My Words Will Heal You: On RISE Edutainment
Randell Adjei’s wide, toothy grin fills the screen.
“Hello, hello everybody! If you don’t know, my name’s Randell—”
He interrupts his own introduction with a constant string of enthusiastic interjections. “Hello Emily! How y’all doin? Allison! I see you Maya G! Stretch is in the building!”
With eyes shut, one could easily imagine he was up on a stage while a stream of exuberant spectators filled the room, all regulars he knew intimately, of course. In reality, it’s a one-way conversation, limited by the restrictive social parameters of Instagram live-streaming. The people tuning in, introduced by a quick flash of their Instagram handles, are not in the room with Adjei, but his warmth permeates through the glitchy, technological disconnect.
As the director of community arts collective Reaching Intelligent Souls Everywhere (RISE) Edutainment, this is not the type of open mic event he’s accustomed to hosting. Since 2013, on 46 Mondays out of every year, RISE has hosted open mic nights that invite emerging poets, rappers, and musicians of all kinds to perform, specifically those from communities that are underfunded and undersupported, whose cultural contributions have long gone unrecognized.
In a phone interview, Adjei recalled feeling silenced as a youth growing up on the outskirts of
