{"id":120071,"date":"2016-12-09T09:18:46","date_gmt":"2016-12-09T14:18:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=120071"},"modified":"2017-01-06T15:17:13","modified_gmt":"2017-01-06T20:17:13","slug":"coveted-class-hip-hop-politics-youth-culture-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2016\/12\/coveted-class-hip-hop-politics-youth-culture-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Coveted Class: Hip-Hop, Politics, and Youth Culture in America"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

The Instructor<\/span><\/strong>
\nJeffrey Ogbar was 10 years old when hip-hop first hit the Top 40 charts (Sugarhill Gang, \u201cRapper\u2019s Delight,\u201d 1979). He was captivated by the beats and rhythms and lifestyle. As a teen, he tried to learn to breakdance. He took up spray paint as a graffiti artist. Eventually, his passion turned to academia. \u201cWhen I was 19, 20 years old,\u201d he says, \u201cmy dream was to pursue a Ph.D. and be a scholar.\u201d<\/p>\n

The author of Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap<\/em> (2007, University Press of Kansas), Ogbar has been teaching at UConn since 1997. He is a professor of history and director of the Center for the Study of Popular Music. Prior to founding that interdisciplinary institute in 2014, he served in a number of administrative positions \u2013 vice provost for diversity, associate dean for the humanities in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and director of the Institute for African-American Studies, now known as the Africana Studies Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorking in administration was rewarding,\u201d says Ogbar, \u201cbut with teaching, well, I sometimes feel guilty that I enjoy myself so much. You might sense my enthusiasm when I talk about hip-hop.\u201d Indeed!<\/p>\n

Class Description<\/span><\/strong>
\n\u201cHip-Hop, Politics, and Youth Culture in America\u201d explores the history of rap music and its artistic antecedents, from minstrelsy to ragtime to jazz, and traces the popular genre\u2019s influences in addressing race, class, and gender. The landscape in the course, which Ogbar has taught since 1998, is constantly reshaping.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had no idea we would address gentrification in cities,\u201d says Ogbar. \u201cWe now have discussions on that, as well as health care inadequacy. These are matters that rappers get into.\u201d The same cannot always be said for artists in other genres, even those favored in affected communities.<\/p>\n

\n

Students tell me they had no idea this music was so cerebral. — Jeffrey Ogbar<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cGo through the Top 10 of soul and R&B in the 1980s, from Luther Vandross to Marvin Gaye, and you\u2019ll find love songs that are absolutely silent on important issues,\u201d says Ogbar. \u201cBut then hip-hop emerged, fearlessly and unapologetically reflecting on our society.\u201d<\/p>\n

The class delves beneath the misogyny and homophobia on the surface of some rap to unearth literary gymnastics, deconstruct metaphors and subtexts, and analyze the creation of rhymes.<\/p>\n

One exercise Ogbar finds illuminating is showing video of, say, Robert Frost reading a poem at the Kennedy inaugural \u2013 \u201cstanding still at the podium, his papers blowing in the wind, trying to read his 80 words\u201d \u2013 and asking students to compare it to a rap performance, Drake or Eminem \u201ccharismatic onstage, reciting hundreds of words from memory, riding in and out of the beat.\u201d This inspires the class to reimagine poetry and literary work in both oral and written form.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents tell me they had no idea this music was so cerebral,\u201d says Ogbar.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Ogbar\u2019s Teaching Style<\/span><\/strong>
\n\u201cWhat does Yoda have to do with hip-hop?\u201d When Ogbar introduced the \u201cStar Wars\u201d character on the first day of class one recent semester, his students were baffled. Then he went on to explain how Luke Skywalker was in search of a Jedi knight when he encountered this small creature, feeble in appearance.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t expect a fierce fighter to come in that package. You don\u2019t expect courage and bravery,\u201d says Ogbar. \u201cLikewise, in the 1970s people didn\u2019t expect genius in the form of young black and brown dudes in the south Bronx. Yet out of that poor and violent community emerged a cultural juggernaut the likes of which the world has never seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unexpectedly outside the box, the professor\u2019s example was.<\/p>\n

Why We Want to Take It Ourselves<\/span><\/strong>
\nUnlike a survey of ancient China or Colonial America, this is living, breathing history. Ogbar cites the Tunisian rapper El G\u00e9n\u00e9ral, who as recently as the fall of 2010 released \u201cRais LeBled,\u201d which decried poverty, unemployment, and other social injustices in his country, laying the blame on the authoritarian leader Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali.<\/p>\n

The unapologetic rapper was arrested, sparking protests in the streets that led to the downfall of the Ben Ali regime. This spirit of democratic revolution spread throughout North Africa and the Middle East, becoming a movement known as the Arab Spring.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was history unfolding right in our midst,\u201d says Ogbar. \u201cAnd it wasn\u2019t country music, it wasn\u2019t jazz that got those people out in the streets. In many popular art forms, when someone says or does something offensive, they\u2019ll pull back and apologize. There\u2019s none of that temerity in hip-hop. There\u2019s something about the politics of rap that enables an emcee to say what he says and not back down.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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