Let me start with the caveat, you can work alone, but I don't recommend it.
Group Assignment, due October 21, presentation, October 23.
October 22 is a Staff Development Day for the district. No Classes
We meet in the library tomorrow, Tuesday, October 7, 9 a.m. for an orientation that will help students decide how to conduct research on hip hop as a global movement. Remember the project I told you about earlier this semester? Well the time has arrived to look at an area of the world and see how they interpret hip hop culture. Each group can choose a geographic area and see what comes up, re: documentation. I thought countries like Iraq and Iran, Spain, England, Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela, South African, Ghana, Nigeria, Congo, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Palestine, Korea, China, India, Australia, Vietnam, Alaska, Mexico, Guatemala, France, Switzerland,and Germany.
It would be interesting to look at the lyrical content, the themes, how women are depicted, and the other aspects of the culture from values and clothing.
The project will have a verbal component, and a written component. Students will write their own papers looking at an aspect of the culture in the country chosen. Take for instance, Cuba. One student could address the values of the artists and how this shows up in the lyrical content. Another student could talk about the dance, dress, writing, music. Students could also look at how hip hop culture is tied in certain cultures to the folkloric and spiritual traditions. Are indigenous instruments used? Are their certain rhythms used that have special meaning? It would also be good to have someone look at the history and significant artists in the movement.
You decide see who will address what in the paper. Students will turn the project in together, and present as a group. This is not the research paper on an artist in Northern California who uses hip hop as a tool for social change, an entrepreneur.
Your essay plan is due October 9. Your source list is due October 14 (L-202E) along with a preliminary outline of the entire project and who is researching what aspect of the culture in your chosen locale. Essays are due for peer review sharing October 16.
The research group project (papers) due date is October 21. The presentation is October 23. Use Total Chaos as a resource for talking about your genre. We will go live using a web cam for the presentations. A question I'd like you to answer in the research is how is hip hop culture American culture and when exported do any residuals remain? If so, how so? If not, why not and is the separation deliberate?
The other research paper is due: Planning sheet October 28. Identify your artist or social entrepreneur and bring in a biographical statement that gives your audience a sense of who they are, what their medium is and why or how they are hip hop.
We will be continuing our survey of hip hop culture by going to events to see how playwrights, visual artists, musicians, designers, photographers and others use the medium to communicate. How are they hip hop? Why are they hip hop?
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Kimberly Peterson
Professor Sabir
English 1B
20 October 2008
The place this scene takes place in is, Sao Pablo, Brazil in the present day. Looking at the streets of Brazil, we can see that it is much more different then it was about twenty years ago. Gerard Behague, the late abounding Latin American scholar, explains that “[i]n 1985 Brazil returned to a democratic government after over twenty years of military authoritarian rule during which censorship was rampant…” (Behague). Behague basically means that Brazil has only been under democratic rule for a little over twenty years, and freedom of speech has been made possible for the inhabits by this democratic new rule. At approximately the same time as the new rule of democracy taking over Brazil, was also the same time that hip hop started to flourish the streets. The hip hop scene had already reached America in the 1970’s, and from there on was a new way of life for many. The hip hop culture spread like a wildfire through different nations. The hip hop culture includes the 4 elements of MCing (or rapping), DJing, b-boying (break dancing), and the urban art, graffiti. Since there is defining line in Brazil’s hip hop that this is graffiti seen in their culture, I will now look at some the differences in Brazils hip hop scene, and any residual remains of American culture.
Hip hop started in America in the 1970’s in the Bronx, New York. Michael Dyson an American writer and author of Know What I Mean?, and even civil professor Paul Butler would both agree that the culture was brought out of poverty, with prison-idealistic realities. Dyson explains that “…men have embraced… certain elements of the prison-industrial complex: the sagging pants, the baggy shirts, the laceless [sic] shoes…” (Dyson 14). The chances of someone going to prison that lives in poverty is much higher than someone living comfortably in a safe neighborhood. Prison attire exists far beyond the prison system, but even now in neighborhoods all around the world. Butler tells us that this prison vestment in hip hop culture has made its way to Brazil, “[a]t the same time that an art form created by African American and Latino men dominates popular culture, African American and Latino men dominate American prisons. Unsurprisingly then, justice--especially criminal justice--has been a preoccupation of the hip-hop nation” (Butler). Could this be that the prison complex has made its way over to another continent, is it coincidentally that the males in the hip hop culture has decided to dress this way as well, or could this mentality of being in the prison complex have started from slavery? Africans were brought from their country centuries ago to be enslaved even in Brazil. Scholar, Helioisia Toller Games believes that since Africans were “denied access to cultural goods” such as music, and literature, that their “culture in Brazil appeared as a strategy for psychological resistance.” This theory is a way to think about another true underlining foundation of hip hop’s roots.
