Talilo Marfil started his musical journey making beats at the Apple store in downtown Portland when he was just 16 years old — as a houseless teenager, this became his means of survival.
Now, a renowned local rap artist, Marfil used his platform in 2017 to connect with kids in Klamath Falls who were struggling just like he did. He invited them to create music with him in the back of his mom’s Filipino gift shop with just a microphone and a laptop.
What started as Marfil’s desire to uplift and connect with struggling youth in his community, particularly those aging out of the foster care system, has evolved into an award-winning nonprofit, Ascending Flow, now located in east Portland.
Music is a powerful tool for the brain, particularly for those in vulnerable stages in their lives simultaneously struggling to survive. Music saved Marfil, and by focusing on mentorship and mental health, he’s giving young people the opportunity to find their own outlets of personal and artistic expression while helping them envision a better future for themselves.
“At first we didn’t have an end goal,” Marfil said. “It wasn’t ‘I’m going to mentor you to help change your behavior’ or ‘I’m going to mentor you to help you get good grades.’ That wasn’t the goal at all, the goal was to connect and just show a different path and to show the opportunities.”
But he noticed how these kids’ lives were improving.
“When we started collecting data, we started seeing grades go up and mental health go up, more attendance at school,” Marfil said. “It was just natural. Some kids wouldn’t go to jail as much or at all, some stopped using drugs.”
As the program grew, he wanted to find a way to sustain the program to help more young people, but he understood this had to be done thoughtfully, as artistic expression alone doesn’t get the same recognition as other programs.
“It seems like music and art are always the last to get funded and I feel like I was always trying to figure out how to make it important,” Marfil said. “It’s important to me and to a lot of people who testify to music saving their life, giving them purpose. But how do I make it important to the system?”
That’s when he came up with the idea to tie in mentorship and mental health. His program follows a model that uses the four elements that each represent a different part of life. Earth stands for physical wellness, water for mentorship and community, fire for positive and artistic expression and wind for knowledge and education.
The students interpret these spaces on their own, and the space is separated into each of the elements with designs complimenting each element. He said he wants to make the kids feel good about coming into the space since many didn’t have that in their lives, so the building on the outside is also covered in colorful graffiti made by a team of artists. The mural represents foster youth who aged out of the system.
“I started thinking about how those elements could transfer to the value of mentoring,” Marfil said. “That was all inspired because I was a hip-hop artist for a long time even before conceiving Flow.”
This has been incredibly effective. One student Marfil recalls won a talent show and dropped a music video, and attributes their sobriety to this opportunity and this program.
“They were sober because of the music, because of the mentorship, because of the opportunity to do these projects,” Marfil said. “This is somebody who used to use meth and heroin and were MIA. They changed their life because of the elemental model in this program.”
Ascending Flow is located on Southeast 122nd Avenue, an underfunded part of the city. A close friend of Marfil’s, Donovan Scribes, said what Marfil’s doing reminds him of the late rapper and community advocate Nipsey Hussle, because he was somebody who was popular who people looked up to.
“It’s important to recognize when people are doing things that are representative of their own communities,” Scribes said. “I think him being in that area on 122nd and doing the things he’s doing, and having a building that’s actually bringing life and productivity into the area is very much in the name of that.”
The death of Dante McFallo
Gun violence is having dramatic and disparate impacts on Portland-area youth, particularly in the Black community. On Jan. 1, 18-year-old Dante McFallo was fatally shot in Gresham near Southeast 187th Avenue. Marfil, who mentored Dante off and on since he was 12 years old, said Dante is the reason he started Ascending Flow.
Dante was a teenager with many talents who naturally had a strong, positive influence on others and he was loved by his community, said his mom Jozi McFallo.
“My kid was amazing,” Jozi said. “That kid was one of a kind. He was incredibly talented, incredibly smart. His wordplay when he rapped was insane.”
Dante wanted to be a barber, and was cutting hair for his mom, his siblings and all the neighborhood kids.
He had an impact on people around him as well. One of his mom’s friends is going to continue working with kids in the justice system because of him.
“From former teachers, (Marfil), one of his mentors, he really influenced people in a way,” Jozi McFallo said. “Dante wanted to be a mentor, and he would’ve been a great one. He loved little kids, they all loved him. Younger kids looked up to him.”
The city started seeing an uptick in gun violence around the same time the pandemic went into full force in early 2020, which is when more people went into poverty and houselessness as a result.
