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>> T. Hasan Johnson: Good evening. I can't see not one of you. All right [audience laughs].
That's okay. So if everybody leaves I'm going to pretend like it's still a packed room [audience
laughs]. You always know it's a good introduction when you're halfway through your like "Damn.
I want to hear that person too. Oh. It's me." [audience laughs]. I was not expecting that.
Thank you. To Clay in particular. I was caught off guard by this and was honored that students
nominated me for something like this. You know you never quite in the classroom how
you're received. You just kind of think "You know. They just want a grade." They don't
really like you. But something like this definitely confirms otherwise. Welcome to Hip-Hop. The
Frickin Remix. Re-evaluating Hip-Hop Culture's Origins and Impacts. This is a subject that's
very close to my heart. For reasons I'm going to get into in a minute. I've got a real cool
clicker so we're going to get with this [inaudible]. This is KRS 1. This is somebody that we had
an opportunity to have here at Fresno State a couple years ago. And he stood on this very
stage as part of the hip-hop research and interview project. And as a matter of fact
we are doing the hip-hop research and interview process project next week. We will be welcoming
[inaudible] Public Enemy and Brother J of X-Clan. Plug. So March 5. There we go. Better?
All right. So they'll be here next week. 5 o'clock. IT 101. And next Tuesday. March 5.
But [inaudible] here gives us one of the themes from tonight's talk. Hip-hop has had many
starts. And unfortunately some of those starts aren't talked about enough. So we're going
to explore what some of them look like. Myself. I was introduced to hip-hop at about the age
of six. But I was born with hip-hop. I was born the same year hip-hop began. In 1974.
In the South Bronx. I myself am from Brooklyn. But was raised there. And you can see from
the fly collar. See that [audience laughs]? That was the fashion back in the day. You
had to know [audience laughs]. Have to give my mother props for that. But I was born with
it. And I didn't know at the time. None of us did. That it would be something that would
still be around years later. I mean for the most part we enjoyed it. We loved it. But
you know none of us really thought about the long-term impact of it. And we weren't even
really appreciating how powerful what we were doing was. My reintroduction to hip-hop. Well
I should say my first introduction was when I was in preschool. I was in a preschool in
San Jose California. And there the principles son from San Francisco would come and hold
dance classes there. For us five-year-olds. Four-year-olds. And so on. And he introduced
us to popping and locking. So that was my first introduction. But what was incredibly
important about it was I had a chance to go to Colton California. And I was introduced
to some young fellas that lived across the street from my father who had decided that
for one reason or another they needed to throw me into a trash can. I don't know why they
decided that. I didn't particularly look like I needed to be in a trash can [audience laughs].
But it was something that they decided they wanted to do. And different from other stories
that begin like this hip-hop intervened. What started out in one vin is me about to get
jumped and beat up. And it turned into a pop locking contest. And from there I won and
I didn't get thrown into a garbage can. But what was interesting about that. What I did
not process is that was happening with hip-hop all over the country. Instead of violence
young men in particular who were engaging this culture were starting to learn to find
other ways to mediate difference. Right? Whether it was rapping. Whether it was dancing. They
found other ways. Even DJ-ing. They found other ways to battle. Hip-hop is a very battle
oriented culture. So in that vein even at that age I didn't realize that what we were
engaging in how to relevance. On levels that I hadn't pondered. That you can actually dance
your way out of a fight [audience laughs]. And that's what people were doing. One of
the things that I do want to emphasize as we talked tonight is this is particularly
for the students who are still finding what they're into. Finding their voice. Finding
yourself. I found mine in hip-hop and didn't even know it. And thirty-something years later
I'm still in love with it. And I hope you will take tonight as an example of what finding
your voice can look like and do it yourself. Is incredibly important for you to do so.
And there's a power in it that I cannot tell you about. You have to experience it. So find
your voice. And use whatever you need to to do so. Okay? But why hip-hop? Why study that?
That noise on the radio that's on every time I'm flicking through the channels. Why is
that even important? Well first and foremost what you hear on the radio is a very different
thing. Than the culture people have been living in. Building. For years. For decades. It's
a very different entity. Right? What you hear on the radio is much more about consumption.
Commercialization. But what people are actually doing on the ground in hip-hop is creating
an alternative paradigm for cultural interaction. And I just gave you an example of that. All
right? As well as a grassroots. Anti-corporate globalization. There's a movement happening
across the world through hip-hop that is very much about finding ways to creatively express
yourself outside of consumer. Culture. And just really articulating ways of doing so
that our based on real feeling. Real people. And not these ideas about corporate globalization's.
