Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation McCune Charitable Foundation, New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

and Viewers Like You Indigenous children's author Daniel Vandever uses imaginative storytelling to inspire young readers to embrace their uniqueness and creativity, in a world that often asks them to fall in line.

Lyric Lab█s open mic approach gives emerging artists the opportunity to create original soundtracks and unite through their love of music.

It's all ahead on Colores FALL OUT OF LINE [tranquil music] >> Faith: Daniel, thank you for joining me today on Colores.

So to get us started, you've spent a lot of your -- career on education and literacy.

When you began writing children's books, what did you feel like was missing from literacy for children?

>> Vandever: I think something that's always been really missing in indigenous communities especially, is just representation.

I think in media today, we we see ourselves in television.

We see ourselves more in books.

But growing up, that wasn't necessarily the case for me.

And so, I really wanted to show representation, but at a deeper level, I really wanted to address creativity.

Especially in recent years, I think -- we have really in-depth problems within our communities that require outside the box type thinking.

But in our school systems today, everything is so standardized, and it can be so standardized that we really need to promote the creativity behind our youth.

And so what really motivated me was to have more of that outside the box thinking for our youth, but also seeing themselves in stories.

To really value and appreciate who they are -- is so necessary especially today.

I think so often our kids are wanting to be the same, to dress the same, to look the same.

But I think the beauty in our culture and who we are individually is what makes us different.

And so in each of my stories, I really try to really bring that out within our students and to really have them appreciate their identity and what makes them different.

>> Faith: And that brings me to, “Fall In Line, Holden!” because this book kind of really encompasses a lot of that.

So can you tell me, like what is, “Fall in Line, Holden!” about for people who haven't read it?

>> Vandever: Yeah, well -- “Fall In Line, Holden!” is a story about a boy who falls out of line and the single file conformity nature of his boarding school, whereas all of his class kind of passes from class to recess, ignoring the beauty of the everyday.

Holden sees that every day in a different light where everything comes to life.

And so instead of seeing pictures up on the wall, he sees animals come to life.

Instead of seeing joking janitors in the janitor's closet, he sees rodeo clowns.

And it's really about breaking through the conformity of the world around him.

And I really wanted to tie-in in a boarding school era education into the narrative My father went to boarding school, which was -- know there's a lot of connotations for what boarding school is, but for indigenous people throughout the world, really -- boarding school as a means or a method to remove yourself from your identity, to really colonize, westernize -- indigenous people.

And so, I wanted to draw the parallel between kind of what all kids are going through today, especially as you see cuts to funding for programs that really value art, music, PE [Physical Education] subjects that can really help raise the creativity that I was discussing.

These days, that's not in place for a lot of our kids, and that's really doing a disservice to their creativity and their own individuality.

>> Faith: I feel like that's really shown through the visuals of this book as well.

Right?

Yeah, I see Holden, is always in color, and then the other kids are like -- they've lost their color.

Can you talk about how the visuals support that story?

>> Vandever: Well, in a book like this, you really want to try to pair the words with the visuals to really elicit this feeling of boarding school, or at least the emptiness of it.

As the students are passing through the school's corridors, they're missing parts of their body.

They're in black and white.

But then when Holden passes these select locations, everything comes to light, when you get into his imagination, pairing that with the words, especially written in cadence and in rhyme and repetition, it kind of makes it feel like you're marching in that single file line.

And so I really kind of made it a note in order to get the feeling of that, because I don't necessarily dress the harshness of boarding school in it.

It's kind of tough to do it in a children's book to talk about getting your hair cut or in certain cases, being abused verbally or physically in many cases.

So I wanted to bring that out as much as I could in the visuals and the words and the rhyme tie it all together to kind of make it so you feel it more so than see it.

>> Faith: Is there like a moment or a page in this book that feels especially personal to you?

>> Vadnever: It's the very last page.

It ends with them all falling out of line and getting to be who they are.

Once they exit the boarding school walls, when they're returning to class and you start to see the color come back to their faces.

And that was so great to me, just because it was really showing the impact and the influence of Holden on his classmates, and seeing them to bring that back to their classroom kind of gives you hope in that they're carrying forth a lot of the message and the reason behind why I made Holden.

