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Although Q-Tip & Kanye grabbed headlines and blog-love, an essential part of the past week’s Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival was the an educational symposium that organizers Brooklyn Bodega put together at Pratt Institute here in Brooklyn. Luckily, our correspondents Rico aka Superbizzee and photographer Jayro were on hand to document the whole thing. Check the photo gallery (above) and read on for the full story.
This past Wednesday, hip-hop artists, intellectuals, professionals, journalists, and educators convened at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn for the second Bodega Education Initiative (BEI)–the newest addition to Brooklyn Bodega’s annual Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival (BHF). Conceived to break up the monotony of party and bullshit, BEI offers a fertile space to dissect and examine the complexities of the politics and infinite possibilities of hip-hop as a social and economic force to be reckoned with. The inaugural 2010 event was centered on a series of analytical discussions on the life and work of legendary hip-hop producer J Dilla. For this year’s symposium, the Brooklyn Bodega team shifted gears with a new theme: Beyond The Mic. “Not everybody can be a rapper, make beats, or dance,” says Brooklyn Bodega president and BHF executive director Wes Jackson. “We need web designers, managers, teachers, and people behind the scenes to make it all work.” As a further exposition of this year’s theme, Jackson relayed his desire to “get some minds in the room and discuss the issues” effecting hip-hop artists and the larger hip-hop community. A weighty undertaking, to say the least.
Jackson’s opening remarks were followed by a screening of the 2009 film Copyright Criminals. Boasting a colorful cast of talking heads and artists such as George Clinton, Q-Bert, Chuck D, and Pete Rock, the groundbreaking documentary critically probes the arguments for and against the loosening of the leash on copyright laws governing sampling. The roundtable discussion that followed, featuring the likes of venerable emcee Milk D of golden era duo Audio Two and Johnny Juice of seminal hip-hop production outfit The Bomb Squad, provided a more in-depth look at how the concept of sampling in hip-hop culture has permeated the far reaches of our social universe. Though the film proffered the somewhat antiquated opinion of sampling as a lackadaisical attempt at musicianship, Milk D argues that the output of much of today’s non-sample based hip-hop production embodies a significantly diminished and uninspired musical content. “They’re not musicians, so we’re getting product that is not as good as it should be,” he laments. “It would probably be better if they just went ahead and sampled.”
After the discussion, attendees were dispersed into three break-out sessions that addressed the topics of education, journalism, and entrepreneurship. Expounding on concepts posed by Brazilian educator and theorist Paulo Freire in his landmark text Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, the Hip-Hop Pedagogy and Education session forged ahead in the exploration of innovative ways to utilize hip-hop via tangential learning in the classroom. Despite a multitude of data supporting hip-hop education’s effectiveness, there remain invisible hurdles preventing a full-scale integration into academia. One such hurdle, posits Dr. Marcella Runell Hall – NYU’s interim director for the Center for Multicultural Education and Programs, is the ostracizing of hip-hop culture into a vacuum of mutual exclusion. “There was a time when if you claimed hip-hop, you couldn’t claim social justice,” she recalls. “There’s so much room to discuss racism, sexism, and other issues using hip-hop as an interdisciplinary lens.” Artist/educator “Farbeon” Saucedo fervently supports Hall’s claim. “Using the elements [of hip-hop] as pedagogy, we give them the tools to develop identities as agents of change in their own communities,” he says.
In the Hip-Hop Journalism discussion session, the panel and the audience volleyed various topics ranging from the future of long form hip-hop journalism to the rise of content jacking. Journalist Christopher Weingarten (Rolling Stone, Village Voice) raised a hot button issue that has been plaguing print journalism for nearly a decade. “The reviews section of every magazine on newsstands right now feature all the albums that blogs were talking about a month ago,” remarks Weingarten. So what about long-form hip-hop journalism as a remedy for the ailing print media industry? While journalist Kelefa Sanneh (New Yorker) argues that print publications have budgets for long-form journalism that online mags may find difficult to compete with, it ultimately boils down to how the consumers react to the change in the tide. “The question is does it fall into the category of what people like,” says Sanneh. He argues that while mobile devices such as the iPad are revolutionizing the way people consume content, monetizing long-form journalism may be quite a different battle. “We ultimately have to determine if it’s a medium people are willing to spend money on.”
The final discussion, entitled The Cultural and Entrepreneurial Initiative, flaunted some of the more esteemed invited guests of the day. Newark, NJ councilman and second-generation activist Ras Baraka lead off the group discussion with an impassioned analogy, encouraging artists to ensure that their business is in order when it comes to ownership of intellectual properties. “It’s not yours if you can’t keep it,” he warns. “You can buy a boombox from the store. But the [guy] down the block who’s bigger and stronger than you can just take it from you. Unless you go do some push ups and get a crew.” Baraka also shined a light on the cultural aspect by praising the landmark efforts of his Howard University classmate and discussion moderator April Silver. Howard University’s Cultural Initiative and its subsequent conference series of the 1990s, of which Silver was a co-founder, was the first of its kind to effectively engage academia with hip-hop culture. “There was no blueprint,” he recalls of its inception. “It was the product of sheer will.” He notes that Silver’s initiative was essentially born of youthful ingenuity and the desire to cultivate a broader, more sustainable economy within the culture. “Being that hip-hop was a culture that shaped people’s politics, we wanted to find other ways to empower ourselves by music created because of our condition in this country. We wanted to teach it, preserve it, and learn how to eat off of it.”
Preceding a performance from the Berklee College of Music’s J Dilla Ensemble, integrated with an emcee competition, Berklee’s senior vice president of academic affairs/ provost Dr. Larry Simpson imparted closing words to tie in the varied elements of the conference. “Borrowing has always been around, long before sampling,” he states. “It was typically out of respect and love.” While pointing out that Berklee was the first academic institution of higher learning that instated a curriculum of turntablism, Simpson is well aware that academia and hip-hop have to partner together to ensure that the culture leaves a clear and truthful footprint in the sands of time. “Hip-hop is the most documented cultural phenomenon in the history of the world. It’s up to us to help others understand the cultural context in which it has evolved.” While the fact that the break out sessions were running concurrently presented a challenge to attendees hoping to take in the full breadth of the day’s events, BEI 2011 nonetheless provided a unique opportunity to engage in a wellspring of ideas and bring progressive concepts to the fore of hip-hop culture. With hip-hop culture being incessantly pillaged by Madison Avenue and its imitators, it’s paramount to have a solution-based environment to broaden the culture’s horizons. BEI is one of the few beacons of light allowing us the space to develop dynamic ways of igniting the young minds of the 21st century; chronicling and disseminating the culture –and subscribing to sound business practices that fully operate in our best interest. Because when it’s all said and done, it’s bigger than hip-hop.
