Because hip hop is badly represented in media, it is necessary to present an alternative perspective that reflects its grassroots origins. Moreover, hip hop in its activist form should be leveraged to encourage students to engage media critically. The hip hop community is composed of four major elements: writers (”graffiti” artists), DJs (turntabalists), B Boys and B Girls (break dancers) and MCs (rappers/poets). Equally vital but not always recognizable is the fifth element, the element of “building” (raising consciousness). In hip hop all these elements work together cohesively, like when someone wants to throw a “jam” or party. The graf artist makes the flier, the DJ provides the beats, the MC creates the context and narration and B Boys rock the house.
Sadly, hip hop has been derided by the media as a destructive fad, a fashion and little else. Hip hop is strongest among urban Afro-American and Latino youth, and, in the case of the Southwest, Chicano/Hispanos and Native Americans who have adopted hip hop as a *surrogate* culture. Hip hop is not necessarily a subculture. The reason for distinguishing hip hop as a surrogate culture is because it substitutes many of the elements ineffectively provided by the dominant society. When displaced youth don’t have access to their tradition and culture, hip hop provides a school of life. Hip hop becomes the cultural tradition in a situation where there is a disconnection from customs. Literary and linguistic skills are taught through rapping; visual art and geometry skills are learned through graf art; mathematics and computer skills are learned through the musical forms (DJing and beat production); and break dancing is a de facto form of physical conditioning that can be likened to kung fu or the Brazilian capoeira dance, which combines martial art and dance developed be West African slaves. Break dance’s “up rock” can even resemble Native American fancy dancing or salsa.
To hardcore members of the hip hop community, each of the four elements is to be mastered. Emerging from their mastery is a fifth element of “building” consciousness. This raised awareness is not an end, but a means, which allows one to access a deeper level of self, to cultivate the universal truths within.
Mainstream society holds up gangster rap as an example of why hip hop is considered a dangerous subculture, but this notion ignores the parallel nature of hip hop, which developed organically, on its own in New York’s ghettos outside the view of the media or traditional social institutions. It’s a testament to capitalism’s power that aspects of hip hop would eventually get appropriated and commercialized, but that’s not the whole picture. Hip hop still has a thriving underground speaking a poetic language discernable to those who practice its unspoken ethics and artistic expression. Unfortunately, what is passed off as “sanitized” rap on commercial airwaves still covertly emulates the negativity of gangsterism with veiled references to drugs, sexism and killing people. By adapting hip hop’s language, the commercial version is more dangerous because of its cryptic and irresponsible nature.
Within hip hop’s four core elements you can find a lineage to the past, connections to sacred geometry and science, and tools for self-sufficiency. On a synchronistic level, the form of break dance, a physically intense dance involving a variety of complex movements, has at its core the “six step down rock.” If you chart out these movements they reflect the fundamental pattern of chemical compounds and geometrical forms. Realized through practice, break dance allows you to additionally comprehend laws of physics like concepts of torque and gravity. Also, you can study the roots of break dance, which is traceable to capoeira, as a way of connecting with the struggles of ancient ancestors. Moreover, break dancers have to learn not to abuse their bodies because drugs and poor diet diminish the rigorous conditioning required of the dance. To some, breakdance is ghetto kung fu.
DJs, also called turntabalists, are master technicians. It has been said that jazz was the African appropriation of European instruments. It can also be said hip hop is the re-appropriation of Japanese technology for the art of awakening universal truths within us. Producers and mixers master the computers and audio technology, skills invaluable in a world that is increasingly divided by the information haves, and the information have-nots. But what if technology fails us? Hip hop is self-contained and not technology dependent. For example, in the absence of turntables or drum machines, one can beat-box (vocalized percussion) all the rhythm. Consequently, hop hip is an oral culture that passes information just as Spanish troubadours of old did lyrically in plazas, or like Griots who told old stories and current events through song and music, or the Puerto Rican plena drummers whose “periodico cantado” (sung newspaper) informed the illiterate poor of regional events and news.
Because pure hip Hop is not contingent on MTV or Japanese gadgetry, it’s ultimately uncategorizable. Defining it, in some respects, defeats it. Naming it inevitably leads to commodification.
Hip hop is a manifestation of culture, not a scourge, as some conservative pundits would suggest. It teaches tools for survival by providing a means to voice opinion, explore linguistics and express thoughts and experiences through poetry. It is important to distinguish true hip hop and its fifth element because as much as these are tools to cultivate us, they could easily enslave us if they are misunderstood and appropriated by socio-economic forces who benefit from keeping hip hop’s core audience from self-empowerment.
– By Antonio Lopez, UnderstandMedia.com Contributor, and Mike Ipiotis (360)
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