Algiers Graduate, Poet Awarded Scholarship
Algiers graduate awarded scholarship

June 10 , 2007
by Brian Friedman
The Times Picayune

It was quite a graduation party for Querido Arias.

In the midst of celebrating his graduation from the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts with his classmates at home, his mother pulled him aside with some news.

It turns out Arias had been awarded a Blues Ambassador Scholarship in the amount of $10,000 from the International House of Blues Foundation-New Orleans, which is given to a college-bound senior who has demonstrated an interest in the arts or leadership in promoting understanding among people of diverse backgrounds.

I started doing backflips and laughing and jumping around," said Arias, upon hearing the good news. "Then I announced it, and everybody started clapping and screaming and congratulating me."

The recent graduate of Edna Karr Senior High School in Algiers said he will use the scholarship money to attend the Art Institute of Atlanta this fall, where he plans to pursue his love of music by studying audio production and acoustics.

Arias, known to friends and family as Q, is a renaissance man when it comes to the arts. When he's not learning to play a new instrument (currently, it's the piano), he's drawing or working with film.

But it's poetry, particularly "slam" poetry, a form of spoken word often performed at competitive poetry events, that got the attention of the HOB Foundation. An excerpt from his winning poem, "Freeze Frame," appears below.

Applicants for a House of Blues Ambassador Scholarship must be high school seniors graduating from a public school in Orleans Parish, who have been accepted to a college and maintained a grade point average of 2.5 or the equivalent through the seventh high school semester.

Applications are available through Orleans Parish public high school counselors, the IHOB-New Orleans program office at 510 Bienville St. or the IHOB Web site, www.ihobf.org

Here is an excerpt from Arias' "Freeze Frame":

“This goes out to all the struggle and pain of every person who's ever been in the battle of 300 knives against a million handguns

This is for odds that seem odd to overcome

But somehow this world, I mean baseball field, keeps throwin' obstacles at you

Take . . . an eviction

Take . . . a funeral of your father

Take . . . never having blood family to get to love

Take . . . your own life

Snap . . . awww . . . mannnnnnn . . . I'm out of film

Sometimes I used to wonder if anyone cared for me the way that life threw obstacles in my path

But . . . I'm here now . . . on this stage . . . thank God for letting me live another day

To live my own life and not what the media snap shots depict

So what happens when the media's out of film, they are gonna start painting pictures of how ancient renaissance people used to do

Wait, sir, let me paint your picture

Paint this picture,

World with peace, and not worldly police

No monkeys for president, and evidence of who kills the innocent, not crooked cops, no racism, no murders, no hanging of souls . . . no negativity

Wait, I got another roll of film, let's

Take a picture of this,

SNAP!!"

Querido Arias, a recent graduate of Edna Karr Senior High School in Algiers and New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, has won an International House of Blues scholarship worth $10,000.