Saturday, June 19, 2010

Somalia/ United States: K'Naan on Hip Hop Learning

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Father-Son Bond Inspires Memoir Of Love And Reflection

Above is a talk about young African-Americans seduced by the threatening power they gain and exude when they conform to a representation of blackness, which a lot of mainstream hip hop glorifies, templates and makes accessible. In the American context it seems like a given that the inverse effect of the music's swagger and what it glorifies is the undermining of other tools of empowerment (i.e. reading and schooling etc). I recall authors Ta'Nehisi Coates and John McWhorther went a few rounds on the issue back in the day and in the excerpt below McWhorther says the seduction comes from hip hop's "confrontational cadence" and "how it is a musical evocation of a middle finger stuck up at the world":

But in the African context, apart from being all those things stated above, could hip hop indirectly, because of the cultural context the lyrics assume and which the non-American or African will need to acquire, be a learning tool or platform as K'Naan attests to below?