Higher Education :: Hip-hop scribe and URB alumni Jeff Chang hits the academic circuit to promote his new book
By Jeff Chang Photography by Jeff Chang
Spring in Laramie looks like winter in Alaska. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it this afternoon to the Vassar event. Skies are clear here now in Wyoming, but there is no physical way to be there today. We’ll reschedule the event as soon as we can. See y’all in Hartford at the Trinity International Hip-Hop Festival tomorrow.
March 30th: Karl Roves of the World
Joseph Abrams begins by critiquing my new book, but he starts heading toward a way of defanging hip-hop by reducing it to just a pleasurable way of understanding “the black street world”—his words, not mine. You may remember these are the same folks that last year tried to rewrite rock history recently as a proto-conservative movement.
In any case, reducing hip-hop to a simple “identity movement” is one way to make hip-hop safe for the Karl Roves of the world. (And you see what the results are…) Now, although many academics have made the claim, I have never claimed hip-hop began as political movement. I’ve always repeated the lesson that Kool Herc schooled me in: It simply began as a way for black youth—African American, Afro-Latino, Afro-Caribbean—in the Bronx to have fun. No more, no less.
April 1st: Hip-Hopportunist
I was told that last year’s inaugural Trinity College International Hip-Hop Festival was the best of the wave of springtime hip-hop conferences. And this year’s festival did not disappoint. I got to attend a great panel led by Marinieves Alba on the Afro-Latino Diaspora in hip-hop, with activist/DJ Loira “DJ Laylo” Limbal, Ariel Fernandez from Havana, Eli Efi from São Paulo, Rodstarz from Chicago’s Rebel Diaz and fi lmmaker Vanessa Diaz. The conversation quickly moved to a deep discussion about the role hip-hop has played in reinvigorating educational and youth movements from Brazil to Chicago to the Bronx. Eli Efi , in particular, spoke about how independent hiphop “posses” transformed the entire educational system by taking it upon themselves to organize hip-hop programs in favela schools in São Paulo.
Our Total Chaos panel featured Toni Blackman, PopMaster Fabel, Juba Kalamka and Vijay Prashad whose new book, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, is absolutely essential. Because the event was held on the Saturday after Karl Rove had performed a rap at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, I started with a question about whether this was an indication that hip-hop really was dead. Blackman and Fabel both responded by noting the irony that men who cared nothing for the culture would use it in a mocking way, another example of how hip-hop currently is received in the global popular culture. Fabel called Rove a “hip-hopportunist.” Prashad then noted that there was a history of blackface minstrelsy at such White House dinners, that in fact Rove’s crunkface was in line with a history going back more than a century.
All the panelists talked about how to maintain a radical aesthetic in the face of rampant commercialization and continuing voicelessness. Kalamka noted that young gay rappers no longer have the expectation of speaking to one another, but in breaking big in the industry. Prashad decried the idea of art as property, noting that Jay-Z doesn’t write a check to the black community when he receives royalties for his records. Fabel noted that the decline of public jams and block parties has seriously affected the culture–there are fewer places for competition and evolution of the culture not tied to capital.
We all moved out for some Peruvian food (which was really close to Chinese-American home cooking, except the steaks weighed, like, 25 pounds each) and then returned for a great showcase, with incredible sets from La Bruja, African Underground (with Ben holding down the drum kit like a master), Baba Israel and Yako, and Les Nubians. All in all, a perfect day. If anyone could come to this event and still be cynical about whether hip-hop can do its thing on a college campus—which, if you think about it, is just another space to take over—well, they probably don’t have a soul.
April 5th: Bombs Per Minute
Spring again, right Biz Markie? Welcome to April, the month of my solar return and the official opening of protest season or panel season. Some days I think back on burning tires and bandanna’d youth on Telegraph Avenue in my adopted homeplace of Berkeley, CA, and I think we might be better served by more protests than panels.
Then there are days when people like Bakari Kitwana bring in folks like Joan Morgan, Davey D, Mark Anthony Neal and Yo-Yo—yes, that Yo-Yo, now being heard on KDAY, yes, that KDAY—to your part of the world, and you experience more bombs per minute than a gabba set.
The Hip-Hop Studies Working Group at Cal put together two days of events, the first being a screening of Byron Hurt’s by-now classic doc Beyond Beats and Rhymes and the second, a Rap Sessions night curated by Kitwana.
I missed the screening, though I have participated in others around the Bay and always been left amazed at how the movie is able to pry open minds and vocal chords on issues of gender and sexuality among crowds that would otherwise leave the elephant hanging around the room. I did catch the Rap Session and was impressed at how deep the discussion was able to get in just a two-hour time.
With a panel as diverse as this and an audience as sharp as this, the topics ranged widely: from Davey and Yo-Yo’s discussion of the way that management manages progressive voices in the radio and media industry (one way— by bouncing Yo-Yo to a weekend deadzone in favor of piped-in programming) to Neal’s incisive comments comparing how sexism and homophobia in the church are treated by the media as opposed to hip-hop, to Morgan’s discussion of video programming and sexual relations. In other words, if videos are accurate visions of the way men are imagining sex, then that’s some boring-ass sex folks are having.
We left later, after Morgan’s massive fan base had her sign the entire Bay Area stock of her book, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, and continued the conversation down on Telegraph. No burning cars, but a lot of burning minds.
