Intro to HipHop Anthropology 101:

Culture, Language & Archaeology

We must get out the box, stand next to it and examine for what it is.

Tha Questions?

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear HipHop?

What is the first thing that comes to you mind when your hear Rap?

What happen to the African in America?

What is HipHop?

What is Rap?

Why HipHop Anthropology?

Definitions

• Kujichagulia (co-gee-cha-goo-lee-ah), meaning self-determination; it establishes an emic

distinction (insider’s perspective) of HipHop.

• Emic vs. Etic Distinction

• To this day HipHop is defined as a music genre and dance phenomena. Rap is solely defined as
music. This reductionism has created an underground movement to sustain HipHop as a culture.

• In order to truly discuss the idea of culture, the conversation must be differentiated from music,
personas and to some extent race and European influences in order to arrive at the quintessential
ethos of HipHop with a “thick description” as Clifford Geertz says

A. Tha African in America & Cultural Progression

a. Pre-Colonial African Multiculturalism
b. Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
c. Segregation and Separation
d. Oppression and Repression
e. Retention vs. Distinct Culture

• African American culture has developed in its own right.

• Africanisms are evidence of thriving cultural traits that have survived their intended demise by
slavery and oppression. Africanisms found in language, dance, music, food-ways, kinship
relations and spiritual rituals are the unique cultural icons that are endemic to HipHop. Moving
beyond “Africanisms”, a distinctive culture and language group is promulgated by the notion that
the experiences of Africans in America have created a new society. Much like the Hausa, Akan,
Zulu and countless other societies in Africa, HipHop has risen to be another African society but
in the trenches of North America.

B. Historical Archaeology and Material Culture

a. Levi-Jordan Plantation & Frogmore Manor
b. African Burial Ground & Joseph Lloyd Manor

• Over the past 20 years, through these excavations, archaeologists are developing an artifact
identification index of “African American” artifacts, primarily based on multivalency. The array
of artifacts and material culture recovered must be examined with uninhibited and creative minds
to account for the complex meanings of found objects.

• Levi-Jordan Plantation Brazoria County, TX. The sub-floor deposits of the Praise House on the
Jordan plantation comprise an organized pattern of coins, a knife, a cross, ash deposits of the
hearth planted in a four cardinal directions formulate a cosmogram with the cross in the center.

• Frogmore Manor St. Helena, S.C.

C. HipHop Cosmology

• “African symbolism continually calls on you to go inside yourself and discover new truths,
which takes your consciousness and behavior to higher patterns to core cosmic truths,” Oba
T’Shaka Return to the African Mother Principle of Male and Female Equality (1995)

• Cosmology is the worldview of a culture; it is the way the culture perceives and explains the
universe.

D. Tha Crystallization of HipHop and Rap

a. Integration and the Revelation of a Distinct Culture

b. 30 years removed from Brown vs. the Board of Education (1954)

c. Black Power Movement

d. DJ Kool Herc invented the Mixer

e. Thelonious Monk uttered BeBop

f. Afrika Bambaattaa uttered HipHop

E. So what is HipHop? – tha 4 Pillars, Style & Rhythm

a. Emceein’, Deejayin’, Breakin’, Graffiti
 b. Style & Rhythm

• EMCEEIN: (The study and application of rhythmic talk, poetry and divine speech). Commonly
referred to as rappin or Rap. Its practitioners are known as emcees or rappers. The Emcee is the
most visible pillar of HipHop. The emcee serves to be the mouthpiece of the culture by carrying
on the tradition of oration in African cultures. The emcee relies on learned behaviors from elders,
preachers, jazz talkers, the “dozens”, poetry and spoken word. An emcee asserts acts of oration
and the regeneration of Nommo (the generative and productive power of the spoken word) to
deliver a ‘thick description’ of events, attitudes and social conventions .

• DEEJAYIN: Commonly refers to the work of a disc jockey. Hip Hop's deejay interacts
artistically with the performance of a recorded song by cuttin’, mixin’, and scratchin’ the song in
all of its recorded formats. Truly an advent of technological advancements in the 20th century, the
deejay utilizes turntables and electronic devices to produce music for the audience. Deejays
utilize the rich traditions of jazz, R&B, gospel, reggae, country and rock through sampling,
cuttin’, scratchin’ and mixin’ over the reclaimed drumbeat in the baseline of the music.

• BREAKIN: (The study and application of street dance forms). Commonly called Break Dancing
or B-Boying, it now includes the once independent dance forms; Up-Rockin’, Poppin’ and
Lockin, Jailhouse or Slap-Boxing, Double Dutch, Electric Boogie, Krumpin’ and Capoeira
martial arts. Breakin’ follows a long line of African dance traditions. These “circles” are more
than derivatives or Africanisms; they are a continuation of the cultural process and a visual
representation of cosmology. Just as African societies in traditional settings, Africans in the
Americas continue to dance within circles. This act is displayed in Capoeira (African centered
martial arts); the well documented Ring Shouts of slavery, family reunions, church services and
parties.

• GRAFFITI ART: (The study and application of street calligraphy, art and handwriting).
Writing or drawing that is scribbled, scratched, or sprayed onto a surface. Although,
characterized as spray painted walls, subways and street murals, graffiti art is projected through
art, graphic design and film. Archaeologically, graffiti-like writing has been discovered on many
plantation and cemetery sites. Prevalent in the engravings of headstones and coffins of
cemeteries, graffiti is common place in burial practices. If any, there are very few syntax rules to
the written language and iconography of rap. Words are generally spelled phonetically as opposed
to the inconsistency of English.

F. So what is Rap? – How We Talk

a. Rap the Redefinition
b. Jazz Talk, Blues Talk and Tha Dozens
c. Kool Words & Semantics
d. Non-Verbal Communication

• Because of the covert symbolic aspect of language, it is difficult to understand the full range of
meanings expressed by speakers in another culture. In order to gain insights into a people’s world
view or system of values, it is necessary to ascertain the cultural symbols embedded in their
words. This is one reason why translation from one language into another is never completely
accurate. Words in isolation can be translated, but the full sense of those words in context cannot
be easily or succinctly conveyed.

• Rap by definition means ‘to talk’ or ‘escape punishment.’ If placed in a historical context
of slavery and captivity, the African was not allowed to speak in her/his own words and
 feared losing her/his tongue if she/he was overheard by her/his captor. This restrictive
design inspired a language group of parables and allegory to become more complex
through codification and rhythm, setting itself aside from being a pejorative form or
English. Rap is not a dialect, slang or vernacular language; it stands alone on its own as it
requires a great deal of translation to outsiders. Simply put, there is a plethora of words in
Rap that do not translate into any other language, i.e. “hip hop”, “crunk” and “jazz”.

G. So Why HipHop Anthropology?

a. 21st Century African Culture in America
b. Self-Determination
c. Rap is Something You Do. HipHop is Something You Live

• African American Cultural Anthropology

• African American English Vernacular/Ebonics

• Kujichagulia (co-gee-cha-goo-lee-ah

• Creating a new paradigm in the world of Anthropology is to alter the view and change the
perspective about 21st Century African life in America.

• It is to set a stage for unborn projects and ideas about culture that seek to explain all of what it
means to be African in America. It is to re-establish as a growing discipline and define it as
HipHop Anthropology

• KRS-ONE, HipHop artist and scholar constantly reminds us that HipHop is more than music,
“Rap is something we do, HipHop is something we live.”