Really so it's an internal. A completely different paradigms that people are working with. And
it's incredibly important if you can look at the implications of it. Now in my class
Hip-Hop Culture we do that. We spent the entire semester looking at the different ways that
people do that in hip-hop. And so I want to kind of give you a touch of that tonight and
hopefully you'll get a chance to taste what you don't get on MTV. And what you don't get
on the radio. In its most bare-bones form what you see here is the structure of hip-hop
began in the mid-70s most people think. It is basically the various elements of hip-hop
culture. The first of which being DJ-ing or turntableism. B-boying. MC-ing. Beat boxing.
And bombing. All of these have different terms that some of you are more familiar with as
they've been kind of filtered through the media. All right? B-boying is referenced in
popular culture as breakdancing. MC-ing is referenced as rapping. Bombing is referenced
as graffiti's. And so on and so forth but the people that innovated this and developed
it with a particular aesthetic and a particular ethic didn't necessarily call it those things.
Those were the things that were kind of consumed and put out there and made titillating. But
in terms of what people were actually doing on the streets they had a whole different
narrative behind it. A whole different idea. And of course on the second tier you have
an emphasis in Street language. Street fashion. Entrepreneurship. Musical production. Spirituality.
And politics. All of these areas touched on through hip-hop. These first five are the
basis of the culture. You'll find that almost everywhere you go. Hip-hop in Cuba. Hip-hop
in Brazil. Hip-hop in Germany. Hip-hop in Japan. Hip-hop in California. You'll find
these elements linked together. And it begins with DJ-ing. But as DJs begin it I do need
to give it a little bit of context. What's important to note about the DJs that started
this in the mid-70s is they were pulling from all kinds of things. All right? They were
pulling from Jamaican culture. A toasting cultures. We are the DJs didn't just play
music at the parties they actually talked over the music and interacted with the audience
want to play. And as they began to develop these parties in New York in particular they
basically used what they had access to now you're talking about in the South Bronx in
the early 1970s. You're talking about a population of people that had been by and large. If you
ever saw pictures of the Bronx in the 1970s it looked like somebody dropped a bomb on
the entire city. And economically that is exactly what happened. Okay? So by and large
the people that were there and the people that were left there basically built from
what they had. All right? Record players. Mostly their parents' record players. Their
parents' record collections. All right? You're talking about an era where music programs
in school are gone. Art programs in school. Gone. All right? No funding. No support for
any of that. Many of them in fact actually got their formal training to be electricians.
So once they finished there were no jobs either. So here you have this population of fairly
poor black and brown folks in the South Bronx with some degree of electrical skill and nothing
to do with it. So what they begin to do is work with what they have access to. The home
stereo systems. The home speakers. The record collections of their parents. They began to
create entirely different sound escapes. As a matter of fact that they began to do when
they mixed records and pieced together sounds is restructure the idea of what an instrument
is. They turned the record player from something that you just played for pleasure into an
instrument itself. Because they didn't have any instruments to play anyway. All right?
So in that they used their creativity. And in so doing by the time they started to produce
in studios. What they actually began to do is take bars of different songs and make those
bars into like keys on a piano. Sophie sit down at a piano and play a key it plays one
note. Well what they envisioned was each key playing a 4-bar note of a song. So how can
you mix those different 4-bar notes together and make new soundscapes altogether? So they
began to envision music much differently than the way these kinds of pieces of equipment
are designed to do. They even created songs with the tape decks in that time period. Now
one of the things they also did was they used their bodies. All right? Not just the DJs
but the people in the culture. They used whatever they could to make music. And this is actually
an example of what some of that sounds like. This is a human beat box contest. This is
in 2009. And it's actually one of Fresno's great artists. His name is Optimist Prime.
Had a chance to see him last week perform live. At a concert. And I wanted to give you
just a taste of what this looks like. This is a beat boxing battle. There are two people.
And Prime is the second person. But I wanted to see what kinds of sounds people figured
out how to make with their bodies. If they had no access to anything else. [Video Plays]
All right? Different ways you can make music with your body if need be. All right? And
in so doing I think a couple of things are pointed out here. The body in hip-hop becomes
a form of technology in and of itself. All right? Where it's not just about the equipment
you have. It's about what you can do with it. All right? Creativity as the most advanced
form of technology. Not just the equipment itself. And this kind of contrast. And I do
need to point out contrast. As they are making music with whatever's available to them. Creating
art out of nothing. They're also making an argument about what music is supposed to be.