And so that last page is just so kind of dropped me just how impactful it is and caring for that lesson with other kids.

>> Faith: That book, Fall in Line Holden, is what spawned other books-- >> Vandever: Right.

>> Faith: Right?

You talked about how the characters from Fall in Line Holden kind of go off and have their own adventures, and you brought two other books along with you, We Weave, and Horizon.

So can you talk a little bit about these two books, and what are the themes or ideas that are central to each of them?

>> Vandever: Well, one of the big things that happens in Fall in Line, Holden, is every time that he falls out of line and gets in trouble and is reminded to fall in line Holden, if you notice, is that every time that happens, one of his classmates heads turns and then they turn, and then they turn until they finally all fall out of line at the conclusion of the book.

And so what I like to think is that every character in one of my books that follows is one of his classmates, who subsequently fell out of line and took that influence to their own community.

And so I think I have a real running theme across all three books in that creativity is important.

How do you carry it forth in your own world?

And so -- to me, it seems like each of those characters takes that back to their own communities.

Horizon is a story about a girl who helps her grandmother retrieve a flock of sheep, aided with a magical scarf that helps her kind of imagine her journey in helping out her grandmother.

Again, it's carrying that creativity that outside the box thinking in order to help save the sheep in this case.

And then my second book that followed Fall in Line, Holden, and We Weave, is a story about a boy who uses his creativity to help his grandmother help sell a rug so they could purchase a computer when school turns virtually.

And so really kind of carrying forth that influence of falling out of line, appreciating and valuing yourself and your own culture and using it to improve the world around you is kind of the running theme of all three books.

And the other two, they really kind of take it back to their home on the reservation, whereas the boarding school is something that took place within Fall in Line, Holden.

So yeah, I thought that was pretty unique and something that kind of shows the influence of what one voice can have on the world around them.

>> Faith: That's amazing.

That's beautiful.

>> Fandever: Thank you.

>> Faith: I love it.

And I found interesting too is that Herizon.

There are no words.

So like imagination is definitely necessary even just to like, you know, interpret the book.

So can you talk a little bit about that?

>> Vandever: Well, one of the things I noticed with Fall in Line, Holden, especially going around to different schools across New Mexico, the Four corners, basically coast to coast, is that there are different types of students who engage with the stories in different ways.

And I think you always have those who are in the front row raising their hand, wanting to participate.

And I think that's great.

But there's also those who are kind of standoffish off to the side and might be intimidated by words, perhaps.

And so in creating Herizon being wordless, it provided more opportunity to engage those students who are off to the side that might not have the reading skills to engage with the story, but might have experiences that they could bring to the narrative.

They might have language that they could insert into the story or prior experiences within their own home life, within their own culture.

And so a big part of creating it to be wordless was to allow the flexibility for students to insert themselves into the narrative and bring that creativity that I was discussing out and put it on display.

And I think a story that has multiple voices adding to the narrative just makes it more rich and what that story could be.

And so that was a big decision on making it wordless.

It also provided avenues for me to talk about things that are happening in our community that aren't necessarily always discussed, such as MMIW, murdered and missing indigenous women, where people within our own community are going missing and are literally having their voice taken from us.

And so by making it wordless, you're really providing space for that voice to rise above and people to engage with it in different levels.

>> Faith: That's beautiful.

I love that, and like, it's so amazing that you're able to take these concepts that are very like, you know, hard to talk about and put them into a book for children.

>> Vandever: Right.

>> Faith: Like that's amazing -- >> Vandever: I think it's necessary, though.

I think our kids are ready for these types of discussions.

And how do you talk about boarding school, something that's so harsh.

And often people tend to want to forget or MMIW or any of those types of conversations or themes.

I think our kids are ready for it, because it really explains a lot of the conditions we are living in today.

And so I think having those themes, you're addressing literacy, but you're really getting at the root of a lot of the problems we see in our communities that allows for discussion.

So.

So change could happen, healing could happen.

I think oftentimes, especially with the native communities, what's focused on is the trauma or the histories.

But behind that is the beauty at the same time.

