The Black and the White Voice in the Hip Hop Culture Research Paper

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Hip Hop and American Youth Culture

Everyone enters a stage of growth when a strong urge to break out of parental dependence, when he recognizes his own person and desires to assert himself. This sense of individuality is an inherent in the American character, especially the youth. Aligned with this restlessness is the restlessness endured for centuries by the Blacks. Their elders may have learned to live with the malignity, although without yielding to it, or have less energy to fight. But African-American youth found a way to vent their revulsion towards the discrimination and abuses to which they are subjected as a race. That discovery happened in the 70s when the hip-hop spirit evolved into a concept and then into music, dance, poetry and many other creative forms of letting the sea of anguish flow out of their soul.

The voice of the young American who seeks individual freedom and assertion has merged with the voice of a spurned and beleaguered race. Through the hip-hop culture and lifestyle, young people of all cultures find what they seek in common -- a separate identity they could not find anywhere else. From a mere musical genre, it transposed into multiple phases. It attracted industries and penetrated the different sectors until it transformed into a lifestyle or an ideology of youth itself. The singularity of purpose and sentiment has blurred races, classes and genders among these youth. Their newfound sense of belonging and identification with something that is theirs and is them is irreplaceable. It influences them profoundly as they profoundly influence and dictate its very substance. They are at home in it. It is their very home because it understands them. They find more than expression in it. They find themselves in it. It knows and values their feelings and thoughts, whatever these are, and accepts them. It is there for them. [2: Christina Blandon. "Hip-Hop and Youth Culture for Today's Society." Itzarap (2013). Retrieved on November 30, 2015 from https://itzarap.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/hip-hop-and-youth-culture-in-todays-society/]

Hip hop articulates the contemporary American youth culture.

II. Body

Life is Movement

The very first sign of life is the felt quivering of gestating fetus in the womb. The excited parent identifies the stirring as that made by a knee, an elbow or a shoulder. Regardless of the body part, the faintest movement is ascribed to as that of a developing life and the lack of it, a sign of non-life. From thereon, movement is an assumed barometer of animation, which from birth, takes on many forms throughout one's life span. It is the basis of all culture and its very expression. One evocative expression of culture is dance. [3: Gerald Jonas, "Dancing- the Pleasure, Power and Art of Movement," Educational Broadcasting Corporation and Gerald Jonas (1992), 3] [4: ibid. 3]

Dance is Expressive Movement

Dances are for courting, entertainment, weddings, funerals, healing, teaching and for myriads of other purposes. They stimulate a thought or emotion, celebrate, mourn, inspire, tell tales, extol, worship or exhibit rage or turmoil. All these expressions possess power. The new discipline called dance anthropology imparts the concept and execution of dance in its social and cultural context. In this form, dance's techniques and structures possess inherent meaning and value to the dancer and those who share these with him or her. This is the case with dances and dancers at social events, such as weddings, for spectators. There are many dance forms according to events and structures of presentation. There are ritual or religious dances for the gods, waltz by newly married couples, sexual dances and the ballet dance drama form. [5: ibid, 3] [6: ibid, 8-15]

Dance is Communication and Interaction

As in other forms of performance, a dance presentation accomplishes its purpose when the passive audience actively internalizes what it watches and participates in it. Spectators move their bodies in unison with the performers as though they are performers themselves. The message or experience executed and embodied by the performers moves to the spectators, establishing a kind of relationship between them. this connection between dancers and their spectators is precisely one of the most fundamental objectives of dance. It was reported as central to the North American natives before the arrival of Europeans. [7: Gerald Jonas, Part 2, p 2] [8: ibid, p 2]

The Beginnings of the Hip Hop Culture

Thoughts and feelings, especially burning ones, will always find a way to vent themselves. In their dejected state, young and urban African-American working classmen found one outlet in hip hop music and accompaniments through which to vent their rage. This rage built up with every event such as the murders of rappers like Tupac Shakur and Notorious BIG who were blamed for the shooting at a school in Little, Colorado.

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The authorities expectedly placed the blame on the growing trend of violence among the practitioners of the then-evolving rap music from the hip hop culture as embodying youth violence. But critics of the time were just as quick to counter that the message from the lyrics of the music could not be understood so sweepingly understood without knowing its history and its social context. [9: Becky Blanchard, "The Impact of Rap Music on American Youth: the Social Significance of Rap and Hip Hop."Ehics of Development in a Global Environment (1999). https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/poverty_prejudice/mediarace/socialsignificance.htm ] [10: ibid, web page 1]

The beginning of hip hop music is generally believed to have occurred in New York's South Bronx in 1973 by Kook DJ Herc, a Jamaican. At his younger sister's Halloween dance party, Herc innovatively stretched a song's drug break by using two identical records in succession in playing the song's break portion. It caught attention and turned into some kind of prototype for break-dancing, which later became an ingrained style in hip hop music. Break-dancing was accompanied by extended drumbreaks, usually played by DJs at dance parties in the City. It caught fire. By mid-decade, hip hop in New York was the treat among DJ Grandmaster Flash, afrika Bambaataa, and Herc. And in 1979, the rappers of Sugarhill Gang came up with the first commercially acclaimed piece called "Rappers' Delight." [11: ibid, web page 1]

The Expansion of a New Form of Communication

There were massive efforts in all organized quarters to inhibit its growth but this newfound expression, which evolved in the last quarter, could not stop its spreading popularity among the young. While it began as urban music and dance, hip hop proliferated into a special form of communication, especially by the young, which breached national limits. It has reached other countries in a common effort of expressing what is un-expressed. Hip-hop also breached its limits as to interpretation modes from rap music and break dancing into a gargantuan industry, which asserts its influence across industries and various human endeavors. It is now a symbol of most everything that seeks self-expression from design of automotives, fashion, television programming, sports, marketing and advertising. It has incorporated itself into the culture of the young so intimately that it has become a way of life to many. [12: Carl Taylor and Virgil Taylor. Hip Hop and Youth Culture: Contemplations of an Emerging Cultural Phenomenon." Reclaiming Children and Youth 12, 4 (2004), p 1] [13: ibid, p 1]

An Appeal for Recognition

As earlier mentioned, the Hip-Hop concept emanated from the first young players of rap music, DJ wizardry and street-corner dressing in an attempt to convince adults who rejected the concept to accept and assimilate it into their own as legitimate. Most of these adults whose acceptance or recognition was valuable to these youngsters were parents. They and other authority figures mostly did not understand, like or accept and also warned the young who practiced the concept to drop it. But the more their older folks opposed Hip-hop, the more these young people engaged in the concept and deepened their involvement. [14: ibid. p 1] [15: ibid. p 1]

A study explored the reasons why the young practiced and enjoyed street dance between February and May 2010 in Timisoara, Western Romania. It gathered and interviewed 46 girls and 103 boys, half of whom came from inferior social classes and almost half from the middle clsse. About 83.89% of them regularly practiced break dance for more than five years. Their physical condition, artistic sense, and knowledge, physical discipline, culture and way of life all reflected that they, indeed, engaged in the dance on a regular basis. [16: Simona Petracovschi, et al. "Street Dance: Form of Expressing Identity in Adolescents and Youth." Physical Education and Rehabilitation Journal 3, Issue 6 (2011): 1-7] [17: ibid, p 1]

A Sense of Oneness Across Borders

Most of the volunteers said that they engaged in street dance because of its non-conformist nature and live style. These come along with the new moves, new ideas and new styles that they approve and enjoy. They also found street dance an enjoyable way of socializing with others who share their interests and values. At the same time, street dance made them feel nicely separate….....

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