Cultural Considerations. Inside Perspective (from Lamont)

In this section of the chapter, we hope to offer considerations for music educators to understand and engage with Hip Hop as a culture. As mentioned earlier, treating Hip Hop as if it is just another musical genre, whose elements can be dropped into a music classroom without critical interrogation of the assumptions, beliefs, and values of that space, will limit Hip Hop’s critical and transformative potential at best (Hein, 2020; Kruse, 2020b; Tobias, 2014). At worst, this type of approach can reify existing power structures, promote cultural appropriation, and perpetuate stereotypes. Understanding Hip Hop as a culture centers Hip Hop’s Black American roots while engaging with cultural values that run deeper than any particular musical element.

Engaging with Hip Hop culture prioritizes its complex socio-political factors. That means that exploring Hip Hop’s racial politics is not optional or extra (Hein, 2020; Hess, 2018b). The same is true for issues surrounding gender (Tobias, 2014), or any other seemingly political matter. Evans (2020) argued that “hip hop cultural practices are best taught when culture is introduced through a political lens that does not censor critiques of dominant power structures influencing the students’ everyday lives” (p. 9). A cultural approach to Hip Hop in music education will place socio-political concepts as central— not ancillary—to music creation, performance, analysis, or appreciation.

Understanding Hip Hop as a culture also acknowledges that Hip Hop music is not a monolith. Hip Hop is teeming with endless subgenres, geographic variations, and arbitrary boundaries between traditions that have been blended, bent, and broken. Any music educator hoping to contain Hip Hop into a list of musical characteristics, a canon of repertoire, or a pantheon of musicians is truly facing a fool’s errand. We believe that music educators will be much better served by understanding and embracing Hip Hop as culture with “a distinct worldview with related sensibilities and epistemologies” (Petchauer, 2011, p. 1412). Considering Hip Hop in this deeper, and more meaningful way may very well contribute to music educators not just doing Hip Hop, but being Hip Hop (Ladson-Billings, 2015; Kruse, 2016).

Inside Perspective (from Lamont).From the perspective of a person who has lived and sought to engage themselves in authentic Hip Hop experiences since the age of five, any educator seeking to teach in this space must acknowledge lived experiences. Developing essential questions around understanding Hip Hop culture and one’s relationship to the culture will help educators with this acknowledgment. Educators love to ask and answer essential questions. It’s an addictive practice because it’s a tool that constantly challenges you to understand everything around you. Some suggested questions:

- Am I a cultural native or a cultural immigrant? Asking this simple question can guide you in so many ways that have great implications regardless of context.

- What is attracting me to this culture? This helps you ground your practice in something that you have love and respect for. If you understand what is attracting you to the music and culture, that becomes sacred. When something is sacred to us, we treat it as such.

- Whether a native or immigrant of the culture, am I upholding its principles? Do you even understand what the principles of the culture are?

- What are the values and tenets of this culture that can be understood across other cultures? For example, remixing is building something new out of something old. Where else does this practice exist? How do other cultural practices make space for all perspectives—big, small, popular, unpopular—while still prioritizing certain ideas and voices that keep the culture cohesive? Competition is important in Hip Hop, but while “winning” and “losing” are sometimes concrete, they are often abstract concepts. What role does competition play in artistic development in other cultures? What are the cultural experiences and values you hold, and how do they align or conflict with those in Hip Hop?

What I really love about these questions and asking them continually as the context changes—particularly important in Hip Hop because it often changes faster than other cultures—is that they deal with all types of potentially problematic issues. They reduce the opportunity to offend or encroach and leave room for the inclusion of all. Hopefully everyone in music education feels welcome to explore Hip Hop, but everyone also feels a sense of responsibility to check themselves, acknowledge their positions, and appreciate the lived experiences of those in the culture.