This week in our online classes we exlpore the five “pillars” of hip hop. Today: Graffiti! Graffiti artists literally make their mark on the world by making designs or graphic signatures on the wall of a building or another public surface. Graffiti has existed in one form or another for thousands of years — ancient Romans got a kick out of carving signature images onto walls or on monuments — but it really became part of the American landscape in northeastern cities like New York and Philadelphia in the 1970s. There, young artists, primiarly from African-American and Latino communities, took aerosol spray paint cans to the streets — or, more literally, to the walls, and subway cars, and bridges — and announced their existence by “tagging” the heck out of their landscape. Though the powers that be often dismissed tagging as an annoyance, even prosecuted as vandalism, as early as the late ’70’s the “high art” world began to recognize the expressive merits of the form, making artsy celebrities out of graffiti pioneers like Lee Quinones and Fab 5 Freddy. The 1983 PBS documentary “Style Wars” and grafitti-swathed videos for early hip hop hits like “The Message” rocketed the art form into the musical and pop culture mainstream.
Tag Archives | Hip-Hop
The Future of Music is Now
In our online classes we’ve spent the last three months “Connecting the Dots,” traveling in musical terms all around the world, celebrating the international fusion of cultures everywhere…and the new day has just begun. This five year-old rapper from Sweden will never know a time when he can’t instantaneously access almost the entirety of the world’s music in the super-computer in the palm of his hands. We can’t begin to fathom the where the seamless and inextricable intertwining of everything will take us — not just musically, and culturally, but beyond. Rap on, little Swedish boy! The future is now.
Next week we take a break from our heady international travels, sing a few of our favorites and get a’ready the spend the next three months to brave a whole new season.
Calle 13 Wows the Latin Grammys
Puerto Rico’s Calle 13 is one of the most electrifying musical acts anywhere. Formed by stepbrothers Residente (René Pérez Joglar), Visitante (Eduardo José Cabra Martínez) and their half-sister PG-13 a.k.a. ILE (Ileana Cabra Joglar), Calle 13 fuse hip hop with the most dynamic international Latin music, taking their art beyond Reggaton to form something new. If we’re going to chase hip hop around the world, as we’re doing this week, we’re still going to be a step behind Calle 13.
Are you ready for Ethnic Zorigoo Featuring Zaya?
Hip hop is an equal opportunity art form, giving anyone with a beat and a rhyme to step up to the mic and offer something to say. In this video, Mongolian musician Ethnic Zorigoo has all those things, and does just that.
Greenlandic Rap — Nuuk Posse
When we say hip hop is everywhere, we mean everywhere. “Nuuk Posse” is Greenland’s most accomplished rap group. They formed in 1985, have toured worldwide, and in 2004 were nominated for the distinction of “Messengers of Truth” by the United Nations. As we all do, thep rap in English, Danish and Greenlandic (Kalaallisut.)
Sizzling Sudanese Hip Hop
Hip hop is a powerful medium everywhere because it empowers people who may not usually have a voice to SPEAK. In “Gua,” Sudanese-Canadian rapper — and, it must be said, former child-soldier — Emmanuel Jal makes a powerful pleas for peace in several languages including his native Nuer.
Let’s Start at the Very Beginning: Rapper’s Delight
The very first commercially successful rap song was the extraordinary “Rapper’s Delight,” a 1979 breakthrough masterpiece by the Sugarhill Gang. At the time rap was such a novel medium that the starting rapper, “Wonder Mike,” had to very explicitly let the audience know what he was doing: “What you hear is not a test, I’m rapping to the beat…” In this video we dive even deeper follow Sugarhill Gang to Soul Train.
