While attending a symposium entitled, The Business of Show, which explored cultural images of Blacks in media, a simple but profound question was asked. Tim Reid and his wife Daphne Maxwell Reid, hosts of the symposium, owners of News Millennium Studios and stars of such shows Sister, Sister and the Fresh Prince of Bel Air respectively, asked the audience: What is hip-hop and is it a culture? Since we were located at a Florida A&M (a Historically Black College and University) and the audience was a mixture of young Black college students as well as a diverse population from the surrounding community, it seemed the answer would be easily addressed. Yet, the question remained unanswered. Mr. Reid posed the question repeatedly, yet no one in the crowd seemed up to the task. There were responses that skirted the issue and stated what hip-hop was not, but no direct meaningful answers. One young man stated, "I know what hip-hop is, but can’t put it into words." Reid in turn responded, "Well, if you can’t define it, then how can hip-hop be a culture." He stated he has posed this question to young Black audiences many times, but no one has ever provided a definition. To see a huge body of predominately young people who enjoy and grew up on hip-hop unable to define it and explain its cultural aspects was a shock to me. Many people may ask what right does Tim Reid have to pose these questions or to be critical of some aspects of hip hop. Yet, regardless of one’s feelings, the question deserves an answer. It makes perfect sense to ask an audience to define what it often identifies with and has been often identified by. If you can’t state what you are or the code that you live by (which many people who are into hip hop express) then others who have no interest in you, except as a dollar sign, can tell you what hip-hop is and directly or indirectly affect your behavior. Then you are trapped into an illusion that is not of your making or design. Therefore, it behooves all of us who grew up in this era, whether young or older, to come to grips with what hip-hop means, what direction we want it to take us in and what we will use it as a tool for. As a writer who often focuses on issues related to hip-hop and what it means to Black communities, it quickly dawned on me that I should provide my interpretation of hip hop and how it relates to culture. However, since I was not recognized and therefore unable to answer Mr. Reid’s probe during the questioning period, my definition derived from years of listening to and participating in hip-hop from the 70s as a child until today, has to take written form. Hip-hop in its most rudimentary form consists of four major activities. KRS One defined it best when he listed those activities as "MCing", "Djing", break dancing and artistic expression through graffiti. These four activities are the major identifiers of someone being involved in hip hop culture. Now, is it its own separate culture? In my opinion, hip-hop is an extension of Black culture and has created its own subculture that is shared by many. The Four Elements As stated in my article, The Cultural Jacking of Hip Hop (https://staging.allhiphop.com/editorial/EditorialsArchive.asp?ID=46), being an MC can be compared to the tradition of the traveling griot that in African cultures provided historical information, like Nas and his track "I Can" or can provide news on the state of our communities, like Dead Prez and their hit "It’s Bigger Than Hip Hop". They provide us with information that we might not be able to receive in mainstream arenas. DJs provide the basic beat over which the messages are passed, but in a deeper sense can be related to the drummers of old who communicated thoughts and ideas through a complicated system of beats and pauses of the drum. When the drums sounded in traditional African cultures of old, people stopped what they were doing and listened in the same way people in current civilizations stop whatever they are doing when a car with heavy bass drives through their neighborhood. People want to find out what is or the cause of all the commotion. Although the beat no longer provides the message, it does provide the emotional backdrop for the information about to be passed. It sets the tone and lets you know what is about to occur. Break dancing is often theorized to have its origins from Capoeira which is an African Brazilian martial art that disguises its lethality in dancing movements such as the ginga which is eerily similar to the beginning movements in break dancing. Its catlike ground techniques, unique aerial moves and other gymnastic feats performed while standing on one’s hands would definitely remind someone familiar with break dancing of the similarity of the two forms of expression. Capoeira, is believed to have originated in Angola, where most enslaved Brazilians were kidnapped and sold into slavery. Whether break dancing is a direct importation from Brazil that has been "Americanized" or a cultural carryover of a defense system adapted to dance from Africans brought to the US we may never know. What we do know is that it is an African & Latin tradition of dance that has been practiced and has been evolving long before it was officially termed break-dancing and is part of Black culture. Finally, we come to graffiti, which consists of "tagging" or painting your name, group’s name or just plain artwork on public property. What has this to do with African culture? Plenty! Although it is universal to leave one’s mark behind whether as an individual or as a nation, no one is more known for their pictorial representations, better known as hieroglyphics, than the Egyptians. The Egyptians wanted to leave no doubt as to whom they were and to let future […]
