Sound engineering program offers hope to at-risk youths: ‘I had many male band directors who were like second dads’

At a warehouse in Irving Park, a group of teenage boys and young men between the ages of 14 and 20 sat on couches in a recording studio Wednesday afternoon, taking turns freestyling over a loud beat that bounced off the walls of the glowing room.

Music producer and sound engineer Johnny Rayborn maneuvered the settings on his soundboard at the front, looping beats and cutting segments of audio.

When Zell, 16, spoke through the microphone in a closed recording room next to the studio, the other teens and young men looked at each other with wide eyes.

“That’s hot!” someone called out.

The group is part of Acclivus Inc., a community organization that provides violence intervention programs to help people in Chicago’s most vulnerable neighborhoods. The organization started a new small youth cohort in its sound engineering program Monday. The group met for a second time in a recording studio in Fort Knox Studios.

Program director Xavier Williams seeks to engage some of the most at-risk teens around the city of Chicago, he said. He recruits youths for his program from alternative schools and juvenile detention centers.

The program has been in operation for about three years, with three cohorts each year. It has reached about 50 young teens and men, Williams said.

He knows what it is like to be in the pipeline for prison, and believes in the transformational power of culturally aligned intervention techniques, specifically for those with high truancy rates.

At 54, Williams said educational classes kept him sane through the over 20 years he spent in prison.

He went to a juvenile detention center when he was just 15, was transferred to an adult facility at 17 and formally left prison when he was 36, he said. At his worst, he said, his own mother was terrified of him.

Now, he works with boys and men between the ages of 16 and 24 at exactly the same stage of life he was in when he entered prison. His program is a sub-grantee under Acclivus Inc., which is funded by the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority.

Williams has a 9-year-old daughter, but he said the men who participate in the program are his second responsibility. They call him frequently, confide in him and lean on him.

“I try to engage with them,” Williams said. “I say to them, ‘Hey, man. I’ve done this. Yeah, I’m old now. I want this to be you, but there are a lot of prisons waiting for you out there.’”

Williams lit up when he described the man who mentored him right after he was released from prison.

“He was consistent. He came into the jail and he was trying to really teach us. You could tell,” he said.

Williams said he seeks to emulate that consistency for the teens and young men he works with every day. They are on a steady schedule at Fort Knox. They spend two hours in a classroom learning tangible sound engineering techniques and familiarizing themselves with the ProTools software, before heading into the studio to make music.

Lunch is served every day. Wednesday, Williams passed out Popeyes and paper plates to the group sitting in class.

He said sometimes the teens and young men aren’t allowed inside their own homes because their families feel they pose a threat, bringing violence in with them. He works with them so they won’t harm themselves or the members of their family, he said.

“And this comes from somebody who is forever remorseful for how I let down my mother,” Williams said.

Williams conducts assessments of each participant in the program to cater the support he provides. He identifies their assets and how they best learn, provides financial literacy and educates them about street law. He pairs a clinical approach with his personal relationships, he said.

The program lasts for 13 weeks. On Monday and Friday, the group goes to University of Illinois Chicago for job readiness training, and on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, they go to Fort Knox Studios to learn sound engineering skills and spend time in the studio. It takes time to build up a rapport, he said.

Williams also tries to do two home visits a week. Every day, he drives around to pick up his students. He has relationships with their families.

“And you can really tell about the kid once you go into his house,” he said. “When I see a kid and he’s always hungry here, and then I see he has seven brothers and he’s the oldest, I can understand that.”

Because he works so closely with the teens and young men he chooses for his program, he said he has a handle on the social media dynamics correlated with youth crime. His program doesn’t offer the highest stipend of all the employment opportunities, he said, but it seeks to spark interest, to engage and excite.

“We want to do 21st-century learning,” Williams said. “We want to teach you coding, engineering.”

Zell, from the South Side, said he is always rapping — at school, at home, with his friends. He wore a green sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over his head. He found out about the program through an outreach worker who approached him on the street, and said he loves going into the studio.

He raps off the top of his head using his own experiences and things that he’s heard or been thinking about, he said.

“I’ve got a really unique sound,” he said proudly. “I’m really going to be a full-time artist.”

In the studio, all eyes watched as Zell rapped along to the beat Rayborn created for him. The studio is warm and inviting, with bamboo plants, a ProTools soundboard and Genelec speakers. Hundreds of records are stacked on a bookcase leaning against the wall, and electric guitars are mounted in the front of the room.

“So real quick, I’ll tell you what my ears are already doing,” Rayborn said to the class. “My ears are already making adjustments frequency-wise.”

Rayborn, known as 6ravo, is a music producer and sound engineer who just mixed a record with Wiz Khalifa, and works with several other major artists from across the country. A graduate of Columbia College and former teacher at SAE Institute Chicago, a River North training center for aspiring music producers, Rayborn now devotes his afternoons to sharing his knowledge about audio frequency and more to the young men registered in Acclivus Inc.’s sound engineering program.

The program enrollees sat on couches covered with gray sheets watching the flat-screen television. Some bumped their fists to the beat.

“Everyone shows their excitement a little differently,” said Rayborn. “I’ve learned to let people express themselves how they want to express themselves.”

As Zell rapped, Rayborn coached and encouraged him, fiddling with the soundboard. Zell stumbled over a word and asked to do a retake.

“I messed up,” said Zell from inside the small recording room.

“Don’t worry about that, we’re just getting started,” Rayborn said, cuing the beat again.

Rayborn studied tuba and played trombone before delving into audio production and sound engineering. He said he came from programs where people pushed him, and hopes to do the same with the teens and young men in his vibrant studio.

“I had many male band directors who were like second dads,” he said. “They were honest about everything. Not just the music but how you carried yourself, how you dressed.”

At one point in the studio, a few enrollees in the back raised their voices.

“Patience, please! Patience. That’s all I need, just a little patience,” Rayborn said.

Williams tries to stay in touch with as many students as he can. Outreach and case management would ideally continue after the program ends, said Williams, but he doesn’t have enough resources to keep a consistent line of communication with all of them.

Some will be hired for internships after the 13-week program, said Williams. Acclivus Inc. partners with Fort Knox studios to facilitate those opportunities, he said, and program alumni are often referral sources for job opportunities.

He said it’s important to manage his expectations.

“Not everyone will make it,” he said.

Dialogue around youth employment centers on long-term job training, said Williams, but he’s just trying to get them through high school by keeping them engaged.

Williams said a few of the participants who have left the program have gone back to school.

“It’s really fun to be around people from different areas who’ve got the same vision as you,” said Zell. “This is not just us. This goes beyond us.”

Zell laughed and said the first time he entered the studio, he thought he was signing a recording contract.

nsalzman@chicagotribune.com