CRAIN'S NEW YORK BUSINESS

The company, based in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, is providing a grass-roots link between corporate America and the minority community in that borough.

Basement Recordings' program to teach the community about digital recording technology has attracted the attention, and help of, computer giants such as Commodore Business Machines Inc. and Yamaha Corp. of America.

Luring new consumers

Through the free program, computer companies are able to not only cultivate possible minority consumers for their products, but to curry interest in careers in the field.

"Their position is that this is an investment in their future," says Basement Recordings Founder and President Trevor John, referring to Commodore and Yamaha.

Basement Recordings was created in 1986 by Mr. John, an electrical engineer, and now-general manager Augustin Hinkson, a former medical school student. They decided to make a career of music by putting together their own music studio, and developing local talent, ranging from rap to Caribbean artists.

But the company's other mission was to offer a program to educate the nearby community, which is African-American, Caribbean and Hispanic, about the latest in musical recording technology. The computer applications students learn can be applied to fields other than music.

In September 1989, Basement formally started its free "Electronic Music Educational Program." Since then, more than 500 people have participated in the course, with attendees ranging from musicians to non-musical types who are curious.

"A lot of people in the music business have fear of the technology, or haven't had access to it," Mr. John says.

Commodore and Yamaha have donated a variety of equipment to Basement Recordings, including synthesizers, mixing boards, speakers and computers.

Commodore, based in West Chester, Pa., has been raving about feedback and the results from the program.

"From a marketing point of view, I'm exposing as many people as possible to the strengths of our computer, the Amiga," says Paul Calkin, Commodore director of education marketing.

He says that Basement's community-based approach is accessible and easy to relate to.

Commodore gets a questionnaire from each of Basement's students, explaining what type of computer equipment they might be interested in buying in the future.

"This reaches a market we're interested in, but that is not really being reached by normal distribution," says Steven Thatcher, assistant to the president of Buena Park, Calif.-based Yamaha.

Although Commodore doesn't track each purchase at its half-dozen New York City dealerships, Mr. Calkin claims there has been an increase of business for computers for educational purposes.

Sony Corp. of America, although it hasn't donated equipment to Basement Recordings, earlier this year visited Basement Recordings to teach a workshop on its compact disk equipment.

"This is a minority community, which is a good focal point for the future," says George Kazane, a digital sales manager for Sony.

Ernie Graham, a full-time computer operator and part-time rapper from Bedford-Stuyvesant, took the course two years ago and is now an instructor. A year ago, Mr. Graham won a contest sponsored by WRKS-FM, the urban contemporary radio station, to compose a theme song for its morning show. "l rapped on the song, and used the studio at Basement to record it," he says.

Attracting college students

The course also gets attendees from Medgar Evers College in Crown Heights, part of the City University of New York, including one of its professors. Earlier this year Jamesetta Holliman, a music professor, took the course. "I'm a musician, and I'm a traditionalist," she says. "But I need to be able to talk intelligently to students about electronic recording. As a music professor, I'm expected to know."

She recently brought along Edison O. Jackson, president of Medgar Evers, to visit Basement Recordings because the college is putting together plans for a multimedia center. Ms. Holliman says Mr. Jackson liked what he saw.

"I got some training there," she says, "and I've gotten ideas from them that I've incorporated in our proposal."