Hip-hop Practices Research Articles

Liberatory school counseling practices to promote freedom dreaming for Black youth

The American School Counseling Association calls for professional school counselors to support the holistic development and success of all students. However, the field of school counseling is riddled with practices that have harmed and dehumanized Black students. For example, school counselors engage in practices (e.g., social–emotional learning and vocational guidance), which work to reinforce white supremacy and dehumanize Black students. Further, school counselors may also contribute to the ways that the basic and unique needs of Black students are overlooked, leading to the continued systemic adultification of Black students. What is needed is a radical imagination of school counseling, which centers on homeplace as the foundation in order to engage in freedom dreaming. In this article, the authors engage this radical imagination to detail an antiracist view of school counseling practice that embraces freedom dreaming and homeplace through healing and Indigenous educational practices, youth-led school counseling, and critical hip-hop practices to promote joy, creativity, power, love, resistance, and liberation.

The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: Latinext ed. by Felicia Rose Chavez, José Olivares and Willie Perdomo

Reviewed by: The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: Latinext ed. by Felicia Rose Chavez, José Olivares and Willie Perdomo Ignacio Carvajal THE BREAKBEAT POETS VOL. 4: LATINEXT. By Felicia Rose Chavez, José Olivares, and Willie Perdomo, eds. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2020. The stated purpose of the fourth volume of The BreakBeat Poets series collection, LatiNext, edited by Felicia Rose Chavez, José Olivares, and Willie Perdomo, is to bring “the aesthetic of hip-hop practice to the page.” It is the latest from Haymarket in a series that has published several collections based around sets of marginalized identities. The editors highlight poetics that have been excluded to center the works as serious subjects of study and literary merit. During a moment in which the analytical use of the term “latinidad” in the United States trembles (se tambalea, por de alguna manera decirlo), revealing both the possibilities and fissures in better understanding or wielding concepts like identity or relation, the voices in LatiNext complicate, rather than attempt to foreclose, those discussions. As a whole, the book celebrates what Perdomo in the introduction calls a “somos más” moment. This proclamation seems to be simultaneously referring to the diversity of communities to which the label of Latinx/a/o may or may not apply, but also to a growing number of artists making noise in increasingly visible stages. There are 125 poets in this anthology. They hail from Houston, New York, Chicago, many places in California, the DMV — but also Cuba, New Mexico, Chile, the Dominican Republic. They are Nuyoricans, Afro-Latinx, Ch/Xicanx/o/as, Central American, Queer, Black, poet laureates, established voices, and young new-comers. In Mariana Goycoechea’s “PoEma for MaMi,” to highlight just one, the speaker mourns a mother who struggled with writing: “Mujer,/... I don’t know what I’ll/write from here on/other than to remember to write the entire alphabet/every time I write your name” (43). Gabriel Ramirez’s “Afro-Latinx Manifesto (or I learned to Count Salsa Steps to Laffy Taffy by D4L)” proclaims that “I let go of my father’s abandonment to carry a name I knew better than any,” that of the mother whose belly was kissed by Celia Cruz (73–74). Too many to name here, the collection includes explicit odes to the peacock, to the chola, to Kendrick Lamar, to dipset, to new money, to Tego Calderón — along with many others to place, memory, and future. “These poems, though, they wanna be about something beautiful like birds ‘n’ shit,” writes Joseph Rios in “Fellowship Application." The poem continues (57–58): This poetry is for the birds......Birds that getcancer. Birds that get valley fever. Birds that die ofdiabetes. Birds that watch professional wrestling andown cats with feline leukemia. I hate that my poetry hasto be about this shit, but it’s true.... [End Page 31] The poems in the collection constitute remembrances, eulogies, portraits, and celebrations. Ashley August’s “Luanne” celebrates a young woman at school, much less concerned with what others may think or say and more with living in her joy. She (23–24): Run when it scares herStay when it feel goodSay nothing when she ain’t got nothing to sayDon’t fake the funkShe don’t be polite for nobody’s feelingsTell you she want it, tell you to take it backTell you you stupid when you is stupid The speaker in Victoria Chávez Peralta’s “Dios te Salve, María” insists that “la virgen de guadalupe loves me, even though i’m queer.” Susi García’s “The Bridge is out” defiantly declares that “The bridge is out/but it won’t stop us, amigax –/ we under water walk” (131). Jonathan Mendoza’s “On nationalism” critically states: “I do not need to wave an empire’s flag/to prove I am deserving of a life” (183). Cierto es, como el poema de Raquel Salas Rivera “preguntas frecuentes” nos dice, que (246): en inglés el plural singular ya exitseel yo muchamenteen español tenemos que inventar el pluralellx elleun singular bastardo una caja de galletas/duct tape...