Even in Brazil, they use hip hop as a type of aesthetic outlet. Music all around the world is used as outlets for human beings. As I prior said, the movement in Brazil started in the 1980’s, at about the same time as the democratization of the entire country. Brazilians use hip-hop as a form of education in their communities and to others, as they try to put out better messages for their society. For example, they tell children to stay in school and to never give up. Unlike Americans, although, we use hip hop as education too (and you can mostly find this in earlier hip hop, in the 1980’s) but, mainstream “rap,” or media rap, that is played on the radio, gives off bad messages. This ruins the image of American hip hop.
As for graffiti, the people that apply themselves in this urban artistic practice, is well respected by others that fore take in this urban art form. The community, as a whole, however, all has different views on what they think the graffiti is all about. Some graffiti has good messages, and some would believe that it has negative messages in the community. I guess it would depend on what was written or what was drawn, and where. Brazil takes pride for their trains and would never allow anything to tarnish their images. In America, graffiti is seen as a horrible thing to city workers. They see it as this type of film that covers the beauty in the city. In 1972, the beginning of the brawl, graffiti vs. the city of New York, New York; graffiti won because the city realized that they could only cover up so much of it. The major, John Lindsay spent so much of the city’s tax dollars on different methods of putting a stop to all graffiti, and in the end, nothing worked. In Jeff Chang’s book, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, Lindsay suggested that people who do graffiti are “insecure cowards’… they all had mental health problems,” (Chang 134). It is hard to say how Brazilians have reacted to graffiti. If graffiti was covering the entire city, like a plague like in New York in 1972, I would imagine that it could have the same effect. People write tags, that start tagging crews in different cities, or just sit at home and make art, for many different reasons. Jeff Ferrel, a criminologist, believes that graffiti “incorporates youth from different ethic and economic backgrounds and takes back some of the public space which is denied to them. The writing of this graffiti creates alternative statues, identity[,]and community by tagging and piercing from other writers.” A group in Brazil called; the 6emeia project started tagging because they wanted people to view things in their daily lives’ in another way. They go around and tag everywhere on street lamps, trash cans all around the city of Sao Paulo.
In the end, most of hip hop in the Brazil is just trying to give out positive messages to the communities. Perhaps hip hop artists are giving good messages out to their society because their society is experiencing other issues then America is, to this day. Derek Pardue, a socio-cultural anthropologist explains that, “[b]eyond an evaluation of Brazilian hip hoppers’ engagement with the State as ‘educators,’ the evidence and analysis presented in this article suggests that Brazilian hip hoppers see “globalized” discourses of hip hop identity…“ Hip hop is expressed asa globalized view, it is not just kept in the communities but spread throughout. They even talk about many different topics. For the majority, they tend to focus more on the positive, rather than the negative. It could be there Brazil’s media is completely different than in America. Americans media focuses on sex, drugs, and money and I know America has one of the most taboo countries in regards to sex. In the end, it is just a music form that was created for the people, by the people like all music.
Works sited
Behague, Gerard. “Rap, reggae, rock, or samba: the local and the Global in Brazilian popular music (1985-95).” Latin American Music Review 27.1 (Spring-Summer 2006): 79(12). Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. College of Alameda. 8 Oct. 2008 http://find.galegroup.com/itx/start.do?prodld=EAIM
Butler, Paul. "Much respect: toward a hip-hop theory of punishment." Stanford Law Review 56.5(April 2004): 983(34). Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. College of Alameda. 13 Oct. 2008 http://find.galegroup.com/itx/start.do?prodId=EAIM
Chang, Jeff. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop. New York: Picador, 2005.
Dyson, Michael, Jay-Z, Nas. Know What I Mean? New York: Basic Civitas, 2007.
Ferrell, Jeff. "Urban graffiti: crime, control and resistance." Youth & Society 27.n1 (Sept 1995): 73(20). Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. College of Alameda. 15 Oct. 2008
http://find.galegroup.com/itx/start.do?prodId=EAIM.