All right? The idea that you make music out of music is not something that was well received.
Especially by some of the older artists that they were using this music from. All right?
But the idea that you can make music out of previously recorded music and make something
entirely different. Turning things into instruments that never were supposed to be used that way.
And completely transforming the scape of what that should be. And the same thing happened
when it came to bombing. Or graffiti. All right? The PCC on the right. Growing out of
time. I could have shown some older pics as well. But just looking at what people are
doing with the visual image. And graffiti as you know been placed on public spaces is
the basis of the argument that there needs to be a question about who gets to use public
space in certain ways. The image on the left is Times Square. And graffiti artists would
look at this and say, "That's just one type of graffiti versus another." All right? But
as long as you're ***. You're Kodak. You're McDonald's. You have the right to put up whatever
graffiti you want. Wherever you want. But coming out of the Bronx. Coming out of New
York in a particular time. Sometimes the graffiti of just saying "I exist" was important. Right?
So even the graffiti artists in hip-hop represents a different paradigm shift. Making an argument
about what the dominant culture is doing. And making an argument about what the people
that live in certain areas being able to use their public spaces in non-traditional ways.
This aesthetic is in each area. And then we get dancing. Which some refer to as physical
graffiti. Now in hip-hop in the 1970s you have what is generally referred to as B-Boying.
Coming out of the early 70s with African-American kids and then having it kind of taken on by
Puerto Rican kids all the way up through the late 70s and 80s. And having been perfected.
So again a contrast with the dominant culture. What is dance? And what isn't? Who gets to
call it what it is? And who gets to do it? Where can it be done? Who has the right to
call it dance? These kinds of arguments are being made. But at the same time if not a
little bit earlier California's also doing some things. We're going to talk about in
more detail in a moment. But locking and popping actually being inventions of California. And
as you can see here popping started by Boogaloo Sam. Was here in Fresno. So Fresno makes a
global contribution to hip-hop in so far as popping goes. And that was my first introduction
to hip-hop. And so it's kind of interesting that that I find myself in Fresno years later.
The origin of my first introduction. But this is pretty much how hip-hop is talked about
in pop culture all right? Hip-hop starts in the mid-70s. And it kind of develops in New
York in a very certain way. And it's introduced to the public and it's a very popular framework.
So for DJ-ing you kind of hear about it a little bit later though. Especially through
under wrappers. But Rapp becomes one of the first introductions of hip-hop culture to
the outside New York environment. All right? And that takes place with Sugar Hill Gang's
Rappers Delight. The first recorded albums that goes out and introduces everybody to
what we could call hip-hop. All right? Dancing. Hip-hop dance. Breakdancing. Is formally introduced
in 1983 through the film Flashdance. So in places like LA and Oakland you had black and
brown youths going on to see Flashdance in droves. Just to see a three minute clip of
some kids from New York breakdancing. And watching it over and over and over again.
And incorporating it in what they're already doing. The video to Herbie Hancock's song
Rocket. 1983. Demonstrated DJ culture. But it's these elements that most people refer
to as hip-hop. And they leave it there. And I'm here to tell you tonight the history of
it is actually far more complicated and involved. This is a clip from the film Beat Street.
It came out in 1984. And even though there were many of us that were already active in
hip-hop culture the film itself begins to redefine what hip-hop culture is and what
its history is. And it does it in a very casual way. I'm going to show you a clip of one particular
dancer at a dance battle. And were going to look a little bit at what he does. [Video
Plays] Fresno hip-hop. The weird part about it is that I was doing some of those dance
of last week. And I would like "Damn." I'm dating myself in a way. But what you had a
chance to see was Fresno's contribution to hip-hop culture. And the clip that I played
earlier from Beat Street although you have to spend some time looking at it you can see
elements of it that pulled from a lot of different places. And we're going to talk a little bit
as to why. When I was a kid and hip-hop came around being in California you didn't really
get hip-hop on TV. You didn't get I mean at the time I mean MTV wasn't even plain black
artists. You wouldn't even see Michael Jackson or Prince on MTV at the time. And that was
a huge issue before MTV decided to do so. So much of the time when it came to hip-hop
you got your introduction to it through family reunions. Through first-hand contact with
people. Somebody had a cassette. Or they showed you a dance at a party. Usually a house gathering.
