Hip Hop's African Origin - Art Essay Sample

The origin of Hip Hop music can be ascribed to African tradition and origin. When Africans were taking as slaves into America, they were subjected to harsh conditions and abject suffering. They also came into contact with a new culture that existed in America. As the years went by there evolved the African Americans who carried both the American and African culture (Peterson, 2014). They used music as a way of reconnecting with their culture and at the same time as a way of protesting the brutality they experienced as slaves. The African Americans developed a musical genre of their own which showed their lack of defeat and defiance from their oppressive masters.

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Hip hop was initially used to pass across messages of hope to the hopeless on the streets and speak up for the minority. Over the years hip hop has lost its meaning as artists have commercialized it. The current hip hop stars are glorifying violence and sex and forgotten the basic message of the genre of focusing on the harsh reality. The media and prisons are owned by the same people who are getting richer. The owners of the private prisons also own media houses and use the two to their advantage to promote the other therefore making huge profits. Hip hop videos glorify crime, drug, and prison by the exposure displayed in the media houses. The emergence of contemporary artists who are based merely on material benefits from hip-hop has led to an outcry by the older hip hop lovers that they have deviated from the message that hip-hop was initially meant to bear. The genre focused more on empowerment of people of color rather than the materialism concept that it carries today.

Hip hop culture was made up of DJing, MCing, Breaking, Beat box and Graffiti art as its connection to African aesthetic. These practices appealed to the fans as they could express themselves in a creative matter and put themselves in the shoes of the artists. Kool DJ Herc was one of the first few hip hop DJs who used the technique of creating tunes using turntables and manipulating sounds to make hip hop (Bush, 2013). He terms hip-hop as a family and looks back at the hip-hop at his time in the 1970s and compares it to the current era and deems the current hip hop lovers and artists not using the music for the betterment of the society. In his view, hip-hop is a way of life, and in so saying he urges the artistes to serve as role models and act up because the younger generation is looking up to them. He further dismisses the thoughts of hip hop fans as keeping it real but rather keeping it right would be the only way to better the generation.Djing can be termed as a replacement of the traditional drumming that was used to create rhythm in the songs.

MCing involves chanting rhyming lyrics by an artist. It has become more popular than DJing. It is embodied with ancient African culture which involves quick and slangy speech that is uttered by the artist through metaphors and descriptive words. Graffiti is the visual embodiment of hip hop. There are renowned exhibits of graffiti motion pictures of hip hop artists in galleries around the world, linking graffiti as part of hip hop. Break dancing is a popular form of dancing in the hip hop culture which involves frenetic style. Beating is the technique that involves creating rhythms using ones mouth. It is an integral part of hip-hop music as it gives the artist a platform to rap over.

In conclusion, the rhythm, way of dressing, music, and dance are a representation of heavy African culture that has been adopted and assimilated into the American culture. Youth around the world fancy the hip hop way of life and have embraced the dressing by hip hop artists (Osumare, 2007). Hip hop has a lot of influence across the world, whereby fans imitate what the hip hop artists term as cool.' Hip hop artists should ensure they pass across positive influence and message as they are a force to reckon.

References

Peterson, J. B. (2014). Defining an Underground at the Intersections of Hip-Hop and African American Cultures. The Hip-Hop Underground and African American Culture, 59-81. doi:10.1057/9781137305251_4

Tiongson, A. T. (2013). The African Americanization of Hip-hop. Filipinos Represent, 1-16. doi:10.5749/minnesota/9780816679386.003.0001

Peterson, J. B. (2014). The Hip-Hop Underground and African American Culture: The Deep Structure of Black Identity in American Literature. The Hip-Hop Underground and African American Culture, 41-57. doi:10.1057/9781137305251_3

Osumare, H. (2007). The Africanist aesthetic in global hip hop: power moves. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bush, E. (2013). When the Beat Was Born: DJ Kool Herc and the Creation of Hip Hop by Laban Carrick Hill. Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, 67(2), 95-95. doi:10.1353/bcc.2013.0727