Hip-Hop practice as pedagogy

The idea of Hip-Hop pedagogy for the classroom is in its third decade of existence. This work began with replacing traditional literary texts with Hip-Hop lyrics for close reading and analysis. How...

A Community-Based Intervention: A Hip Hop Framework Toward Decolonizing Counseling Spaces

ABSTRACT The use of hip hop practices within the minority youth counseling environment have demonstrated patient improvement in areas of critical consciousness and civic mindedness, creativity and activism, and the development of a verbal artistic voice. In this study, hip hop is used as an expressive dance tool that is supportive and congruent with intersectional youth identities, offering a decolonized approach to coping skill development for urban youth. The goal of this qualitative study was to illuminate the perceptions and experiences of youth who engaged in a hip hop dance program in a community center. The results of this study indicate that, through participating in a hip hop dance program, participants experienced: stepping out of their comfort zones, developing increases in self-confidence, and experiencing positive feelings associated with processing difficult topics verbally with their peers. Results highlight the need to honor and integrate youth and cultural practices in future therapeutic interventions.

Music and spatial injustice in banlieue cinema

ABSTRACT This article examines the use of pre-existing music in French films set in impoverished banlieue neighbourhoods. It draws on Dikeç’s concept of ‘spatial injustice’, which arises in a convergence of media representation and government policy, entrenching inequality, in the context of the ‘fracture coloniale’ in French society. Pre-existing music, with its wider spheres of signification beyond the film, potentially disrupts reifying visions of the banlieue. The article considers ‘third space music’, applying Powrie’s concept to contemporary cinema in the banlieue. For context, Le Thé au harem d’Archimède (Mehdi Charef, 1985) and La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995) show pre-millennial banlieue films using music as a shared cultural resource. La Haine begins to evoke a third space by foregrounding analogue ‘sampling’, a hip-hop practice in which dominant codes are appropriated and reconfigured, an aesthetics which now pervades contemporary digital life. Looking at pre-existing music in more recent films Divines (Houda Benyamina, 2016) and Swagger (Olivier Babinet, 2016), through the prism of ‘third space music’ and sampling, shows how these films use music in their search for alternative ways of representing the over-determined space of the banlieue, whilst also confronting its spatial injustice.

Glocalisation of Nigerian contemporary hip hop music

This paper discusses the glocal trends in Nigerian hip hop music production in the age of digital communication technology. The concept of music glocalisation explains the local consciousness in music production, dissemination and consumption amid the forces of globalisation. Following the adoption of American hip hop in Nigeria in the 1990s, a renegotiation of hip hop’s cultural authenticity led to the production of localised hip hop with features of preceding popular music genres, especially highlife music. Although highlife was the most favoured popular music in Nigeria before the 1990s, it did not receive immediate global distribution and appreciation as localised hip hop did during the internet era from around 2004 to date. Increased internet access in Nigeria largely strengthened the access to global hip hop production and consumption. By focusing on the music of two Nigerian hip hop artists, 2face and Flavour, this discussion explores the production and transnational projection of transcultural hip hop identities amid global hip hop music flows. The paper contends that hip hop glocalisation promotes blending of hip hop practices of diverse locales, transcultural communication and global appreciation of Nigerian hip hop culture.

Rappers as hip-hopers: the remaking of authenticity and construction of the future by Korean underground rappers

ABSTRACT Contemporary Korean hip-hop has made its way into the mainstream of youth culture, and Korea’s hip-hop scene has emerged as a significant social space in which the voices of the young generation resonate vividly. When compared with the rest of their cohort, emblematized as the so-called ‘Give-up Generation’, the optimism of rappers provides a fascinating subject for exploration. In order to answer the question of why young Korean rappers profess their dreams in the age of no-hope, we interviewed six underground rappers, delving particularly into the following two themes. First is the inquiry into the rappers’ logic of hip-hop practices, under the conceptual rubric of ‘remaking authenticity’. We found that by inventing their own figurative ghettos and symbolically becoming black, they actively reinvent Korean hip-hop authenticity. Second is the inquiry into the principle of their practices. Our findings show that the fundamental motor force which drives them consists of their aspiration for a better future. The dreams of these rappers derive from three distinct sources. The first source is the illusio (Bourdieu) of the Korean hip-hop field; the second source is the musical form of hip-hop itself; the final source is the communities of dreamers to which the rappers belong.

Hip-Hop pedagogy as production practice: Reverse-engineering the sample-based aesthetic

Abstract Hip-hop music practice contains a rich matrix of creative methods within its paradigm, which can inform and inspire music production pedagogy. The techno-artistic trajectory of rap production consists of numerous performing, engineering and production phases, while it may also involve self-contained developmental practices, such as the creation of intermediate content for sampling. The well-documented issues affecting phonographic sampling have given rise to alternative approaches, inviting both live musicianship and a dependence on synthesized sonics within hip-hop practice. As a hybrid production vehicle par excellence, Hip-Hop provides a fertile context for the application of diverse techniques in pursuit of inter-stylistic aesthetics. The article explores the spectrum of creative opportunities that lie between live performance, sample-based processes and notions of ‘composition’ as encompassed within the hip-hop paradigm. The aim is to identify under-represented aspects of contemporary music production and unexploited synergies in popular music curricula that may benefit from further integration.

