Afrikan centered Education and Hip Hop Today: Intergenerational Propagation of the Talking Drum and Three Snippet Lessons

HISTORICALLY POETRY / RAP, LITERATURE, ART AND MUSIC HAVE BEEN COMBINED TO PLAY A PIVOTAL ROLE IN BLACK (AFRIKAN) PEOPLES EDUCATION, PROGRESS, POWER AND DEVELOPMENT; INCLUDING REVOLT, REBELLION, AND RESISTANCE TO PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SYSTEMIC OPPRESSION AND CULTURAL ELEVATION OF THE PEOPLE



“WE MUST REMEMBER THAT SOCIO-POLITICAL RAP STARTED WITH
THE AFRIKAN TALKING DRUM”



Because of the perceived potential of talking drums to "speak" in a tongue unknown to slave traders and thus to incite rebellion, in 1838 these and other drums were banned from use by Africans in the United States.

BEST DEFINITION OF AFRICAN CENTERED EDUCATION MY RESEARCH HAS TURNED UP:

African Centered Education is a system of sequentially planned educational opportunities provided for African heritage children, youth and young adults to develop the necessary and required skills to participate in the global marketplace with specific interest on the upliftment and empowerment of their African-American communities and the total development and growth of the African continent. -
Dr. E. Curtis Alexander

Dr. Amos Wilson On Culture, Symbolism and
The Role of Entertainment in Education

Why should an overstanding and appreciation of Hip-Hop / Rap and other genres of Black (Afrikan) music be considered worthwhile in what is being called, a scholarly think tank and educational curriculum anyway?

We would like to suggest just five of the many reasons:

1) The skills one brings to listening to Blak music --imagination, abstract / non-concrete thinking; intuition; and instinctive reaction and trusting those instincts (melanin-mediated themes) have gone uncultivated in the U.S. educational system and culture.

2) Music, as a universal, non-verbal language, allows us to tap into the social, cultural, and aesthetic traditions of the Blak / Afrikan experience, and the sociopolitical climates of various historical eras. Listening to conscious and message music we become more aware of our shared predicaments as Afrikan people across space and time and the never ending battle between freedom and bondage.

3) You learn how the Black Liberation Movement, in fighting against the system and business of white supremacy, created and continues to create music and musicians whose rhythms and lyrics are shrouded in liberation themes. The work and activities of the organizations and grassroots peoples of the Movement transmit inspiration, wisdom and vision to the musician/ poet; and in turn, the music/spoken word produced by the artist inspires and drives the Movement .

4) Music allows us to transcend our own individual world and partake in the utterly different, but nonetheless similar, realities of other Afrikans in American and throughout the diaspora.

5) Last, but certainly not least, good music is fun to listen to, relatively inexpensive we can do it by ourselves or with others and there are any number of ways to expand our knowledge and appreciation of the art itself and its role on our overall struggle for freedom, justice and equality.

Lesson Snippet # 1

Introduction to RBG Blakademics at
RBG Street Scholars Think Tank

RBG Wake Up Call:
On The Shoulders of Those Before Us

Please keep in mind that RBG is a Think Tank. A center of higher learning organized for fun but, intensive study, research and problem solving; focused in the areas of the use of creative digital technology in Afrikan-centered cultural development and education, social, political and economic strategy.

1) More frequently than not, we initiate our teaching / learning processes by presenting audio and visual (symbolism) resources that pose semalies, parables, metaphors, analogies and oxymorons--that's what makes you think (we hope).

2) Then we have lively and well informed group discussions in our forums revolving around the various messages put forth in the learning objects and media assets.

3) Next we research the facts overlaying our discussions using the voluminous number of resources available in the communiversity's web portals and learning environments.

4) Finally, each learner has the opportunity to fill our evaluation instruments on most of the 5,000+ RLOs (Reusable Learning Objects) and media assets that comprise the core curriculum.

It is out of above four component methodology that we devise position papers and community policy recommendations and initiatives in the best interest of the health, well being and progress of New Afrikan people in America and through the diaspora.


Further Study:
The Foundation of Knowledge is Knowing Definitions of Words, Featuring RBG Teaching VLog

"ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE": Music that Drove A Movement, Paris/The Black Panther of Hip Hop & A Classic 1966 SNCC Document "The Basis of Black Power"

The Political Power of Rap / Spoken Word : "Feat. Def Poety as a New Age Talking Drum, Educating Tha Masses"

http://www.zimbio.com/RBG+Afrikan-+Centered+Cultural+Development+and+Education/ Multimedia Notes

For Our Definitive / Scholarly Study Download:

Shani Smothers.pdf, 1.6 MB

UNMASKING HIP HOP: LANDSCAPING THE SHIFTS AND IMPACTS OF A MUSICAL MOVEMENT A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Communication, Culture and Technology By Shani Ali Smothers, B.A. Washington, DC, 2004

Lesson Snippet # 2

Drawing history lessons from
Great Revolutionary Afrikan Leaders

Sekou Toure'

Mouse over image to read/scroll the Wikipedia biography, click to link

On Music and The African Revolution

To take part in the African revolution it is not to write a revolutionary song; you must fashion the revolution with the people. And if you fashion it with the people, the songs will come by themselves, and of themselves. ... In order to achieve real action, you must yourself be a living part of Africa and of her thought; you must be an element of that popular energy which is entirely called for the freeing, the progress, and the happiness of Africa. There is no place outside that fight for the artist or for the intellectual who is not himself concerned with and completely at one with the people in the great battle of Africa and of all suffering humanity.

Sekou Touré

From: Black Nationalism and Rap Music
by Errol A. Henderson

Lesson Snippet # 3

International Association for Hip Hop Education

I am very please to have found out about the International Association for Hip Hop Education.

I would like for us to receive the three snippet lessons herein as typical examples of the growth, unity and 5th element (knowledge) significance that hip hop culture and conscious rap music is playing today in our educational, technical and professional development ; when we now have an International Association. Another feather in the cap of new age Afrikan centered academics.
"Kudos for Us" See the documents / links below to learn more

Developing Hip Hop Studies Curriculum, a PDF



Also check out:

The Crisis of the Hip-Hop Intellectual

http://www.voxunion.com/?p=294






Another RBGStreetScholar Educational Design