Jay RebL × A Neighborhood

Hey — I'm Jay RebL. I make music that moves between R&B, hip-hop, reggae, and dancehall, and I've been doing that professionally since 2006. I was born in Spanish Town, Jamaica, and these days I'm based on Chicago's North Shore. Right now I'm the opening act for Charly Black on TRC Events' lineup here in the city. But this idea isn't about my show. It's about something I already do for free, most weeks, that I want to turn into an actual program. I call it "On the Street" — I stop a stranger, ask for one word, one sentence, one story, and I turn it into a melody right there on the spot. It works because people already have the story. I'm just the one who knows what to do with it musically. I want to bring that into [NEIGHBORHOOD], not as a clip for content, but as something real that stays with the block after I leave. Here's what I want to build. First, a series of free community songwriting workshops — residents of [NEIGHBORHOOD] sit down with me, and we turn a story they already have — about the block, about their family, about the neighborhood's own history — into a real song hook. Not something I write about them. Something we write together, in the room. Then we close it out with one free neighborhood showcase. A live concert, open to everybody, no ticket required, where we perform the songs that came out of those workshops, side by side with my own catalog. I want to build that set the way the roots reggae shows I grew up on used to run — strip it all the way down to just guitar and hand drum first, so people actually hear the words, then bring in the full band and the sound system for the back half, so the night ends the way a dancehall night is supposed to end: loud, and together. Who's involved: this is a partnership, not a solo project. Ras Tafari Inc — the Chicago nonprofit that runs SelassieFest — is backing this as the producing organization; they've got a real track record running community reggae programming in this city. I'm the lead artist and the one running the workshops. And the actual lead applicant on this grant is going to be someone who actually lives in [NEIGHBORHOOD] — because that's who this program is really for, and that's whose name belongs on the paperwork, not mine or the organization's. As for when and where — we're proposing this for [NEIGHBORHOOD], on Chicago's [South/West] Side. The workshops would run over several weeks, and the free showcase would close it out as one event, timed to land inside the grant's performance window. Nothing about this needs a venue that doesn't already exist in the neighborhood — a field house, a park space, wherever people there already gather is exactly where this belongs. That's the idea. A story a resident already has, turned into a song, performed for the whole block, for free.