Remixing the School Counselor’s Tool Kit

This article explores a model for school counselors to capitalize on the therapeutic, empowerment-oriented nature of hip-hop practices to engage in youth participatory action research (YPAR). Drawing from research that supports the use of hip-hop therapy and YPAR in schools, we propose a culturally sensitive group counseling process wherein students use hip-hop lyric writing, recording, and performing to critically analyze, research, and report on issues of personal importance to them.

LOCATING HIP HOP ORIGINS: POPULAR MUSIC AND TRADITION IN SENEGAL

ABSTRACTThis article complicates internationally circulating origin myths that alternately link hip hop to West African griot traditions or highlight the global resonance of its roots in the US inner city. I argue that such generalizing narratives potentially obscure how complex understandings of traditional cultural production inform local engagements with hip hop in Africa, and advocate instead for ethnographically generated interpretive frameworks that enable alternative, locally grounded analyses of hip hop cultures. In doing so, I examine the particularity of Senegalese invocations of origin myths to ask how local and global histories are reimagined through discourse about musical practice. Based on their understandings of tradition as something that precedes, is transformed in, and remains integral to contemporary urban life in Senegal, underground hip hoppers conflate the local popular genrembalaxwith griot practice, contrasting it with hip hop as a modern music born from experiences of urban struggle that resonate with their own realities. I demonstrate that Senegalese hip hop practice is defined not only through political engagement or social action but also through and against local musical practices that performatively re-inscribe the political and social systems that limit and contain youth.

‘Orality is my reality’: the identity stakes of the ‘oral’ creation in Libreville hip-hop practices

Based on an ethnographic study in Libreville, this presentation examines the political and identity issues contained in the inscription in the register of orality for Gabonese hip-hop artists, mainly in rap music and slam poetry. It describes the history of these two genres’ appropriation in Libreville, then analyses how the claim for orality is deeply shaped for Gabonese youth with a dynamic of identity construction and of reafricanization, manifested in three different ways: the creation of a peer language (toli bangando), the use of a traditional Fang epic (mvet), and the staging of religious initiation societies. It finally discusses how this identity construction coincides with postcolonial issues and with connections with the black diaspora.

Carnal teachings: raunch aesthetics as queer feminist pedagogies in Yo! Majesty's hip hop practice

This essay puts forward a notion of “raunch aesthetics,” theorizing raunch as an aesthetic, performative, and vernacular practice: an explicit mode of sexual expression that transgresses norms of privacy and respectability. Raunch aesthetics describe creative practices that often blend humor and sexual explicitness to launch cultural critiques, generate pleasure for minority audiences, and affirm queer lives. The author activates her formulation of raunch in analyzing Yo! Majesty, a hip hop group comprised of black female emcees who openly describe their sexual desire for women, and explores how the queer youth of color she works with have responded to their music. Working beyond the unexamined moralisms that give critiques of raunch culture their legitimacy, the author argues that Yo! Majesty's raunch aesthetics transmit queer and feminist teachings. While celebrating carnal pleasures, these artists critique heterosexism, subvert narratives about the incompatibility of belief in Christ and queer sexualities, and trouble notions concerning the emancipation of coming out of the closet and declaring a stable homosexual identity. In demonstrating how raunch aesthetics generate consciousness raising, the author discusses how her youth participants critically read and consume hip hop while negotiating unwieldy meanings of sexuality and gender presentation.

‘Mic Power’: ‘Public’ connections through the hip hop nation in Kampala

Hip hop culture has been celebrated in the media and scholarship as a universal youth language, part of a global hip hop nation, and a type of counter-public. This article examines the everyday meanings and practices of hip hop among hip hop activists in Kampala, Uganda, specifically within the Batuuze rap group. Rather than portraying hip hop as a counter-public of the disempowered, I argue that the Batuuze engagement is based on what I call moral economy that enables the negotiation of connections in social and cultural networks towards what is considered a good life. Here, the hip hop nation is less of an alternative public sphere and more a way of articulating and contextualizing the world in a specific locality, which produces connections and opportunities in the young rappers’ lives.

