Our Story
Alphabet Rockers, “the premiere Bay Area hip hop collective for families” [KPFA], is a project founded in 2007 by singer-songwriter Kaitlin McGaw, hip hop theater veteran Tommy Shepherd, and beatboxer Stefanie Liang. The mission of Alphabet Rockers is to produce high quality, authentic and engaging hip hop productions for young audiences that make learning come alive through beats, rhymes and movement. By creating interactive shows, recordings, workshops and residencies that children find fun and engaging, we are able to partner with educators to address social issues such as bullying, nutrition, self esteem, and the Common Core Standards.
Over the last decade, musicians have brought rock, indie-rock, pop and more “adult” genres into the genre of children’s music. Alphabet Rockers is one of the premiere groups that merged hip hop beats, rhymes and culture genre and culture with a family music experience. Through the Alphabet Rockers’ hip hop musical productions, young audiences are moved to sing, breakdance, beatbox, and think critically. Topics and messages have included healthy food choices, writing and sharing their ideas, standing up for their friends, and believing in themselves. Alphabet Rockers performed 30-50 shows from 2009-2013, and will do 75-100 in 2014. We have reached for tens of thousands of children around the country at schools, performing arts centers, cultural institutions and community spaces to high acclaim.
Our artistic goal is twofold: to serve as positive role models for families and students, while working to create alternative educational methodologies through the use of music and movement as the basis for learning. Our music residencies and teacher trainings bring music and movement central to classrooms (K-5) in arts integration aligned with the Common Core Standards. We have scripted and toured nationally three shows: “The New Kid in School: Bullying Prevention,” “Eat the Rainbow: Nutrition,” and “Get Up & Go!: Community Building.” We recorded and released two albums with educational songs about science, math, nutrition, self-esteem, friendship and literacy.
Our next steps are to make a high-quality music video series for the web to share positive messages with families around the globe. We look forward to continuing to share our mission and vision with you this year.
Be a part of our Alphabet Rockers family – try a free song today.
the long story:
In 2005, Kaitlin McGaw was working in a music school, coordinating band camps for kids, and wondering how to pair her love of working with children with a love of expression and songwriting. At the end of 2007, the Alphabet Rockers debut album was out, with critics from Parents Choice Awards, Education.com, California Kindergarten Conference, National Parenting Publications, UrbanBaby.com and teachers around the country raving about how fresh and spot-on the tunes were for the classroom and family. Soon after, unsolicited performance requests were pouring in, and Kaitlin called up her friend from high school, Stefanie Liang, as she knew Stef was an incredible singer, beatboxer, and might possibly consider being in a hip hop band for kids. Stefanie immediately agreed, and together they thought of who might be another good member to the band. When the two had relocated to the Bay Area from Boston, MA, they had seen the work of Felonious Theater in a show called, “Hip Hop Raperetta” – and called upon the directors to see if there was interest in collaboration. Tommy Shepherd jumped on board, and Alphabet Rockers, the band, was born.
Over the next few years, the trio refined the show, working with various musicians and collaborators, and heavily touring the Bay Area and Greater Boston communities, performing over 100 shows for libraries, schools, and families. In 2011, they released the music video “Shape Rap,” produced by the incredible company, Clean White Lines, and found the foundational piece for a possible new TV show in the works. At the close of the summer, culminating in a featured article by San Francisco Chronicle, the group went into the studio to lay the foundation for the future live performances, recorded tracks, and television concepts for Alphabet Rockers. At this time, Kaitlin reached out to her high school classmate Maria Freda, to become the Alphabet Rockers educational advisor, to provide feedback and ideas for the lyrics of the songs, and officially write and oversee the educational curriculum for the company. Kaitlin, Tommy, Stefanie and Maria worked together over the course of the year that followed to:
- write and record two CDs
- design and release an iPhone app
- create three new shows around the music [Bullying Prevention, Nutrition and Movement]
- design hip hop music class curriculum for ages 2-6
- create over 50 activities and games that pair the songs to the educational standards for K-1 learning
In 2013, Alphabet Rockers expanded to work with Rebecca Alison of Little Cloud Management to liaison to venues and companies around the country and share our performances and message. Arts Integration Expert Mariah Rankine-Landers came on board as our new Educational Advisor. With a successful Kickstarter campaign, we raised $33K in funding to create a web series of musical vignettes from our performances and albums. We continued to work in schools and communities from 2013-14, and in 2014 celebrated our busiest year to date.
Over the course of 2014, Alphabet Rockers performed 70+ shows, trained 400+ educators in hip hop arts-based learning, and reached 10,000 children with our in-school programming and music classes. This is an incredible outreach and impact, considering Alphabet Rockers continues to run without the operating support of a full-time staff. Realizing the impact could continue to grow, Alphabet Rockers applied and were accepted as a fiscally sponsored project of Intersection for the Arts, a 501c3 in San Francisco.
In 2015, Alphabet Rockers will continue to fulfill our mission in the community with our programs and services. We will work to identify funding partners to support the continued development of our musical and creative work. We will continue to partner with educators and health care professionals to create new works that truly serve the needs of our community. Our creative projects include:
- Releasing 3 episodes for the web-series on nutrition, bullying prevention, and learning how to write. Our hope is to find a distribution partner for these materials, as well as funding sources to create additional targeted videos.
- Working with Children’s Hospital Oakland to create music for children with asthma – both for healing and education
- Writing a children’s theater production about how Oakland children see “home” in our changing community
- Formalizing our curriculum for K-5 arts integration and training additional teaching artists
- Touring our Bullying Prevention School assemblies
