Submitted by Amy Dix, Chicago, Illinois
Idea posted October 23, 2002
This is my first year teaching in an inner city school, and hip-hop and rap music in particular are verrrrrrry popular. My background is in ethnomusicology, and I studied hip-hop in-depth in grad school... and came to be intrigued and to respect it as an art form. I decided to begin my year by hooking them in with something that they're familiar with and attempting to steer them towards thinking about music critically... beginning to become active listeners of music.
This is a rough bunch, but so far it's been working pretty well. We've started with defining "hip-hop" and have just begun to explore the roots of hip-hop in the 1970s... the musical influences, the reasons people began performing rap music, the sounds and connections to other African American music traditions... we'll move into more contemporary hip-hop music later in the quarter. I only see them once a week, so it'll still be rather brief. I'm trying to introduce some basic musical terms (these kids haven't had a music program consistently so they don't know many formal words). We'll move into other kinds of music next quarter.
If anyone is interested in learning more about the "how and why" of hip-hop, as well as some history, I suggest reading the book Black Noise by Tricia Rose.