My name is Daniel Pomerantz. I am 18 years old and I come from St. Louis Missouri. I was born into a Jewish middle-class family and my parents sent me to a Jewish preschool and Jewish elementary school, keeping me in what I refer to as “The Jewish Bubble” for the first half of my life.
As an elementary school student, I was blissfully unaware of the challenges and issues that faced so many in my neighborhood. When I transferred to public school in 6th grade, everything changed.
In the University City School District, over 90% of my classmates are African-American, and many experience daily struggles that I could never imagine. Racism, poverty, absent or inconsistent parenting, homelessness, and trauma are all issues that my classmates—my friends—knew firsthand.
My life experiences have shaped me into the person I understand myself to be and I am thankful for these experiences and the opportunities I’ve been given.
My portfolio is a look into my world. Choose however you wish to guide yourself through it.
This portfolio is inspired by the producer J Dilla. To me, J Dilla has perfected the art of finding parts of songs that don’t necessarily stand out and using them as a sample to create something risky and beautiful. In my posts, I try to emulate Dilla’s style by associating concepts that one wouldn’t assume to overlap. Doing so, I have found myself taking many risks in my posts, something I would not have done at the beginning of this Humanities course. This class has given me a place to dissect, to make the unobvious stretch.
My portfolio culminates with a short J Dilla-inspired album that I created on Logic Pro.
