On July 15th UNITY Charity Music Festival wrapped up with a full day of performances in the heart of Toronto at David Pecaut Square.

Celebrating 10 years of hip-hop, dance, spoken word, MC’ing, and beatbox the organizers brought together a stellar lineup headlined by Main Source who celebrated 25th year anniversary of Breaking Atoms (1991). The rest of the lineup included the likes of Large Professor, K-Cut, Mikey D, Neek The Exotic & Joe Fatal. The stage also welcomed some local rising talent such as TOBi, Los Poetas, The Sorority, Red Slam Fest. Mahlikah Awe:Ri, Jayd Ink, Lola Bunz, Ebhoni, Samba Squad Youth Troupe, Zakisha Brown, Mobi Mawla, Yannick Green, as well as Dj Mensa & Iced Misto.

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When looking at cultural genres, hip hop, historically, has a bad reputation. But bad neighbourhoods, bad attitudes and misguided glory generated by bullet marks on certain celebrities is not what it’s really all about. The culture itself emerged from bonding over music and dance in city parks where people gathered around makeshift sound systems, wired by nearby lamp posts. The wealth of the hip hop culture is what brings communities together and has proven, around the world, to be a way for many people to turn a corner or focus their life choices in a more positive way.

In Toronto one of those communities is UNITY, a charity founded by Michael Prosserman (a.k.a break dancer “Bboy Piecez”). The goal of the organization is to empower youth with confidence and skills for success through hip hop arts and began as a grade 11 project called Hip Hop Away From Violence:  “I used dance to relieve the stress and anger I had in my teenage years. After having dance really help me get through some of the toughest times in life I realized it can be a tool for other young people. This was when I decided to dedicate my life to sharing this outlet of hip hop in it’s various forms with youth.”

Hip hop has played a big part in Prosserman’s life since childhood. He began breakdancing at the age of 12 after seeing it at a bar mitzvah. The desire to learn how to breakdance lead him to take classes at Randolph studios taught by Bboy Benzo from Bag of Trix crew (BTX), which is where he met his crew, Maximum Efficiency (MEC). By the time Posserman turned 18 he had already competed across the world, “I finally felt connected to something I could call my own and that was introducing me to new cultures, ideas and perspectives.

For Prosserman hip hop is not just art, it’s a lifestyle which he has taken on full time at home and at work with UNITY. Today UNITY Charity operates in four provinces across Canada and in addition to a multitude of educational activities, runs an impressive annual festival.

While a certain stigma comes with the neighborhoods in which UNITY operates, Prosserman does not see the teens as troubled in any way: “Youth are youth, sometimes they are just surrounded by people who don’t bring out the most in them. Every person has something to offer the world and their community, but it’s about digging deep into those core strengths and bringing them out through relationships,” he continues, “UNITY is all about helping young people realize what they already had inside of them and bringing those great elements out further. We love the work we do and it’s become a tagline at UNITY – do what you love, love what you do.”

Many UNITY students have gone on to achieve great things, many of those students, according to Prosserman, have went on to work in similar fields and education programs from social work to teaching and other artistic fields. “I think our programs have also sparked an entrepreneurial bug in the young people we work with as a lot of the young people are balancing university while also still pursuing their art.”

Last year UNITY reached over 39,500 teens, trained 225 community role models and completed over 165 larger involvement projects such as keynote conferences and workshops. All of this takes funding which the organization builds through partnerships with like-minded corporations and media outlets. The high majority of funding is used towards the programs (78%) and the minimal promotion the organization does for the UNITY Festival is fully donated, which allows them to keep focus on the youth.

Both UNITY and UNITY Festival are growing quite rapidly, attracting international talent on the same stage as local youth. The next big step for UNITY is something that brings out a childlike smile on Prosserman’s face, but we’ll have to wait a few months to find out what that is.

Top image from AFH. Breakdancer image courtsey of UNITY Charity from UNITY Festival 2015. All portraits of Michael Prosserman are by Stephen Caissie for Quip Magazine. 

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Beatboxing may not be a popular culture phenomenon but it is definitely one that is very much alive and well and is a big part of the local hip hop culture. What people tend to forget is that beatboxing is a lot of work, variety which these competitors delivered is mind blowing, causing the audience at times to completely forget that the sound – all of the sound – is made, simply put, by two mouths.

The headliner, Babeli, and special guests’ performances were a showcase of skill and experience. Word of Mouf took the stage before round two for a lengthy and an intensely impressive performance during which they did not even break a sweat. USA West Coast champion and a current judge Mr. Wobbles, on the other hand, turned it up a notch before the finals laying his vocal beats over turntable sounds.

The main battle kicked of with YB & Roshe who immediately caught the room’s attention. But, as soon as Chris Celiz & Gene took the mic it was obvious who was going to win this battle. From there on things begun escalating: K-POM (Kenny Urban and Napom) brought in lyrics into their performance through a shockingly impressive appropriation of Timberlake’s “Cry me a River”. Regardless of their hard hitting beats and vocal variety,  Chris Fernandez and Andre Gibson did not stand a chance this round.

Up next were Full Throttle (Beatspawn and Enkaye) vs Outbreak 2.0 (Heat and Jaeger). Outbreak 2.0’s Ryan Buckspan later received the Tangerine’s MVP award. Heat and Jaeger definitely took the room by surprise as much as their competitors who, to level up the game, begun crowding the space of the performing beatboxers – it is, afterall, a batle. Lungz & Tungz represented Montreal playing against Fresh Boys (BBK and C Fresh), both teams delivered fast paced routines pulling in beats from drum and bass to jungle.

The highlight of second round was an impromptu totem pole by Fresh Boys, a first one for UNITY all around. Fresh Boys moved on to battle Outbreak 2.0 for the third place leading into the finals: Chris Celiz & Gene vs 2014 winners K-POM who, once again, slayed the stage winning two tickets to the American Beatbox Championships.

See full image gallery here. 

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