Thousands of people pack an auditorium and the room is silent. There are performers on stage and everyone is hanging on to their every word. Three of the audience members consist of famous actors like Alec Baldwin, Alfre Woodard, and A Tribe Called Quests Ali Shaheed Mohammad. They are there to show their support for these amazing artists. The performers finish and the crowd goes wild. This is not a Broadway show or concert of famous comedians. No. This is the world’s largest youth poetry slam and it’s called Louder Than A Bomb. The show attracts a diverse cross section of Chicago's Youth with something to say. They may be talking about their hood, their hair, or their struggle and I can guarantee you, at that very moment, everyone is listening. Then unexpectedly Alec Baldwin takes the stage and starts rapping with hip hop artist Chance the Rapper. Who would have ever thought to put this combo on stage together? But that’s what Young Chicago Authors and Louder Than A Bomb was designed to do; bring people together so that they can hear stories and performances from around the way. Personal stories that only the person telling them can share from their perspective. The concept is working, because people are starting to listen…to our youth.
The Founder
Imagine growing up in the suburbs of Chicago back in the late 90’s and discovering hip hop music that took over your intellectual capacity and ignited your desire to learn, read and write. Imagine taking the train to the city and navigating your way through unfamiliar territory just to find that type of music before it was readily available on Yo! MTV Raps and MP3 downloads. Imagine during that era hanging out at underground house parties on the south side and beat boy jams on the west side of the city. Now imagine no one else in the room looks like you, but you’re not phased because your love for the music doesn’t allow you to care. That was Kevin Coval’s experience, as a Jewish white kid turned hip hop poet that listened to hip hop music every single day. Now Mr. Coval is Artistic Director at Young Chicago Authors (YCA) and co-founder of Louder Than A Bomb (LTAB).
Kevin was introduced to Young Chicago Authors during tone particular summer in the Windy City. He was already teaching at alternative high schools in Chicago and was asked to do the same at Young Chicago Authors. Its mission is to transform the lives of young people by cultivating their voices through writing, publication, and performance education. Hanging out at radically inclusive parties as a late teenager gave him a vision of how he hoped cultural space would be and a blueprint for what he imagined it to be going forward. He grew up going to house parties and hip hop sets interacting with people that pretty much mirrored people in the city. “I was pretty much always that white kid, which I wore like a shield of honor. I was proud of that. But I also wanted to recreate some of what I felt at those house parties. As I got more entrenched in traditional poetry communities, I was always sickened by its elitism, racism and white supremacy of what they thought poetry was,” stressed Coval.