology training, as well as recording studio training and participation to many at-risk youths from the Liberty City and Brownsville areas. As part of their ADMIT responsibilities, these young people used their group studio projects to collaborate in the completion of several positive songs to be released into the community to encourage and influence their fellow students.  

One of these songs completed earlier this month by a group from the Liberty Square summer program sponsored by the City of Miami Police Department's Police Athletic League (PAL) Program was "The Police? They're All Right". This song received considerable acclaim and was featured on a NBC-6 news article that can be seen on the home page of our website.  

Other groups completing ADMIT Training over the past three months include elementary, middle and high school students from Belafonte-Tacolcy Center's Zulu Warriors project (their positive song was "Don't Use Those Drugs"); Youth of America ("It's School Time!"); The Alternative Program ("I.C.C. It's Going Down!"); JESCA's Floyd House ("Street Blues"); 500 Role Model Academy ("My Dreams"); Hosanna Community Foundation (It's My Life"); and the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center ("Why?).  

More student groups will be served during the upcoming school term as we come up with different initiatives to reach into the minds and hearts of our youth and encourage them to be the catalysts for change.

You can sample all these songs on our website.

We're Releasing a Compilation CD and Music Video

The ADMIT Program is currently in the final stages of development of a full length CD entitled "Reach For The Heights". This CD features the positive music written and recorded as class projects by our program participants. The songs on the CD address topics such as goal attainment, youth violence, drug abuse and dealing, homelessness, crime, the war in the Middle East, the FCAT test, self-determination, school attendance and performance, and teen abstinence.  

These CDs will be distributed for free to many students in the Miami-Dade County area. This distribution was initially supported with a grant from our very first supporter, District 1 Commissioner Barbara Jordan. Other funders are also being sought to increase the level of distribution from the initial goal of 5,000 students receiving the CD to 10,000 or more. Students from Miami Carol City Senior High School's visual arts class participated in a contest to design the CD cover. The winning images will be made a part of this CD cover, which is being designed by Sam Grant.

Additionally, since our youth like star power, we are also seeking the contribution of a major artist to record a one-minute "Intro" and "Outtro" to encourage them to listen to and live by the positive lyrics presented in the songs.

Please direct this information to any artist who you think can help us with our mission of uplifting our young people and the community through the music that they create. A music video completed by students from Miami Job Corp Center and sponsored by Commissioner Jordan and The Florida Marlins Community Foundation will be used to launch and promote this CD project. This video was filmed and edited by local filmmaker Darren A. Saunders.

We're Developing Our Own Textbook!

To help in its classroom training segment, the ADMIT Program, through it's affiliate Tavette Entertainment Group, is in the final stages of writing its own textbook and workbook.   These books will follow the basic course outline in the current ADMIT Program curriculum and will introduce several new concepts and study sections.  

The books will also be made available to other school boards, governmental entities and programs around the country to advise their students and participants about the many different careers available and business strategies used in the music industry.  

The chapters of the textbook covers artist image, music promotion, marketing, studio production, management, distribution, retailing, legal concerns, and the changes brought on by the digital age of music.  

We feel that it will add a more substantial academic component to the ADMIT Program and make the Program more suitable for replication in other cities.   More information on this critical project will follow.

We have upcoming classes and training sessions scheduled!

One-month long ADMIT Program class and studio training sessions are being arranged to begin soon as after-school or in-school projects for the Overtown Youth Center and YWCA (funded through the Children's Trust PEACE Project); for Miami Edison Senior High School and the 500 Role Model Academy (through the Children's Trust Starter grant and Dade Community Foundation); for Miami-Dade's Turner Guilford- Knight Correctional facility's Juvenile Services Unit; and for the City of Miami Police Department's PAL Program, who requested sessions at many of their locations once they saw the positive results of the one provided at Liberty Square.  

Our most anticipated new service will be the beginning of an extended ADMIT training course to be provided over a 14-week period and coinciding with the school terms. This course will be provided as an after-school program at our new South Miami-Dade facility. This facility features several computer workstations and music software programs and instruments to allow groups youth to learn about the latest in music technology while also learning music business careers and practices as well as life skills and homework assistance. Facilitating the extended course will be as well as Training Assistant Rhonald Borrero, a recent graduate of Full Sail School of Musical Arts.

Stay "In Tune"

Thank you for reviewing our first newsletter, and be sure to check from time to time with our website at www.theadmitprogram.org to stay up on the latest developments. Please contact us at (305)835-8835 (North Office), (305)235-7100 (South Office), or email tdlite@aol.com to see how you can take part of this exciting initiative to empower our youth and strengthen the community through music.