And so the more we platform, the more we leverage, the more we celebrate the creativity, the culture of our state and where we're from.

It's just going to make for a better future.

>> Faith: What would you say is the most important thing you want children to take away from your books, especially native children?

>> Vandever: Yeah, I think the main thing is just to value and appreciate yourselves, to explore their emotions, and to really do a lot of self-reflection, hopefully, which kind of I think can be hard when you're younger.

But I think books like this are kind of tools in navigating that.

And so I really hope that they come off appreciating themselves, but then also hoping to explore their own creativity to make change in the world around them.

[soft guitar] Sound of the city.

>> Tabing: We really want to connect people to community, to place.

>> Peterson: Nothing is going to be able to bring Pompano together, a city together like the arts and the collection of these artists from a variety of different backgrounds and ethnicities speaks to what Pompano is.

It is very diverse.

>> Tabing: It started out with our open mic event, Lyrics Lab, and through that process we had sort of American Idol like tryouts, and we selected the team that we thought would best represent Pompano Beach.

And that's who is in the studio tonight doing these recordings.

Lyrics Lab has been around as an open mic format for some ten years at this point, so a lot of great talent has been on our stage in the past.

And so this is really an effort to celebrate the local talent from Pompano Beach.

It's was really a proposal that was pitched to us by Sarahca Peterson of the Round Table Project.

She had some desires to to really kind of showcase talent from Lyrics Lab.

She started her career at Lyrics Lab on that very stage many years ago.

>> Peterson: My name is Sarahca Peterson and I do a lot, but mainly I run the Round Table Project and we are producing the soundtrack for the city of Pompano Beach.

We have rappers, we have musicians, we have spoken word.

There's a group of talented people here, and you never know what you're going to get when their combined together, because we're creating all original music.

So it's created from a group of people who don't know each other, never knew each other before this unless they were at Lyrics Lab, but then bringing them together in the studio, you're going to get some, you know, we have Jonas in there.

He's playing every instrument that was ever created.

And then you have Daniel, who's 16 and seems like he's 60.

And, you know, you have Yasmeen, who has the biggest voice I've heard since Whitney Houston and Alicia Keys.

Like, you have so much talent, so you never know what you're going to get when they're in the studio.

[guitar strumming] >> Haze: I think that the best musical projects take place when a whole bunch of different ideas come together into one, and that's what we're trying to do with this.

My name is Azrael Haze.

I'm a musician.

I do R&B and rap music, but I love all genres, and I would love to do whatever genre that I possibly can.

I love experimenting and when it comes to music before Lyrics Lab, that was like my second performance ever.

I was the second time I was ever on stage.

I love doing things that are difficult.

I love doing things.

I love challenging myself.

So I learned to mix and master all my music and do all that.

So before Lyrics Lab, I was mainly just in my room, you know, making bedroom music and just working on my craft.

And I showed up to Lyrics Lab and here I am today.

[Vocalizing] >> Thomas: My name is Danielle Nicole.

By profession.

I'm a project director by day, and I'm an artist by night.

[vocalizing] I sang here and there growing up.

But like, mainly in Navy Church.

And it just so happened that night I was going to the event to actually support my aunt who was supposed to perform.

And then they put me on the list and I free-styled The whole thing from start to finish got the crowd involved, and that was the end of all, she wrote.

That's why I said maybe it was a hidden talent I didn't realize I had.

That became alive on a day that I just so happened to be there.

>> Kennedy: Like that.

You want to keep the first half and just punch the second?

>> Arthur: Yeah can I hear it back real quick?

>> Kennedy: Sure.

>> Arthur: My name is Jonas Arthur.

I am a singer, songwriter, musician.

I've played music all my life.

I'm songwriting, singing, playing, you know, different instruments on the songs.

And it's been a really fun time collaborating with the other artists and producers and just everyone involved.

Over the summer, I had this kind of itching and desire to play some original songs.

Just at a local open mic or something.

So I was looking online to see what was what was happening in town and found Lyrics Lab online performed a couple of songs and it was really cool, a really fun time.

A few months later, I got a message on Instagram and says, “Hey Jonas, you know you were selected to be a part of the Pompano Project.