You know the older folks would be in the back playing cards and laughing at the kids. And
the kids would be in the living room dancing. And they would be exchanging some of the latest
dances that came out. So hip-hop's first introduction into many of us particularly here in California
came about through non-traditional means. And what I always found interesting about
it is by the time New York hip-hop comes out and formally introduced it catches like wildfire.
All across the country. And I was always curious about why. Why did it seem to make so much
sense? And I'm telling you the first time I actually saw somebody spin on the floor.
Saw somebody popping and locking. It just made sense to me. And I didn't know why. Especially
at the age of six or seven. All right? But this is actually why. When I talk about this
in my book you must learn to talk about. I talk about the trans-contextual-meta-imaginary.
Basically what I'm saying here is there are reasons why hip-hop catches fire the way it
does. Because by and large the communities that are connected across the country have
a shared context. Shared context that's a little older than many of us actually think.
Because that's slavery in certain respects. And comes all the way forward by large when
you're looking at hip-hop communities in the 1970s they're one or two generations removed
from the South. And for African-American communities the South from slavery all the way up till
about World War II is the principal place where most of us find ourselves. So this cultural
provides a sort of framework that kind of lens itself out later. And I talk in the book
about each of the different stages of the African-American experience that allow for
this kind of spread of something like this. Okay? Let's eat. The first of which looking
at the slave trade or the [inaudible] the Swahili word. It means great disaster. You
can kind of see some of the elements that would allow for a shared context. All right?
When you're talking about the actual enslavement process as a shared experience. But also in
North America scholar Joseph Holloway who does his text called "Africanisms in American
culture." Talks about how many African-Americans actually come out of a shared regional area
of west Africa and in that space are generally referred to as the ethnic group of [inaudible]
share a variety of elements. Religious perspectives. Cultural frameworks. Folklore. Storytelling.
Naming practices. It's this kind of matrix that the African-American community actually
can pull from in a certain way. But there's also the shared experience of living in the
South. The shared experience of living in the same conditions. Whether it's formal slavery
or the sharecropping that comes later and the responses to those living conditions.
Whether it's the blues. Or whether it's the church tradition. By and large the majority
of African-American society comes out of this experience. And even in the activism of the
late 50s. The 60s. And the 70s. This shared experience provides a context yet again. All
right? Here in the protest aesthetic of the civil rights movement there's something that
hip-hop absorbs. And it looks at. It is not completely cut off from history. It actually
benefits from the history that came before. It pulls from it. So in that respect the sacrifice
of people in the civil rights movement. And later the black power movement in the 1970s
hip-hop is paying a great deal of attention to. And bleeding those aesthetics in on one
level or another. Into what they eventually developed. Again. Another shared context.
The movements themselves are shared context for what would later develop. All right? And
it actually important to keep in mind that again in terms of the civil rights movement
the young people who are producing hip-hop culture are basically the people that are
left behind. So by large when you talk about integration and you look at the groups that
could afford to integrate. Not everybody could. And so those kids in the South Bronx were
the people left behind. The people that couldn't go anywhere. The people that had very few
options. And were at the same time paying attention to what was happening around the
world. Okay? In terms of pop culture there are some elements that take place that inform
this matrix. If you will. That becomes hip-hop. And these are some of the most principal elements
that you can kind of see connecting the culture together. Because keep in mind you're talking
about in terms of popular culture. Black popular culture. And unparalleled time. All right?
You have soul music. You have R&B developing. You have all these things that are from the
50s on providing a shared context. Whether you are used in New York. California. Texas.
Wherever you are. You're in some way connected to these national Black popular culture ideas.
They're coming out and they're forming a language if you will. James Brown has to be probably
the most significant individual prior to hip-hop to influence what hip-hop would later become.
Most people pull from James Brown's music when their developing as DJs. And then eventually
moving into making songs. James Brown becomes a key player in that. But even figures like
Mohammed Ali. In terms of the poetry. He would espouse at different points in time. We're
actually going to hear one in a moment. That becomes a source of information. Soul Train
is particularly important. Aside from the fact that that's where you got the latest
dances every week. Whether you could do them or not. All right? Soul Train was your introduction
to it. Soul Train provided another shared context. All right? Soul Train in and of itself
started in Chicago but moved to Los Angeles. And so in classic fashion with all due respect
to Don Cornelius he never paid his dancers. But he brought in kids who wanted to be on
TV and dance. And in Chicago they had a very particular style of dancing. Well the show
wasn't national then. By the time it moves to California it becomes a national endeavor.
