Celebrating its 50th anniversary, hip-hop is in a notable leadership position. Despite mainstream influences that have ignored hip-hop’s legitimate influence for decades, hip-hop, which began as a cultural expression, is now having a profound impact on business, music, and culture on a global scale. increase.
In the early 1990s, hip-hop music and culture emerged as an important educational tool at all levels of education. From K-12 classroom dancing and rhyming, college level classes The use of hip-hop in education, including archives, artist-centered research and fellowships, has evolved significantly over the decades.
Teaching hip-hop as history
For the past 50 years, hip-hop artists’ representations of race, violence, economic class, and more are now being used as powerful educational tools. Dan Charnas, an associate professor of arts at New York University, suggests that hip-hop is pivotal to education as a whole.A popular lecture on the late producer and composer J. Dilla, he has produced artists such as A Tribe Called Quest, General and Janet Jackson — Inspiring Charnas, new york times best seller dillah time.
“Hip-hop is just part of a longer popular music tradition that exists squarely in the history of culture, music and everything else. So teaching hip-hop is like teaching history. It’s nothing but,” Charnas told GRAMMY.com, adding that it doesn’t incorporate hip-hop. Dive into his curriculum “would be an incomplete education for our world.
“Interesting,” he continued, quoting the next episode. [Rick Rubin‘s] podcast. “Last year when I was on the show, he said, ‘I teach hip-hop, what’s it like?’ You said hip-hop was what you were doing when you were a student at Tisch. Instead school’s. He comes from a generation that didn’t have the context of being somewhat academic. “
Charnas is certainly not the first scholar to study hip-hop. He cites a 1994 book by Brown University professor Tricia Rhodes. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America as an important advance that paved the way for hip-hop scholarship.
The study of hip-hop has also come a long way, from socio-cultural studies focused on history to in-depth studies of specific artists. Decades after Howard University began talking about hip-hop studies in 1991, the University of California, Berkeley, created a course to study the late rapper. Tupac Shakur In 1997, he won 17 Grammy Awards. kendrick lamar It is now the subject of dedicated courses at universities across the country. Lamar is one of the artists who exemplifies how hip-hop culture transcends genres and formats, and his work is a living document of society.
Good boy, Marad City The theme is “Gang violence, inner-city parenting, drug use and the war on drugs, sex slavery, human trafficking and so much more.” It’s a thing,” said Adam Deal, a lecturer at Georgia Regents University*USA Today.
Diehl introduced a course on Lamar in 2014 and today Lectures on hip-hop at Augusta University. What if people said, “Toni Morrison, Hemingway, and Emily Dickinson are too new to study,” he continued. USA Today. “Everything was too new, too popular, too risque at the time, but I think great stories live on. Good boy, Marad City, persists. “
“In my literature course, music is considered an important text.” Said Dr. Regina N. Bradley is an Assistant Professor of English and African Diaspora Studies at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. In one class, students delve into black protest songs. In another article, they analyze the music of Southern rap pioneers as follows: outcast. Both help students make connections between the past and the present.
“Music is pedagogy. It’s archival and very real,” she explained. “If we can show and prove to our students that the history of civil rights for blacks is cyclical rather than linear, then their experiences and everyday witnesses will bring the past into the present. You come to understand and cherish it as a reflection, you live in music, you live in culture… My job as a professor is to show my students points and make them a little bit better. It’s about bringing them together and leading them on their own journeys of discovery.”
Hip-hop has been used as a tool to teach students in kindergarten through high school in a variety of ways, such as learning and playing rhymes in math classes and analyzing current affairs issues such as police brutality and social justice. is also used.Non-profit organizations such as Oakland hip hop for change We work with local schools to teach foundational elements of MC, DJ, graffiti, breakdance and more. Like our colleagues across the country, our instructors use that culture to share their hands-on knowledge of the world.
Hip-Hop Archives and Fellowships Advance Research in Hip-Hop Forms
Since the opening of Cornell University, the creation of hip-hop archives and fellowships at the university has been an important educational development over the past 15 years. cornell hip hop collection CHHC features over 250,000 digital and physical artifacts including recordings, party flyers, graffiti art, magazines, books and personal archives. Artists and documentary media like MC Grandmaster Kaz, photographers Joe Konzo and Ernie Paniccioli, and filmmaker Charlie Ahern (best known for his seminal hip-hop films) wild style) and former Def Jam spokesperson and author Bill Adler are all at CHHC.
