Hip hop education = informed artist citizens

Abstract

What follows is a spoken word piece delivered at the Suncoast Music Education Research Symposium in February of 2019 to a group of higher education faculty and doctoral students. It is the intersection of hip hop lyrics and my white privilege, effectively composed as an artistic response to demonstrate the deep knowledge contained within hip hop lyrics and the value gleaned from their critical analyses. The impetus for this piece was my desire to show the conference attendees an alternative to perpetuated and damaging stereotypes about hip hop, a problem which I perceive as the prevalent understanding of hip hop culture and the dominant critique used to oppress this beautiful art form in educational spaces. A caveat about how I chose to sample some of the lyrics is worth mentioning. In some cases, the first-person perspective of the artists, embodied by their use of ‘I’ or ‘we’ in a song, was not appropriate and lyrics were altered to ‘they’ or ‘them’. This choice was to show internal reflection rather than to imply a lived or even co-opted experience by the author. It is important to stress ‘they’ have informed ‘me’. Jvaust as listening to a piece of music would likely be more powerful than studying the score, this piece may best be received by watching the performance.