Dyalekt
Pockets Change
Dyalekt often says that with education, when young people aren’t having fun, they aren’t learning. Dyalekt has been a hip-hop MC, theater maker, and educator for nearly 20 years, and is dedicated to inspiring students to empower themselves through art and music.
Born in Philadelphia, Dyalekt attended an Afrocentric afterschool program before moving to St. Croix with his mother for high school. In St. Croix, Dyalekt learned to rap and found his artistic voice. After high school, he moved to New York City to study law and acting, but after witnessing the lawyers he worked for celebrating the acquittal of police officers who shot Amadou Diallo, he quit and immersed himself in the arts.
Dyalekt landed at Hip Hop Theater, cast in plays like Claudia Alick’s Six Hits, directed by Chadwick Boseman, and Yolanda Wilkerson’s A Musing, directed by Kamilah Forbes. He produced theater mixtapes and wrote plays that were produced by NY Theater Workshop, New Perspectives, and the Downtown Urban Theater Festival. Dyalekt became the youngest presenter at the Hip Hop Theater Festival with a rap & DJ interpretation of MacBeth, featuring indie hip hop luminaries Poison Pen & Tah Phrum Duh Bush.
He stumbled into teaching when a mentor invited him to her afterschool poetry program. He was used to performing for inattentive bar crowds, so when a 3rd grader asked about his rap’s third line in the fourth stanza, Dyalekt was hooked. The classroom has since been his favorite performance space.
Dyalekt created a curriculum linking identity & literacy, paired with his first album, Square Peg Syndrome, the story of a biracial student in detention after a race riot at school. He brought the show to St. Croix, performing at 17 educational organizations for over 400 students. Dyalekt asked students to interrogate their identity - where they live, who their ancestors are, and their interests - and led them in producing two books of poetry, an album, and a documentary.
Dyalekt is now the Director of Pedagogy at Pockets Change, using hip-hop pedagogy to help students take control of their relationship with money. Dyalekt believes that “improv energy, shared rhythm, and collective intention allows for authentic participation and leads to real empathy.” He created Hip-Hop FinFest, which builds finance and songwriting skills with middle and high school students, and culminates in a songwriting competition. Dyalekt and Pockets Change also received the 2022 Innovation in Finance Education Award from National Jump$tart Coalition for his financial literacy curriculum.
Dyalekt has presented and performed nationwide - including conferences like AFCPE and Prosperity Now and stages like Bowery Ballroom and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He even delivered the keynote at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s ‘Can’t Stop Won’t Stop’ Hip-Hop Conference.
Dyalekt wants to create art that “[makes] an argument, trying to change perspective with an inundation of information and vibration.” He is a visionary artist and teacher, bridging the gap between education and fun while helping students build life skills and new perspectives through art and creativity.