Pardue, Derek. “Hip hop as pedagogy: a look into “heaven” and “soul” in Sao Paulo, Brazil.” Anthropological Quarterly. 80.3 (Summer 2007): 673(37). Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. College of Alameda. 7. Oct. 2008
http://find.galegroup.com/itx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IACDocuments&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodld/EAIM&docld=A168547244&source=gale&userGroupName=collalamedal&version=1.0
Toller Gomes, Heloisa. Afro-Brazilian literature: spaces conquered spaces in between. Research in African Literatures. 38.1 (Spring 2007): 152(11). Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. College of Alameda. 7 Oct. 2008 "target=_blankhttp://find.galegroup.com/itx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodld=EAIM&docld=A162921738&source=gale&userGroupName=collalamedal&version=1.0.
http://nothingtoxic.blogspot.com/2007/09/street-cartoons-paintings.html
Kimberly Peterson
Professor Sabir
English 1B
20, October 2008
Outline
Thesis: Looking at graffiti, in hip hop as a global movement and taking a peek into Brazil’s culture, what are some the differences in Brazils hip hop scene, and can we still see any residual remains of America?
1. Hip hop in Brazil, what is residual?
A. This is how it all started; Black and Latin men are both subconsciously doing things as if they are in prison. Art from prison culture turned into the hip hop culture.
B. Even Dyson agrees with the prison complexity.
C. Similarities: All forms of hip hop are used as an outlet. Slums, rich kids-everywhere. Africans were slaves too in Brazil… could have been a heavy influence on the hip hop culture…
2. Differences: Brazil hip hop started in 1980s, America 1970’s. Brazilians use hip-hop as an education, Americans use hip hop as education too but mainstream “rap” gets in the way and kind of ruins the image of hip hop.
3. Graffiti
A. The adults in America felt like it was the kids who were the ones who where crazy for writing graffiti.
B. The kids feel like it is public space that is theirs!
C. 6ameia project and their purpose. http://nothingtoxic.blogspot.com/2007/09/street-cartoons-paintings.html.
Conclusion: In the end, they are just mostly good messages/educators… Globalized we can see a lot of similarities. There are differences because it does not appear that the violence in the songs are there in Brazil like they are in America.,, Perhaps the media is not like Americas at all, that could be why it is different!...
Kimberly Peterson
Professor Sabir
English 1B
20 October 2008
Solo Initial Planning Sheet: Brazil and Hip Hop
1) The subject of my paper as using a team ambience is to look at the hip hop structure in Brazil, Latin America to see how they interpret the hip hop culture. My topics will be about how art (including graffiti, some music, and a possibility of even photography) has had an influence in Brazilian hip-hop.
2) I want to write about this subject because I have always wanted to go to Brazil. I heard the country is not taboo with sex at all; it is a part of their culture. If I cannot learn with a first handed experience by going to Brazil, then I would love to learn about the culture in a visual way, by photography and even with street art, like graffiti.
3) The audience I want to write for is my professor, and my peers.
4) The question I want to answer is how America culture, in hip hop has survived over to Brazil, and even how Brazil has brought some of their culture to America.
5) The basic writing structure I think I will be using for my paper is using and giving descriptions of how life is like there, in my own point of view. Also, I will be using the compare and contrast method to my essay.
Kimberly Peterson
Aerin O’Leary
Benjamin Herrera (sp)
Tammia
Professor Sabir
English 1B
20 October 2008
Group Initial Planning Sheet: Brazil and Hip Hop
1) The subject of our paper, using a team ambience is to look at the hip hop structure in Brazil, Latin America to see how they interpret the hip hop culture. Our topics are as followed, Aerin will be covering some of the history of Brazil, Kimmy will be discovering art in Brazil (including graffiti, some music, and a possibility of even photography), Tammia will be covering politics, and Benjamin will be using a compare and contrast method to discuss how some of Brazil’s hip hop has come to America, and how American aspects of hip hop has even survived in Brazil.
2) We wanted to write about this subject because Brazil is known for being influenced from America by its hip hop. (Like all countries I presume.) Brazil seems like a really interesting country to learn about.
3) The audience that we want to write for is our professor, Ms. Sabir, and all of our peers.
4) The question we want to answer is how America culture, in hip hop has survived over to Brazil, and even how Brazil has brought some of their culture to America.
5) The basic writing structure that we will be using for all of our papers is the compare and contrast method.
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