The following was part of a class assignment/discussion that I gave my middle school mentorship class:

Several years ago I learned about this Israeli Musician/Videographer called Kutiman, who took clips off of YouTube of singers sharing incomplete songs, or musicians offering tutorials on their instrument or salesmen selling musical instruments, and he would hear actual songs in these unrelated clips. He would then do a mash-up or remix and produce full music videos with complete songs from these unrelated clips. One singer he found in his YouTube search was a New Orleans singer who goes by the name, Princess Shaw. This is the video that he saw:

I love that you can hear the TV playing in the background (high production value there!). This is the music video that he produced from that clip:

This song was part of Kutiman’s second collection of songs/music videos and the clip went viral. And just like that this lone singer/songwriter went from singing in empty clubs to touring with Kutiman’s band/orchestra to getting a documentary made…

 Prompt

(This is the discussion board assignment that I gave to my students): Last week we watched a video with Steve Jobs where he said that it’s impossible to know how all of the things in your life will pull together later down the road. He said that you cannot put the dot together looking forward. You can only see how things fit looking back. In the videos we’ve seen this week, our hero, Princess Shaw had no idea how things would turn out, but she kept plugging away, writing her songs and sharing them on her YouTube channel and showing up at her gigs with mostly empty rooms. Until one day a stranger from the opposite end of the world saw one of her clips, heard her song and produced a music video that then went viral, changing her life. This is more than a cool story… 

Hopefully our technology will cooperate this week… this week I want you to either write or draw something that represents your dream or dreams. Using words or art answer the prompt: What do you want to do when you leave this place/school.

The rest was instructions on how to add their hand drawn images to our school platform or just do the typed version and then encouragement to comment on each other’s post. You, dear readers, are encouraged to participate and leave your comment here in my blog about Princess Shaw’s story or about your own dreams…