For the first time on the West Coast, UCLA’s hip-hop initiative is being launched following CHHC in 2022.University’s Ralph J. Bunch Center for African-American Studies Its missions include creating a digital archive and providing postdoctoral fellowships. public enemyof chuck D is the hip-hop initiative’s first artist-in-residence.
UCLA professor and advisory board member Cheryl Keys said, “It’s incredible to be able to witness and mentor so many students as they tap into the history and experience of the communities that gave rise to hip-hop.” Said in a statement. “There is richness, depth and context yet to be discovered and uncovered, and this effort will further support that.”
“As we celebrate 50 years of the history of hip-hop music and culture, the rigorous study of this culture reveals a wealth of information, from language to black music, black history, and the tremendous social and political impact blacks have on world culture. From dance, visual arts and fashion to electoral politics, political activism and more,” added H. Sammy Alim, Associate Director and Initiative Leader.
One of the most prestigious universities in the United States offers resident fellowships for advanced studies in hip-hop music and culture. In 2013, the Hip Hop Archives and Research Institute (HARI) and the Hutchins Center for African and African American Studies at Harvard University Nasir Jones Hip Hop Fellowship.Named after a Grammy-winning hip-hop artist eggplant, this fellowship is funded by an anonymous donor. Past winners include Dr. Bradley of Kennesaw. (His HARI at Harvard also offers additional resident fellowships.)
“Hip-hop is as important as computer science.” eggplant Said At a press conference announcing the Jones Fellowship. “The world is changing. If you want to understand young people, listen to music. This is what is happening before your eyes.”
Having fellowships and archives ensures continued research into hip-hop and gives us the hope of cementing the legacy of hip-hop for the next 50 years and beyond.
teach the elements
As hip-hop education expands and deepens at all academic levels, more specialized schools may be established, increasing educational interest in the original elements of hip-hop: DJs, MCs, beatboxing, graffiti art, and breakdancing. There is also sexuality.
The foundational history and practice of DJing is now taught in courses at major institutions such as Stanford University and New York City’s New School, and is incorporated into curricula at music production schools such as Boston’s Berklee College of Music and San Francisco’s Pyramid. I’m here. One-off workshops and his one-day classes are also sometimes held at select record stores. good elevation in Brooklyn.
Professional technical DJ schools are training future stars online and offline. Queens, New York-based DJ Rob Swift began his own DJing skills after years of teaching civilians and college students his DJing skills. Brolic Army DJ School Teach advanced skills, host masterclasses with other Legends, and host student challenges online.
Another excellent technical DJ school is beat junkie institute of sound (BJIOS) trains DJs and productions both online and in-store in Glendale, CA. Like friend and colleague Swift and his X-Ecutioners crew, Beat Junkies DJ rose to international prominence in his 90s as a champion of the world’s battle DJ circuit.
Like MCs, graffiti and breakdance, female DJs have been an influential and underrepresented part of rap culture, but that may be changing. BJIOS has a department that supports women and girls called Ladies of Sound, which supports more than half of the students and scholarship In honor of the late Pam the Funkstress, for women, prince His final tour with Pyramids and the Purple Pum Foundation.
The future of physical education
The world is facing a new frontier in hip-hop-influenced athletics thanks to breakdancing, which will become an official Olympic sport from the Paris 2024 Games. This official accreditation could drive the need for new learning opportunities in K-12 schools, colleges, dance studios and sports colleges around the world.
This is already starting to happen in East Coast academia.of Philadelphia basics of hip hop utilizes movement in tandem with academic and social education to introduce professional breakdance workshops into K-12 schools.
Princeton University Lecturer and Hearst Choreographer in Residence Raphael Xavier offers a college course called “Introduction to Breaking: Decoding Its Power.” The course “places equal weight on academic research and concrete practice, using both approaches to explore the currents, powers and cultural contexts of breaking”.
From being ignored as a passing fad, hip-hop has grown into an important lens through which we learn about the world. The latter acceleration alone over the last 15 years suggests that much more is to come with hip-hop and education.
The most important teacher of this culture is hip-hop music, which over time will continue to evolve intellectually, spiritually and physically throughout the planet. In that respect, the potential of education is just beginning to be understood.
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