“Maybe I’ll Be a Poet, Rapper”: Hip-Hop Feminism and Literary Aesthetics in Push

This article argues that Push is properly read within the tradition of hip-hop feminist literature and aesthetics. The novel’s invocation of hip hop as the cultural backdrop of protagonist Precious’s coming-of-age intervenes in black literary aesthetics in two ways. First, the novel is the first in the tradition of African American women’s literature to offer a protagonist whose primary self-articulation is understood through hip hop, rather than jazz or the blues. Thus I argue that this text both takes up the cultural project of making space for hip-hop music begun in Toni Morrison’s Jazz and acts as a critique of the way that Morrison invokes (or rather doesn’t invoke) hip-hop culture a decade later in Love . Second, however, I contend that this text intervenes in male-centered genealogies of hip-hop aesthetics, arguing for a different set of cultural narratives through which female hip-hop protagonists understand themselves—ultimately that history includes the hip-hop practice of sampling from black women novelists like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison and soul singers like Aretha Franklin. Through the invocation of this black feminist past, Precious begins to articulate her own nascent hip-hop feminist consciousness. Thus, I argue that Push acts as a bridge text between more traditional canonical African American women’s novels by Walker and Morrison and more recent hip-hop, urban, or street novels like those by Sistah Souljah, Nikki Turner, Wahida Clark, and others.

REVERSAL OF FORTUNES?: SÃO PAULO YOUTH REDIRECT URBAN DEVELOPMENT

This article addresses the relationship between space and investment in two forms of popular culture as part of an assessment of urban development in Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo. Through a selected braiding of ethnographic reflections, urban histories, and social theories of speculation, I argue that the youth cultural practices of hip hop and “saraus” or open microphone talent shows have influenced the flows of investment and the social geography of expressive culture in São Paulo. Consequently, the value of the marginalized periphery (“periferia”) has changed and with it the overall conceptualization of São Paulo.

Giving Back Time: Improvisation in Australian Hip-Hop Pedagogy and Performance

This article documents improvisatory practices in Australian community-based hip-hop, with reference to the work of Australian hip-hop artists Morganics and Wire. It places their teaching work with disadvantaged Indigenous communities in context with the work of free improvisation teachers and theories of improvisation and history, drawn from key critical texts in improvisation studies. Improvisation is shown as key to hip-hop practice and pedagogy in Australia. This paper argues, by employing a performance studies model of the archive and the repertoire, that improvisation in these case studies offers participants the chance to be part of a type of history making that accepts the constructed and performed nature of history and forwards improvisation-led challenges to social injustice.

Aboriginal youth, hip hop and the politics of identification

This paper explores the identity work taking place around contemporary subcultural hip hop amongst Australian indigenous youth in two disadvantaged urban locations. Previous work on Aboriginal hip hop has been attentive to the interface between tradition and modernity. However, existing scholarship has lacked a deeper ethnographic understanding of the dynamics between youth and parent cultures, and the tensions between the two generations. This article is based on research with young hip hop enthusiasts, community activists and educators. It deals with the cultural politics of identification and sees hip hop practice as associated with a process in which Aboriginality is crystallized as a principal affiliation and as offering an account for experiences of social marginalization. Far from being an outlet for expressing a prior or essential Aboriginality, hip hop as cultural practice is associated with the production of particular identifications.

The Diy Habitus of Australian Hip Hop

Since its origins in the late 1980s, Australian hip hop continues to be fundamentally a do-it-yourself (DIY) subcultural field which has little or no music industry input or support. This paper profiles some of the small labels and producers in Australian hip hop (Obese, Elefant Traks, Nuff Said, Crookneck, Invada, etc.) and examines how they have formed from the ground up, using community radio stations such as 2SER, PBS and 3ZZZ, and websites such as Ozhiphop.com , to promote their music, as well as organising their own gigs and tours. It also examines Aboriginal practitioners of hip hop, who have even less infrastructure than the DIY network of independent producers and labels. Drawing on Holly Kruse's writing about ‘situated practices’ in independent rock music, which refers to Bourdieu's ‘fields of practice’ and ‘habitus’, I examine the subcultural networks and associations that have emerged in Australian hip hop, mediated through a nexus of genre, gender, space, location, race and ethnicity. The concept of habitus is arguably a useful way of referring to hip hop practices like MCing, DJing, breakdancing and graffiti, as well as the social behaviour associated with the hip hop subculture.

‘Reading the referents’: the ghost of America in contemporary Kenyan popular music

Cultural practices such as music can be read for the ways in which they both indicate and formulate contexts. This reading of contemporary Kenyan popular music focuses on the mobility and diffusion of popular music in order to analyse intertextuality in local songtexts. The data is provided by two seminal chart hits — Hardstone's “Uhiki” (Wedding; 1997) and Gidi Gidi Maji Maji's “Ting badi malo” (Lift up your arms; 1999). The argument proceeds by identifying the hip-hop practices and the many other references to American socio-cultural and economic discourses in these songs. This appropriation of hip-hop works as a reverse circuit of the black Atlantic exchange, but even then we note the imaginative processes by which local popular forms appropriate and domesticate “foreign” processes and ideas in the system termed globalization