GUILDERLAND — "Entrepreneurs, they never give up. They’re always on the rise and they’re always moving up," chanted the kids lining the stage at Westmere Elementary School Tuesday morning.

The cacophony of sound from the enthusiastic crowd of spectators quieted as the steady beat of rap music filled the air.

Every kid on stage knew the words, and they spoke as one. They looked proud and self-possessed, more like seasoned performers than 10- and 11-year-olds.
"They completely owned it," said Westmere teacher Todd Giagni. "The process was meaningful to them. They lived it so much, they knew it was important."

Black and white kids performed the rap song together in celebration of Black History Month. Half of the fifth-graders were from Westmere, in suburban Guilderland, and half were from Giffen Elementary in the city of Albany.

The theme for Black History Month at Giffen this year is to recognize black entrepreneurs.
Tuesday’s performance, which will be repeated today at Giffen, started with four students defining the word "entrepreneur" and presenting pictures and biographies of African-American entrepreneurs — ranging from the famous like Oprah Winfrey and Duke Ellington to the lesser known like John H. Murphy, who published newspapers in Texas, and Frederick McKinley Jones, an inventor with 60 patents, most of them in the field of refrigeration.
The lyrics the kids had hammered out together, in catchy rhymed couplets, told about these entrepreneurs. "Frederick McKinley was a hardworking man," they sang. "He never gave up, and he always lent a hand."

"They love hip-hop"

The project was the brainchild of two teachers who are also musicians and use music in their classrooms — Jeremy Dudley from Giffen and Todd Giagni from Westmere.
They came together at the suggestion of Micki Nevett, Westmere’s beloved librarian who died in December of a heart attack. She had seen Dudley, a rapper who goes by the name of "Origin," perform and suggested Giagni give him a call.

Dudley — who has, for three years running, been voted the best local hiphop artist by the readers’ poll at Metroland, Albany’s alternative weekly — performed at the Westmere assembly Tuesday.
He seemed to snatch words from the air as he got the kids in the audience to shout in unison, completing the couplets to "An Unfinished Song."

With the agility of a cat, he leapt about the gym, in nearly constant rhythmic motion, gesturing to his ear when it was time for the kids to complete a rhymed line.
"This is the last verse; let’s see what you got, ready or —"
"Not!" shouted the kids.

Dudley told The Enterprise after the show that he was introduced to rap in the ’80s by his aunt and it seemed natural to him to use it in his teaching. He’s been at Giffen for eight years.
"We try to meet our students where they’re at," he said. "They love hip-hop music, hip-hop culture. They enjoy performing. If I can give them math facts to a beat, they love it."
When kids tell him they want to be in his class, he said, "I always tell them to be careful what they wish for. We work hard."
Asked if it is unusual that he is a rap artist since he is white, Dudley said, "In the mainstream, yes, but not in the underground."
Would he like to be mainstream" "I would like to reach as many people as I can," said Dudley. "I’m not after fame and money...I want to make widespread change."
He gave as an example a song he wrote called, "Come Home, Dad."
"It’s about children that don’t know their fathers," said Dudley. "It makes such a difference to have a father in your life, like I did," he said.
"An easy transcender"

Giagni’s father was important to him, too. His father started out in a warehouse and worked his way up to become vice president of a company.
"My father loved reggae," said Giagni. He would talk to the workers in the warehouse; a group of them were musicians from South America and Jamaica. They would come over to the vice president’s East Greenbush house to play reggae, accompanied by Todd Giagni, a drummer.
Asked if it made a difference that Giagni was white, playing in a reggae band, he said, "Music is an easy transcender. If you know the roots of the music, anything goes."
Rather than going right to college after high school, Giagni played in a series of bands. He made a promise to himself at age 17: "If I didn’t make it in music, I’d go to college," he said.

He was true to his word. Giagni, at 38, has a bachelor’s degree from The College of Saint Rose, a master’s degree from the University at Albany, and he’s currently studying at Saint Rose for a school building leadership certificate with the goal of becoming a principal.
When he came to Guilderland four years ago, Giagni started using music in his classroom. He got a Macintosh computer with GarageBand software, which, he said, is "like a mini-recording studio."
"I decided to record my kids’ poetry," he said. He played different beats for his students and told them, "Think about the mood and theme"See what would fit your needs."
"I ended up creating original music for them," he said. "They love it. They take the CD, download it, put it on their iPods, and share it."
Giagni and his wife, Kelly, who is also a teacher, taught at a town camp last summer in a program they named "And the Next American Idol Is." The kids wrote original songs, which Giagni recorded.

Working with Dudley and the Giffen students added a new dimension.
"For us, there was a tear in our eye," he said of watching kids from two different communities come together. "They just saw kids who were 10 years old. We were waiting for comments," he said on racial or economic differences, but there were none. "That was the beauty of it," said Giagni. "It doesn’t even cross their minds," he said of the division between suburban and city communities. "It’s created."

The students visited each other’s schools, researching black entrepreneurs together online and in encyclopedias.

Dudley presented them with 10 different beats and they voted on their favorite.
"Jeremy started playing it and talked about writing couplets," said Giagni.

The students then worked together on coming up with the words to fit the rhythms and then rehearsed the final version.
"The tearjerker for me," Giagni said on Tuesday night, "was some of the kids who aren’t performers every single day"I need to call their parents and say, ‘He was a different kid today. Something was magical.’"
Giagni said that, after the performance, other teachers said of Giagni and Dudley, "Both of you were entrepreneurs. You took a risk in doing this."
He concluded, "Here the schools are just two miles apart and they seem a world away."
Deborah Drumm, the principal of Westmere Elementary, closed Tuesday’s program by reading a poem by Muhammad Ali: "Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside of them — a desire, a dream, a vision."
Drumm concluded, "It’s one world and we’re all in it. We all care and appreciate one another."