GIORDAN DIXON, 19

Giordan Dixon is a singer/songwriter from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Dixon has worked with youth in various ways since 2016: at the Reading Warriors teaching K-5 grade children reading and S.T.E.M. skills; at the Lighthouse Project media arts education program teaching high school-age youth music and visual arts skills; and through the YMCA Before and After School Enrichment (BASE) program supporting K-4 children.

Dixon has been a performer since he was a child, doing commercials and plays which progressed into music. In late 2015, Dixon joined the YMCA Lighthouse Project as a high school participant. After graduating this program at 16, he was hired as the program associate and received a $10,000 grant from The Heinz Endowments to produce and release his own album, #Storyteller. In August of 2018, in addition to cultivating and performing at his own album release showcase, he performed at the Byham Theater as a part of the TedX Pittsburgh event. Later that year, Dixon was invited to serve on the Heinz Endowments Transformative Arts Committee where he worked with other arts educators and youth to develop equitable grant-making strategies in order to impact young people living in Pittsburgh’s distressed communities.

In addition to his community leadership, Dixon participated in the Tuff Sound Music Apprenticeship Program, an audio engineering intensive focused on mixing techniques, and the Startable music entrepreneurship program, where he produced his own EP album, and learned how to market and promote it.

Dixon is a student at Community College of Allegheny County pursuing a Music Technology Certificate. He has leveraged all of these experiences and has learned to record, produce, engineer, and mix local bands and recording artists at professional quality. Dixon is currently working on his second album.

Freedom [a spoken word piece]

By Giordan Dixon

I seek freedom

Freedom from expectation

Where we can live our life for ourselves

Not for what people want out of us

Where we can stay true to ourselves

And love ourselves

And know that our self worth isn't defined by what everyone else thinks

I seek freedom

Freedom from prejudice

From the color of our skin being the only thing that defines us

From the purses that get clutched a little tighter when we enter a room

From the children that give us strange stares as if we're aliens from space

While we stay in our place

And they spit in our face

I seek freedom

Freedom from sadness

Over all the time lost

And the lives lost

And the tears cried

Just to bury young boys side by side by side

To watch them lie and lie and lie

And get away with it time after time after time

I seek freedom

Freedom from silence

From sitting in the background too afraid to speak

To standing in the foreground and being shot down

Told that we're too young and naive

And that we can't see or understand

That our generation is lazy and going nowhere

That "It's not fair I had to work so hard"

And "You don't understand the cause"

When our goal is the same

So why do you want to blame us for the things you can't say

Or won't

I seek freedom

Freedom from myself

From all I expect of me

To be as perfect as can be

From not being able to make mistakes

Or say the wrong thing

From overanalyzing and compartmentalizing

Bottling everything up inside until I can barely breathe

Barely speak, barely see through the tears rolling off my cheeks

I seek freedom

Freedom from insecurity

So that no one has to feel afraid to be themselves

Express themselves, love themselves

Wear what they like, love who they like

Do what they want and never apologize

I seek freedom

For all

Regardless or nation, or creed, or religion

Regardless of who you are

Because you deserve it