And he starts to bring in Los Angeles kids to dance. And in so doing he begins to introduce
particular movement to the Black popular culture network. And in so doing kids all over the
country are now pulling from California dance styles to kind of frame how they represent
themselves. How they express themselves and dance. So because of things like Soul Train
in its national syndication you have this introduction of a California aesthetic. And
that becomes consistent. And people absorb it. And re-articulated. No matter where they
are. In the Incorporated with what they're already doing. So again. Another shared context.
All right? Michael Jackson. The man was a single-handed force. And I'm not talking about
Michael Jackson post 2000. I'm talking about Michael Jackson 1975 through 83. In those
of you who remember that time period he was like a whole different person. All right?
But Michael Jackson's was a fortress that had a powerful impact on hip-hop. In terms
of some of the things he did in relation to dance as well as his appreciation for dance
culture. Much of it again came from Soul Train. Jackson would talk about watching Soul Train
on tour. And mimicking those moves. Incorporating them into his show. And further selling what
he kind of pull together out of movements or representations like Soul Train. What's
happening? Fred "Rerun" Barry. I'll show you a clip of him in a minute. Huge contribution
to hip-hop culture. All right? Even going so far back as 76 and earlier with the different
locking traditions that that particular individual Fred "Rerun" Barry was a part of. But further
introduced California dance into the national Black cultural framework. All right? And again
when I talked about a moment ago in terms of direct contact these were the various ways
that pop culture absorbed what would later be hip-hop. But some of these elements many
of them as you can see by the dates there predated what you formally see coming about
out of New York. Now this is an example of what I call battle poetry. It is not something
the rap artists look to and mimic per se but it comes out of a much older tradition of
signifying. Snapping traditions. The African-American oral practices. Mohammed Ali pulled from all
of that. And in the 60s and 70s most particularly you have people that definitely reinvented
the poetry movements. And in so doing created an aesthetic. An appreciation for wordplay
that hip-hop would absorb. So I'm not saying that Mohammed Ali was considered a wrapper
or people necessarily directly mimicked him but it is to say that Ali as an international
figure. Heavyweight champion of the world. Had an impact. Because in so doing representing
himself the way he did. And having no problem expressing himself orally and unapologetically.
Just as with James Brown. He impacts what later would happen with hip-hop. This is an
example of at least the ethic of battle poetry. [Video Plays] All right? Now if you notice
you saw that move already being done by the lockers on soul train. So wasn't that he innovated
something entirely new. I will say the man made it his own. Right? He did a very cleanly.
But it was something that was around prior to him he merely popularized it. And to his
credit he never said he invented it or anything of that nature. He would always give props
to the people he got it from but he was in many respects an ambassador of California
dance. And in so doing help to make it part of the natural background for the artists
that would create hip-hop. Now formally speaking these are the figures that are credited with
hip-hop development at a New York. 46:50 DJ Kool Herc who you see. in the black. On the
right. In the top. Africa _____right below him. Grand Master Flash. With the record on
the left a little bit. Sylvia Robinson who a lot of people don't know about. I call her
and many others do as well the mother of hip-hop. It's because of her that Sugar Hill Records
that she was the CEO of. She was behind releasing Sugar Hill Gang's Rappers Delight. So in many
respects she's the one that brought hip-hop into the mainstream. And Melle Mel one of
the most significant rappers to come out of the time. Introduced rap. He wasn't the first
but one of the most significant by far. And he literally changed what you could do with
hip-hop. And if these figures that rightly so in New York culture are those that produce
hip-hop. Most particularly DJ Kool Herc of Jamaica. Being a Jamaican immigrant. Enough
going back to visit with take DJing traditions out of Jamaica and bring them back to New
York. And it caught fire. And he would do things parties that others hadn't done. He
would take the microphone as a DJ and talk. He would mix the record together in a certain
way so that the brick of a song with the drums would really kind of kind of go crazy in the
middle of a song that the dancers used to love to come out to he would play to record
that by side. And play the break on one. Put it over to the other play the break again.
And keep the beat continuous. And by spreading out the break he allowed for the dance culture
to build and develop. He's credited as being the father of hip-hop. And in many respects
Sylvia Robinson popularizing it is the mother. The time. Because this is happening around
74. You already have a tradition going on in other places. Most notably California.
In the Bay Area. LA. And central California before we even get to the 1970s. And through
Soul Train. Through Michael Jackson. Three shows like What's Happening? You see impact
on the imagination already present. And hip-hop in many respects is a pulling together of
all kinds of pop cultural elements. I mean people are [inaudible] especially the dancers.