We'd love to have you.” I was like, okay, well, I guess it was meant to be.

[singing] >> Matri: I am Yasmeen Matri.

I make R&B soul music, and my role in this project is to create some music for the city of Pompano Beach.

Growing up, I was operatically trained, so I was trained to sing opera.

But I also have immense love for R&B, jazz, soul, the blues.

And when I realized that was a whole other octave lower than what I was used to singing, I had to reboot a few things, but while keeping the range.

So now I have four octaves.

Pretty much.

I met a couple of friends at one open mic that I used to go to, so then I was like, oh, you know, let's hit up every open mic.

This is fun.

And then I found Lyrics Lab, through Facebook, and we're like, let's check it out and we keep going ever since.

From the time that I've been since like 2017, going to the open mics and stuff, I've never heard of a city putting together an EP, so the chance to be on one is incredible, especially the first ever one.

I'm like, oh, okay, I listen back.

>> Kennedy: We█re going to listen back.

>> Tabing: We're fortunate to also have a great partner with the Power Station studio, which is of course based here in Pompano.

So just a lot of things came together from the Round Table Project, pitching the project, our desire to incubate local talent, this partnership with Power Station Studio.

So it was kind of a coalescing of all the right elements to get us to where we are today, to get in a studio and go through the the process of creating music and creating an EP, you know, it's a learning experience.

>> Peterson: I am working with a group of producers that are amazing.

David Kennedy, such a teacher with the artists and teaching them how to record and what he hears from producing an engineer standpoint.

Avi and Ty, they're all professionals and I appreciate them working on this project with us because it has been a task.

When you're not working on your project it█s other artists project, and it is giving me an opportunity to see that, hey, I'm gonna produce some more albums, so.

>> Arthur: We'll have individual songs from each artist, and, you know, we'll find songs that work well for collaboration and, you know, just find moments in each song.

even the whole song, to to collaborate as a team, >> Matri: Each person brings their own flavor to the EP.

And we kind of created like a little family.

Like, we are excited to see each other.

We check in, we make sure everything's good and it's it's great.

Truly.

We make some friends for a lifetime.

>> Hardin: How y'all doing?

What you're about to hear is nothing but people sharing what it is that they do.

With people like you and want to hear what they have to say, what they have to show, what they have to share, because everybody is sharing a little piece of themselves like we always did, in the hope that we'll get back something from that sharing.

[█City Streets█ playing] >> Kennedy: We are here to celebrate the soundtrack.

The Pompano Beach soundtrack volume one.

Make some noise for that.

Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise.

[█City Streets█ playing] >> Tabing: This is a year and a half in the making to reach this point.

>> Kelly:This next track is called, Fantasy I myself, I produce it, I play guitar Azreal on the vocals, so I hope y'all enjoy it.

That's pretty much it.

Y'all enjoy the rest of the album.

Thank you all so much.

Fantasy [█Fantasy█ playing] - Everybody.

No matter what style of music, what where you come from.

We all connect and unite under the same thing of music.

So that in itself is the initial spark that brings everybody together.

>> Arthur: This song is called Different Love.

[█Different Love█ playing] >> Thomas: This is definitely opening me up to opportunities, even for myself, to realize that nothing is a straight arrow.

Nothing is a straight path.

Everything has curves and whistles in it.

And so just following life where it takes you, it definitely opens the door to different opportunities.

[█Dance In Time█ playing] >> Haze: We all come from different sorts of backgrounds, but we all relate in music, and I think that's a big thing that a lot of us should learn, that music is a universal language.

>> Arthur: The beauty of being able to come together with people that you've really never met before, being able to hear their stories and collaborate with them musically, and just to be able to create something new has been really enriching [█Dance In Time█ playing] The award winning Arts and Culture series Colores!

now available on the PBS app, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and at NMPBS.org From classic episodes to brand new shows, Colores!

is everywher Watch now on your favorite platforms.

Funding for Colores!

was provided in part by New Mexico PBS, Great Southwestern Arts and Education Endowment Fund, and the Nelita E. Walker Fund for NM TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation, McCune Charitable Foundation, New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

And viewers like you.