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Conscious Rap and the Global Cypher” Personal Statement

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Conscious Rap and the Global Cypher” Personal Statement “Conscious rap and the Global Cypher” Personal Statement When I was three, my father featured me on a hip-hop, jazz and funk-infused song he was working on at time, titled “Listen and Learn.” For my musical introduction my role was to chant the phrase “y’all not ready.” After the recording session, my father sampled my voice and looped it beneath the track bed. When I recently asked him about the content of the song’s meaning, he explained the song was meant to be a father-to-son conversation that speaks to personal obstacles and failures and how I should go about overcoming the obstacles and avoiding the failures. The song also served as reminder for me to persevere and never give up; by having me saying “y’all not ready" he expressed his feelings about my future opponents and my coming of age. He prophesized that I’m going to grow to become someone that you all are not ready for! In the same year that I was first invited into the cypher (see my project statement for more details), my father gave me an Mp3 player for Christmas along with 11 discographies of some of soul’s, blue’s and hip-hop’s greatest. He explained to me that I needed to submerge myself in these genres and understand the foundation. Even at nine-years-old, I developed a love for Blues and hip-hop music; everyday, on my way to school, I would recite the likes of Eric B. & Rakiem, Public Enemy, Run DMC etc. This music resonated with me and motivated me to be a more conscious, soulful and 1 educated individual. The meanings behind their song material made me feel empowered and hyper-aware of my surroundings. In sixth grade my teachers allowed me to explore my music interests and artistic creativity through course assignments. I ended that year having produced a CD, my own experimental musical project, “School House Rocks,” a compilation of songs dedicated to the core classes I was taking at the time. In between songs, I inserted sampled snippets from Disney’s “School House Rock!” and playful conversations between my father and me. While this project provided me creative space to gain a first-hand experience in music production and lyric writing it also was a pivotal moment in showing me that what I had was valued by my teachers and my peers and it was important enough to invest in. They allowed me to interrupt lesson plans and use rap to communicate what I knew. During high school, I participated in an entirely youth-operated radio show named True Star Radio. The show had a weekly Sunday time slot on Chicago’s premiere urban radio station, Power 92.3 FM. These opportunities greatly affected my relationship with music; I became interested in the exportation of music and its various outlets. More importantly, I grew more curious about the role that audiences played in the expansion of music genres. I ultimately became hyper aware of where we were getting this music from. I wondered whether the success of certain music genres was dependent on the type of people that music mostly spoke to, and the ways those audiences and individuals responded to this music. What social, expressive or political messages are encoded in the various genres? In developing this interest, I also began 2 questioning how various hip-hop and R&B artists were challenging or falling into the status quo. During my teenage years, the rap form “drill music“ had become popularized. I was immediately disgusted by this subgenre of rap, after realizing how the music glorified hyper-masculinity, gun violence, and the commitment of federal crimes as the everyday norm. For me, this brand of music was particularly troubling because I was brought up under the “conscious music” rap tradition and alongside musical talents whose music focuses on creating awareness and imparting knowledge; these rappers traditionally decry violence, discrimination, and other societal ailments and express the frustrations of living in oppressive societies. Drill music awakened a drive in me to not only create more empowerment-based music -, but also to create music that combated destructive masculine habits, gun violence, and criminal activity. I lived in a two-flat building that was literally half home and half professional studio, with my father and ten uncles, so I was surrounded by the sounds of underground Chicago musicians making conscious rap music. However, it was drill music that awakened the conscious artist within me, and encouraged me to revisit my old musical interest as a way to start exploring my own artistry. During my freshman year in college I co-hosted a radio show on Carleton’s KRLX 88.1 FM and led a live hip-hop, jazz, soul and country fusion group—both named Ashantology. Over a three-year time span the group has become a prominent band on campus. Since forming we have won Battle of the Bands, performed at Spring Concert, and we created four professionally produced videos that accompanied our musical 3 projects. More important than any of the honors or projects, the band has helped me understand that form and content were keys for me. Even with the moderate performing success, the response to the fusion music I experimented with in Minnesota did not quite resonate the same way with crowds in Chicago. The different signifiers that my band tapped into did not reflect the style Chicagoans had come to recognize. I couldn’t figure out where the message was being missed. I sought to constantly expand my knowledge and practice of music theoretically, culturally and technically. My interest in looking at music form and content was ignited, and as a result, I decided to use it as the organizing principle for my Watson project. Contemporary works from scholars looking at world music, like Terry Miller and Andrew Sharahri, primarily focus on the economic success and commercial reception of genres that incorporate hip-hop musical elements. I take issue with this because there is not enough attention being paid to actual form and content relationships—what meaning is the artist attempting to convey when a record is being produced? Additionally, not much consideration goes to how our technologically advanced digital age, and ever-growing, tech-savvy generation has changed the music production and sharing processes. Artists practicing hip-hop traditions shared throughout world music are embracing experimentation and changing the direction in which their traditions are headed. Ideally, my Watson will provide a platform for an exchange of musical understandings and practices between me and all of the individuals, groups and organizations I intend to work with. I want to share my experiences with them and I 4 want to know how their experiences with hip-hop have been different, as well as how their perceptions of hip-hop vary across geographical, genre and cultural divides. Questions I hope to probe are: Is there a common underlying and identifiable principle about using hip-hop practices and rap as a musical tool? How are producers and writers utilizing production methods to create meaning within their music? How are artists handling the complexity of music while simultaneously expressing themselves through it? By using hip-hop as a template for understanding rap’s influence and how it contributes to the reconceiving of world music, I hope to answer these questions and others that will surely arise. In following rap into different music traditions, I will also be continuing my own personal journey to redefine my own music and myself. My Watson will enable me to witness musicians first hand as they create new sounds, and begin to discover how and why the back end of a musical process matters in understanding the art form in totality. Instead of participating from a third-party perspective I will be able discover the musical and cultural ethos from the perspective of those closest to it. Though my Watson will give me the opportunity to deeply explore the intricacies of music production and expansion on an international level, I understand that I will also be challenged in a multitude of ways. Since I will not have the immediate comfort of family, classmates, or faculty, I will be forced to stay out of my comfort zone. I foresee being confronted with various obstacles that include finding people to connect with, both on a social level and for my project, and navigating language barriers. 5 Ultimately, I refuse to let fear of rejection or exploration stand in the way of me carrying out my Watson project. I believe that any lover of music can quickly find common ground. While I am assembling a list of contacts, I know I will also be able to find musicians via word of mouth, musical venues, live performances, and any of the many social media sites. Although not being able to speak the language of some of the musicians may present complications, I don’t think that communication will be difficult, as I believe that I can use the “universal language” to convey my musical enthusiasm. Walking away from my Watson, I hope to be more equipped to expand the understanding of and access to alternative forms of music among communities across the World, especially in the U.S. 6 Project Proposal “Conscious rap and the Global Cypher” Proposal It was my turn to go! Admittedly, I was not quite ready, I was only nine at time, but the cypher (an open freestyle rapping exercise) had begun and my ten uncles waited in circle formation, as it was my time to partake.
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