Hip Hop Hooplah

I was talking to a co worker yesterday and he expressed frustration about hip hop as a venue for teaching. He basically made the argument that it seems like everything is hip hop this or hip hop that, and that everything is made to look appealing by making it graffiti or a certain style of dress. And while he was talking specifically about our center at first, his tone quickly broadened to cover the whole gambit of youth culture. On the one hand, I totally see his point, especially at our center, where hip hop culture is kind of the law of the land. However, there are a couple of reasons that I don't think that justifies ceasing using hip hop as a means of education. (1) It's effective, not only as a means of communicating ideas and new skills, but as a means of re-identifying what hip hop culture really is. (2)Specifically in media, hip hop, and specifically the art of remixing is the ideal venue to introduce the idea of bricolage, which this generation more than any before it is hugely familiar with, and unfortunately unaware of. We are just over 100 years away from the inventions of television and radio, and the last century's styles, music, television, movies, and ideas have been more well documented than any other in history. This gives today's youth a unique opportunity to reappropriate these images and sounds in their own way. While bricolage (which comes from the french word for brick-layer) is not a new concept, its potential today is unimaginable, and it is the idea of remixing that has opened doors for further explorations of bricolage, from video to fashion, to HISTORY. Now, I could teach this incredibly important idea the way that I learned it, through Marxist terminology and hours of boring lectures about superstructures and bases. However, wouldn't it be more well received if I introduced the idea through something that teens are already familiar with? That was the long one.

(3) We shouldn't stop teaching hip hop culture, because it's not where it should be. Someone told me recently that they couldn't leave their job, because they wouldn't be leaving it in the right place for someone else to take on. If we left hip hop culture to only represent girls in bikinis, flashy cars, and drug money, which is unfortunately the way a lot of people perceive it, then we wouldn't be handling it very responsibly. I grew up on Queen Latifah, Salt-n-Pepa, and yes, Public Enemy. It is important to me to protect the legacy of education and empowerment that they helped to instill in me, and to give that message to another generation.