Author Topic: INFINITE'S HIP HOP CULTURE 101/HISTORY/GIVING BACK  (Read 60 times)

infinite59

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INFINITE'S HIP HOP CULTURE 101/HISTORY/GIVING BACK
« on: October 10, 2001, 10:53:49 PM »
You can just listen to hip-hop.  Or you can be hip-hop.  You can BE a part of the culture.  We need more people studying the culture.  Studying it's begginings.
Hip Hop was started as a means of survival in the Bronx New York.  Because in the 50's New York City official Robert Moses levelled large sections of the Bronx.  In an effort to biuld White Flight transportation such as the Cross Bronx Expressway.  This left many to pick up the pieces, and survive in communities that were nothing but rubble and tenements.  
As hip-hop writer Peter Shapiro puts it, "like hunter gatherers, they picked through the debris and created their own sense of community and found vehicles for self-expression from cultural ready-mades, throwaways and aerosal cans.  The moral guardians who think that hip-hop is nothing more than a negative force need to look no further than hip-hop pioneers Afrika Bambatta and the Zulu Nation.  In fact, if it wasn't for hip-hop, New York might very well be the anarchic hell envisioned in John Carpenters Escape From L.A."  
But through hip-hop, former gang members, such as those in the Zulu Nation, began organizations dedicated to urban survival by peaceful means.  They gave disenfranchised kids, from the Bronx and beyond a sense of belonging and success they had previously only seen in street gangs that ruled New York in the early 70's.
Which brings me to the present.  Whether you are fighting battles mentally or physically to rise above your surroundings,  hip-hop culture has always been a means of obtaining knowledge and dealing with struggle.  So with that being said.  We need to work to keep the culture alive and healthy.  Alot of people merely listen to rap when they are young, and then disregard it as they grow older.  They don't see it as a viable culture and merely see it as pop music.  But for those who understand the complexities of hip-hop, as  we grow older we need to look towards giving back to the culture.  There's a 2pac class at Berkeley, CA. University.  J-Ro of the Alkoholiks teaches hip-hop classes to kids in his community.  Author William Wimsatt has worked at started organizations.  I don't have all the answers on exactly how you do this, but I wanted to maybe open your minds up to the idea that their are possibilities out there.