Oakland-based rapper Hyp performs at Artopia in Seattle (Photo by Jim Gupta-Carlson).
Oakland-based rapper Hyp performs at Artopia in
Seattle (Photo by Jim Gupta-Carlson).
These photos are of artists featured in my ongoing work on women in hip-hop.
Seattle emcee and educator Beloved1
(Photo by Igor Beschieru).
Seattle break-dancers Naj and Remi
(Photo by Jim Gupta-Carlson).
Rapper and activist Rogue Pinay
(Photo source: WikiCommons)
Hip-Hop America is my contribution to one of the most exciting and promising vehicles for political and social emancipation of our time. It is an exciting endeavor to help raise awareness worldwide of the positive aspects of community-based hip-hop. We often ask ourselves questions about what it means to change the world:
Can we change the world through dance? Through poetry? Through song? With a vibrant mural on a wall? Followers of community based hip-hop believe that we can, and are working for the betterment of themselves, their people, and their world through daily dedicated practice of their art and their values.
Hip-hop became known in the 1970s as street art. Young women and men from extremely poor, neglected inner-city neighborhoods reacted to such things as cuts in government funding for school art programs by creating their own art. They used bootleg spray paint to create elaborate murals on train cars and public walls; made music by prolonging the sustained beats in hard funk; and pioneered a new physically challenging form of dance that became known as break-dancing. Eventually, concert emcees became poets and musicians, blending their stories of hardship with poetic verse and rap.
My entry into the world of hip-hop came in 2007 as I was completing my doctoral dissertation and wondering what to do next. I was searching for meaningful work, and not just work that would cover my costs. It was not long before I discovered hip-hop, and what it comprised.
I began to meet and interview women hip-hop artists in Seattle, and created a project in 2010 entitled "What It Means to be a B-Girl: A Celebration of Seattle Women in Hip-Hop". The project received support from a grant through the Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, and resulted in several published essays as well as a public performance. Titles and links to many of the essays are available on my Resources page.
I am continuing my work on Seattle women in hip-hop through a book project entitled "Hip-Hop Seattle: A Story of How Unsung Artists Are Changing the World Around Them". I also am creating a course for Empire State College on hip-hop history and its evolution into a cultural movement. I also speak extensively on the educational and political potential of hip-hop, and would be delighted to offer a talk or workshop in your area. Please contact me via e-mail or call me at 518-587-2100, ext. 2860, for details.
My goal with Hip-Hop America is to further the movement through teaching and writing about hip-hop and its artists. Hip-hop is fast. I race to keep up with the excitement it has generated and the new initiatives that constantly unfold. My work in hip-hop continues the work I am doing with Writing Immigrant Narratives. It is work that strives to show and help create through stories a way of changing our world.