winter 2007 - Concord Academy

Kabir SenClass of 1995Passion for Teaching,Passion for MusicHelen Haskell Hobbs ’70It came during a study that analyzed why certain populations, such asthe French Canadians in Quebec and the Afrikaners in South Africa,have a high prevalence of high cholesterol and heart attacks. “That tasteof success was like a drug for me,” she recalled. “Everyone has their ownstory to tell, and in science you tell your story in the laboratory. I havean intense desire to understand things.”Hobbs now serves as director of the Eugene McDermott Centerfor Human Growth and Development and is an investigator in theHoward Hughes Medical Institute at the University of TexasSouthwestern Medical Center. Last year she won Germany’s highlyrespected Heinrich Wieland Prize for her research on variations in cholesterollevels and was inducted as a fellow into the American Academyof Arts and Sciences.“I work among lots of really bright people who are generatingdata and answering questions that are interesting to me,” Hobbs said.“I still teach at Southwestern. I travel, go to meetings all over the world,talk to other people involved in research, visit their laboratories andsometimes their homes. Whenever I go someplace, I’m embedded in ascientific community that includes people I’ve established relationshipswith over a long period of time.”For someone who once thought a career as a scientist would betoo lonely, it sounds like the best possible kind of discovery.Kabir Sen ’95 spent his childhood in London and near HarvardSquare, influenced by thriving arts scenes in both places and byeverything he heard, from The Beatles to Run DMC. But Sen says it wasat Concord Academy that he learned about hip-hop from his New YorkCity housemates and his friends on the basketball team. Though he hadstudied piano and other instruments from a young age, it was therhythm, meter, and lyricism of hip-hop that would become his passion.Sen played piano in the jazz ensemble at CA, also filling hisschedule with sports and theatre. He went on to Wesleyan University,where a jazz professor encouraged him to turn his passion for progressivemusic into academic study. He wrote his senior thesis on theevolution of political hip-hop.During college, Sen worked with the funk soul band, UncleTrouble. After graduation, he moved to Boston and turned to hispre-CA alma mater for part-time work. The Shady Hill School offeredhim a position coaching sports and teaching poetry and songwritingworkshops.Those workshops, for seventh and eighth graders, whetted hisappetite for teaching hip-hop music and culture. Sen developed ahip-hop curriculum at Shady Hill, then started taking it to other schoolsas a visiting artist. “I run assemblies at schools and colleges on lyrics,production, and performance,” he explained. “I fuse many elements ofdifferent cultures into my own music. I want kids to realize there is arich culture of hip-hop that they won’t hear on the radio. It is my goalto expose young people to a wide range of hip-hop culture’s positiveelements.”At the same time that Sen was teaching and coaching, the musicindustry and media began to take notice. In 2001, he released his firstsolo album, Cultural Confusion, followed in 2003 by Fuel for the Fireand, this past spring, by Peaceful Solutions, an optimistic collection ofsongs that focus on rechanneling negative energy. Among his playlist,Sen says he is partial to “The Liar,” one of his most commerciallysuccessful compositions. “It’s a comical song about celebrities, a bluesypoem about a person who has delusions of grandeur,” he explained, thenlisted several more favorites. “‘Answers’ is a song about peace on bothglobal and personal levels. ‘Memories’ is a narrative about using thepast to help you figure out the future. ‘Letter to my Grandmother’ is apersonal song about love and loss. My music and lyrics come from a15WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG WINTER 2007