Musician Meets With Oklahoma Youth Academy Students

TECUMSEH, Okla. — Oklahoma Youth Academy Charter School (OYACS) students today had the opportunity to meet with a Heartland Emmy Award-winning hip-hop artist and actor from Oklahoma City.

Jabee, whose full name is Jonathan Blake Williams Jr., talked with and answered questions from the students in three separate sessions this morning at the Central Oklahoma Juvenile Center (COJC) in Tecumseh. The sessions were transmitted via Skype to students at the Southwest Oklahoma Juvenile Center (SWOC) in Manitou. Students at the SWOC campus were also able to email questions.

“Even though I’ve seen some crazy things, there are kids here who probably have seen worse than I have,” said Jabee, who was born and raised in Oklahoma City. “Sometimes people say I’m a product of my environment. If my sharing or encouraging can help, it’s important that I do that.”

Jabee, who experienced bouts of homelessness as a child, told students how his mother at times struggled to support her family. “We were bouncing around a lot,” he said.

The artist said he was involved with rap music from as young as age 7, but he turned to music full time in 2001 when at the age of 18 his younger brother was shot and killed.

After his brother was shot, a classmate’s pastor counseled him and told him that without vision people perish. “I didn’t want to perish,” Jabee said. Instead he turned fully to music, writing a song, “One,” that dealt with the evening his brother was shot.

As part of his presentation the artist told students about two kinds of people – the thermometer and the thermostat : “A thermometer just tells the temperature in a room, a thermostat can change the temperature in a room. It’s important that we if we walk into a room we’re able to be a catalyst. We don’t realize sometimes we have that influence. If we use that influence to encourage and uplift and not just join the crowd and do what everybody else is doing, then we can be pretty dynamic and influence a culture and change our friends, change our neighborhood, change our city, change our state.”

Jim Weaver, an OYACS teacher at the Tecumseh campus, became acquainted with Jabee earlier this year after meeting him at Oklahoma Christian University in Oklahoma City. It was Weaver who invited Jabee to speak to the students.

“He overcame obstacles and created something meaningful,” Weaver said. “Our kids need to be introduced to other outcomes and possibilities. They’ve got to have hope.”

The school’s principal, Leticia Sanchez, agreed. “He has a positive message and it’s good to expose our students to that,” she said. “He can give them hope that they can change their ways.”

Previously, in 2014 Jabee collaborated with Oklahoma-based marketing agency Funnel Design Group to create, “What If?” a television commercial promoting Science Museum Oklahoma. The video won a Heartland Emmy for commercial writing and performance. (Heartland is a regional division of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. The Heartland region includes Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and Nebraska).

(The material for this story and the accompanying image were provided by the Oklahoma Office of Juvenile Affairs).