secondary general music Hip-Hop Studies: Embracing Diversity
and Striving for Equity Anthony Cao, WMEA State Chair, Secondary General Music
My 4-year-old son loves to cuddle. He’s always asking to sit in my lap, snuggle on the couch, and have me lie down next to him as he falls asleep. My 7-year-old daughter, on the other hand, is
not as outwardly affectionate. I have to go to her and ask for a hug. Her embrace takes work.
When I first started teaching, I assumed “embracing diversity” was like my rela- tionship with my son. Teaching students from a wide variety of racial/cultural/ socio-economic backgrounds just meant having an open attitude. “Come on in! Here’s a chair and a folder.” This was not enough. Dafina-Lazarus Stewart explains, “Diversity asks, ‘Who’s in the room?’ Equity responds: ‘Who is trying to get in the room but can’t? Whose presence in the room is under constant threat of erasure?’” I was embracing the idea of diversity but not prepared for the self-reflection and effort it takes to work toward equity.
In 2011, I began teaching a Hip-Hop Stud- ies course. Each semester since then, we have delved into the history of hip-hop culture, analyzed the music, and refined our artistic skills as MCs, DJs and danc- ers. It has been an exhilarating journey of success, failure and discovery. I am constantly challenged by hip-hop to not be complacent with the idea of diversity but to shake the foundations of my pedagogy, to open myself to diverse notions of whose story matters and who can be an expert. According to Christopher Emdin, Black and Brown students “quickly receive the message that they can only be smart when they are not who they are” (2016). Their genius is not valued in the classroom, when actually, students’ cultural identity
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and knowledge are powerful, necessary educational tools.
The presence of hip-hop in the classroom alone might be a step in the right direction, but if students’ expertise is to be truly validated, it is not enough to replace the canon of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms with a new canon of Biggie, Busta and Black Thought (although you would be doing your soul a favor to check out his 10- minute Funk Flex freestyle. Just sayin’). A sit/listen/take notes music appreciation class, no matter how relevant the music, would still be teacher centered, threaten- ing to erase the presence of students we are trying hard to embrace. Yes, students should (and do) learn the history of the artform, but we also dissect the music that matters to them right now with rigor and urgency. Am I “just teaching them what they already know?” No. Students have the chance to be the expert, to use what they already know to understand their world, to validate their familiar and see it in a new way.
So what does this look like in the class- room? When studying MC technique – rhyme, wordplay, rhythm, flow, delivery, etc. – students create playlists of MCs they consider great. We talk about why they’re great. We analyze individual verses using each of these elements as a lens. It is not my responsibility to show the students what the great exemplars of hip-hop are. The most powerful moments come when students know every word to a song I’ve never heard and they really lead the analysis.
Teaching hip-hop has taught me to em- brace diverse notions of whose story matters. Teachers have countless ways of making stories resonate with students. However, we have to be careful not to be the only narrator. As Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s warns us of the danger
“I was embracing the idea of diversity but not prepared for the self-reflection and effort it takes to work toward equity.”
of a single story (2009), I am committed to hearing my students’ unfiltered voices and understanding their perspectives.
So what does this look like in our class- room? We create to learn. Each class begins with a freestyle cypher where knowledge is created both individually and as a group. Students compose their own instrumentals and are encouraged to use their own samples, something that sonically or culturally speaks to them. They write their own verses rather than covering anyone else’s. Some students are aching to have their truth heard. Others are still struggling to discover who they are and what matters to them, but what a privilege it is as a teacher to witness and be a part of this struggle!
As hip-hop pedagogy finds its way into music classrooms, it is imperative to embrace another type of diversity here: diversity of pedagogical voice. The current trend in education asks us from the top down to align our curriculum with other schools, to make curriculum transparent and best practices explicit so that students can have a powerful experience in any classroom (or slightly more cynically, so that any teacher can do the work). How- ever, for those seeking a hip-hop textbook with easy-to-follow lessons, there isn’t one, and there shouldn’t be. The hip-hop
September 2018
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