If you think about the way you’re watching hip hop right now, you might come to the same conclusion:
There’s music being made right now about everything…
This question is often met with an affirmative response:
Yeah, but everything is a political statement and everyone is talking about race and inequality. I think that’s why I like them more…
Yes, in fact, everything is politic, because everyone is talking about it.
Why is this?
It’s because hip hop is a social dance. This sounds kind of crazy, and it really just is, but…
It’s because we’re all on a collective journey of self-discovery. It’s because in this moment of self-discovery, many of us are creating art about the people and events that create the pain, the rage, and the rage.
The pain of loss. The rage of loss. The rage of inequality. The rage of violence. The rage of oppression.
All of these are all real emotions. But they haven’t been able to find expression because most of us are stuck within existing structures — within political systems and economic systems and sexual practices — and therefore do not engage them fully. They are like black holes we don’t feel we can exit, as the poet and activist and educator Mary Karr puts it.
Hip hop is not our only political dance. There are the political dance of the marginalized: people of color and women who struggle for liberation in systems of oppression.
And hip hop is not the only dance that needs to be expressed and practiced, whether you call it rap or poetry. Because, just like any other dance, there is another political dance. We’re talking about the dance you do with your body and your mind at a given moment.
Hip hop is an “intellectual dance” about black/white issues and is not, as the sociologist Mary Karr suggested, a “social dance,” not because the ideas in rap are not black (they are), but because they are ideas that resonate with black communities.
This is not a criticism: Hip hop is not, by definition, a black art. It is, in fact, a black, urban, and political art. It is, in fact, a dance.
This is why the artists who create it are not the only ones with responsibility.
Many people believe that rap is a black art, because it is sung and produced by
social dance studio near me for adults, social dance lessons near me groupon merchant, crossword dominican social dance crossword, social dance lessons houston tx obituaries funeral home, current social dance trends