But also the DJs. You see them pulling from Bruce Lee. Sammy Davis Junior. The Groucho
brothers. Speed racer cartoons. I mean they're pulling from pop culture in every way. Shape.
And form. And remixing it in ways that made sense to them. Because primarily as they had
very few other options pop culture became the framework to build from. It was something
that people readily understood and can identify with. And so that's where they pulled a lot
of their creative energy from. Now in the 1980s and 90s you had a shift. If you will.
Particularly late 70s. Where you started to see some trends. Particularly in black and
brown communities. All right? The rise of [inaudible] incarceration. The influx of crack-***.
In black communities. The cutbacks of public aid. The rise of *** AIDS. Mass unemployment.
All of these things begin to contribute to what I would call the militarization of hip-hop.
Hip-hop begins to develop an even more formative. Critical. Political voice. All right? One
can always make the argument that hip-hop was political. Because if you look at its
early invention with Kool Herc the dance. The party. His political it's not just a form
of escape. It's not just frustration and the desire to get away from the poverty. The dance
is a political statement about the status of things. The poverty. The lack of options.
But by the time he gets the 1980s most especially it kicks up to a whole other level. And you
have Melle Mel's song "The Message." Which becomes the culture call to order for where
hip-hop can go. All right? A formal critique of the living conditions of black and brown
folk in America at that time. Dealing with these very issues. And in so doing they are
also dealing with the corporate media structure that is linked together like no other time
in history. All right? It has consolidated and dropped-down. And over time. And it is
and it has become managed by fewer and fewer numbers of people. So it's in this time period
from the 80s to 90s most especially that the black community. The Brown community. And
hip-hop in particular. Begin to militarize in a certain kind of way in response to the
living conditions that are prominent and 70s and get worse in many respects in the 80s.
Now in that hip-hop has what I would call a transformative potential. Because of its
local roots. It's grassroots kind of dance. There's opportunity for all kinds of things
to take place. Things that have been happening but with people's involvement can definitely
go to another point. All right? It's become a space for unconventional discourse. All
right? I lectured at a conference in Texas a few years ago. And what is it? American
Academy of Religion. 10,000 people all right? I lectured on three artists in hip-hop who
dealt with religion. And I had scholars of religion who had been studying for 30 or 40
years asking me "who the hell is that?" And there's nothing like seeing that. All right?
They want to know where to get the CD from [inaudible]. It's like "really? You want a
CD? Okay." [audience laughs]. You know I wish I could've told them about it. Right? But
based in hip-hop allowed for an unconventional approach to things like religion. Politics.
Cultural practices. Dance. And worldview in general right? Hip-hop allows for that . And
remixing or re-articulating is one of the central themes that hip-hop offers that I
think many could use to their benefit. Incorporating new ideas. Using them unconventionally. Constructing
a global dialogue and shared language. No. This is key. In every one of those elements
I showed you earlier from MC-ing. To bombing. And graffiti. There is an international community
of people that identifies themselves as hip hoppers in each one of those elements. And
they're overtly political. They are overtly political and aware of what's going on. All
right? And it's that potential. That space that hip-hop offers. That quite a bit can
be done. Now. I think for those who are in positions like myself the point of all of
this is to help people find their role. And to use their I guess I would call it their
expression. All right? Particularly those who are interested in hip-hop. And find their
voices. This is a picture of my son. In
the middle. And I told him I will embarrass him every chance I get [audience laughs].
But I love them to death. This is a trip took a couple of weeks ago with my hip-hop class.
To the Sorensen studios to do graffiti. Over the weekend. And so there are students on
all sides of that picture for learning graffiti by doing it. We had an artist come show us
how it works. And they did it by hand themselves. Much of what you see on the wall is my students'
work. Including my son . Who painted over my piece [audience laughs]. All right? But
it's important that we nurture those voices and allow for that. Because I never would've
imagined 30 something years ago that this stuff that we were doing outside of class.
Or in college when I was walking to class listening to hip-hop that years later I would
be teaching it. And standing on a stage like this talking about it. So if I couldn't imagine
that what will the next generation do? And what can we be a part of? What can I be a
part of to help make sure that the next generation can take it further than where they left it.
Okay? If you are interested
I will plug my book. Because I go into debt on some of these things it's called "You must
learn! Primer for the study of hip-hop culture." And I hope you'll check it out. And I really
want to thank you for taking the time to be here tonight. And I appreciate your time.
Thank you [audience claps].