Talilo went to visit the location where his student was killed, and he met someone who looked a few years younger than Dante also paying his respects. He connected with him and found out the young boy was supposed to get his haircut by Dante.
“I added him on Insta, and he was posting on his stories about how upset he was about the gun violence, and I reached out to him,” Marfil said. “I told him that the fact that you’re this young, you live in the hood and you’re talking about these issues — that’s powerful.”
Pushing for change
Marfil believes if more young people like this kid, Portlanders with lived experience, and people who’ve lost children could share their stories and be at the table making presentations and decisions, the outcomes would be different.
“There’s so many people talking about this shit but they’re not his age, they don’t see people dying around them, they’re not holding the pistol like they’re holding,” Marfil said. “The city is talking about the gun problem, but you’ve got to invest 10 years in advance to see the results.”
One reason Ascending Flow program is so crucial is it helps prevent people from doing things that can change their life and make it harder to switch paths, like going to jail which just creates a cycle, he says.
“If you can prevent anyone from going to jail, that’s a big success right there because once you’re in jail it’s easy to click up, and once you click up and you get out of prison, now you’re in a gang and now you’re in the lifestyle and it’s hard to get out of that and what comes with that,” Marfil said. “But if you invest in the programs and engage in the kids you could see something.”
While music, in addition to future planning for these students, is only one element of focus at Ascending Flow, music is a big piece of it and that’s because of the profound impact it has.
Jovannie Shearn, Marfil’s music manager and mental health advocate, says music is a universal language that can be felt deeply by anyone, regardless of the language.
“What I have learned with dealing with young people is that 99% of the time they do not have the words to articulate what they’re feeling,” Shearn said. “In music you don’t have to be grammatically correct, you don’t have to be politically correct, you can just express how you’re feeling at the time, even if you can’t articulate it in words.”
This is important for young folks who are growing up and learning how to cope with their emotions, especially for those living in traumatic and unstable environments.
“I wanted to create a program to give back to the next generation … because I didn’t have that growing up. I’ve seen music empower youth that struggle with that self-worth.”
“How many times have we read that I heard that song and it literally saved my life — that is not just talk,” Shearn said. “That is real.”
Shearn said what really makes Ascending Flow stand out from other similar nonprofits is the heart behind its mission.
“Some people help people because it’s the right thing to do, some people help because they feel obligated and some people help because they don’t have a choice,” Shearn said. “That’s just who they are and that’s the heart of Ascending Flow. These guys are up crying for the people they serve.”
Marfil has become a role model for young Portlanders not only through the nonprofit but also with his music. He recently released a song and music video titled “122nd” that talks about the realities facing his community.
In pre-pandemic times, Shearn was regularly contacted from young people after Marfil’s shows saying how they connected with his music.
“These are middle school, high school kids saying ‘oh my god,’ that really touched me,” Shearn said. “A lot of folks don’t know people have gone through what they’ve gone through and then they share that in songs and especially young people are like the reason I can relate to that is because I know I’m not the only one who’s gone through that and that’s really powerful.”
Music was life-changing for Marfil. It gave him a way to feel heard and valued while expressing himself, especially during dark times. What music did for him, he is passing onto future generations with his work at Ascending Flow.
“When I was on stage and people would clap and cheer for me, it was the opposite of what I had growing up being kicked out of places,” Marfil said. “I wanted to create a program to give back to the next generation … because I didn’t have that growing up. I’ve seen music empower youth that struggle with that self-worth.”
He has seen music give these students a voice, and they are also learning transferable skills that can help land them jobs since they feel more confident in writing and in expressing themselves.
Ascending Flow is currently testing out a new pilot program helping foster youth who are aging out of the system. New Narrative, a mental health nonprofit contracted by the Department of Human Services, is partnering with Ascending Flow to carry out this mission because they specialize in mentoring.
“We come in with tattoos, rapping, break dancing, lived experience, art so we could speak their language a little closer to their lingo,” Marfil said. “That makes a huge difference for foster youth who are used to being analyzed and therapy and counseling and lockdown facilities. A lot of that isn’t as effective as meeting up with someone who has been there and done that.”
Shearn enjoys working with Marfil because she wholeheartedly believes in him and his vision.
“(Talilo) is authentic, because he has a soul to serve,” Shearn said. “He is real. He has purpose and if he doesn’t 100% know what that purpose is, he’s willing to learn it. He’s a genuine person and artist and there’s nothing fake about him. His music is real, what he does for the community is real. You see him in person it all lines up.”