I
was struck by a comment I once heard from a pre-service teacher woman, and
I will not even describe her because I think she expressed an almost
universal sentiment.
In
her lesson demo she told a group of English teachers that she "used
British hip hop artist M.I.A.'s song lyrics to draw her students in,
that they be more willing to learn about 'real' poetry." I
raised my eyebrows and said nothing--knowing full well how much I
disagreed with her position. I imagined what she meant by “real”
poetry.
I
thought about poets I loved: Dickinson, Whitman, Frost. I figured
those three among the poets she counted as producing “real”
poetry, poetry worthy of study and canonization. In those few
seconds it took to register her comment then become annoyed by it, I
also began to wonder why she discounted MIA's work as not “real?”
I wondered why she didn't know better. I concluded that she had separated hip hop from the poetic tradition either because she didn't
know enough about poetry to make a comprehensive assessment or
because she believed class, race, or nationality actually qualified
one genre of poetry as “real” and another as a pretender. You
see, MIA is a working-class female Bangladeshi Brit rapper. And I
wanted to talk with this teacher to share that I have not ever read
poetry from any author, any period, or any culture that did not match
in complexity, creativity, technique and beauty with a number of old
school and modern day hip hop artists, including MIA.
I
wanted to say, like we often do after these opportune times, that if
a teacher's goal is to connect, then build upon students' prior
cultural knowledge and transfer that into meaningful new academic
knowledge, then teachers could certainly use the poetry students
already know. They already know how to analyze hip hop—without
necessarily even reading the lyrics. If they can do that, why not
take hip hop song lyrics, engage students with its musicality and
content, then show students how similar what they already know at
home is to what they need to know in school? This is culturally
responsive pedagogy. Culturally responsive pedagogy is a valuable
tool for any classroom:
The
validation, information, and pride it generates are both
psychologically and intellectually liberating" (35). This
freedom results in improved achievement of many kinds, including
increased concentration on academic learning tasks. Other improved
achievements can include: clear and insightful thinking; more
caring, concerned, and humane interpersonal skills; better
understanding of interconnections among individual, local, national,
ethnic, global, and human identities; and acceptance of knowledge as
something to be continuously shared, critiqued, revised, and
renewed.
(Chapman,
1994; M. Foster, 1995; Hollins, 1996; Hollins, King, & Hayman,
1994; Ladson-Billings, 1992, 1994, 1995a and 1995b; Lee, 1993;
Lee & Slaughter- Defoe, 1995)
Now,
I of course, have not read every bit of canonical poetry, nor I have
heard every hip hop song, but hear me out. I have read and studied an
enormous amount of literature, have taught critical reading and
writing, have written several genres of literature, including poetry
and have recognized for some time hip hop's poetic value. Hip hop is
poetry--some good and some bad, some mediocre, and some phenomenal. I
offer that when we understand that
in academia, the "real" shall meld with the real
and students will have access to
what many of them find relevant and non-exclusionary. Students can
find genuine validation within a classroom, rather than a
condescending teacher trying to reeaachhh
them through what they know in order to eventually denigrate it.
Students, especially students coming from outside the dominant
culture, appreciate correlative relationships; not hierarchies that
have historically excluded what they value. And understanding some of
the history and poetry of this music form might better equip teachers
to use it in the classroom.
So
let's get back to hip hop, and what it means to many of our students,
and let's be honest, a whole generation of younger teachers who also
grew up with the art form. So it means a great deal to us. From its
inception in the late 70s we saw the music transform from simple,
rhyme schemes of the eighties--predominately sounded off in a bubbly
iambic pentameter--to more and more complex structures that fused
word-sounded syncopation driven by the poets who created tone, mood,
and the highs and lows and complications of narrative poetry through
the use of a multiplicity of literary devices, devices many multiple
subject and English teachers expect their students to recognize,
analyze and use themselves.
You
had early artists, influenced by Gil Scott Heron and The Last Poets,
who took the art of the African American cultural elite to the
streets of New York City. Eventually, and after a commercial surge,
came artists like Grand Master Flash, whose "The Message"
is now anthologized in Norton's African American
Literature. Beside it you will
find Public Enemy's "Don't Believe the Hype." Following in
the tradition of Gil Scott Heron and The Last Poets, both songs
represent a socially critical aspect of the music. That socially
critical voice can be heard through a number of groups that emerged
in the late eighties and early nineties: Eric B. and Rakim, Boogie
Down Productions, Poor Righteous Teachers, The Jungle Brothers, Queen
Latifah, DeLa Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Brand Nubians, Bahamadia and many,
many more. These artists were very well known within the culture, but
were not necessarily megastars. They emerged as respected poets who
could deliver their cerebral poetry over an appropriately funky
breakbeat and move a crowd all night long. They were like the cool
jazz players of an earlier generation, who riffed off of and alluded
to each other's work and character, according to the tradition of
what Skip Gates calls "The Signifying Monkey." The
Signifying Monkey, or allusion, is the key to the music's continuity.
How
does this work in a classroom? Well, I always try to introduce to
English 9 students that when Maya Angelou chose the title, I
Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,
she wanted not only to credit Paul Laurence Dunbar, because that's a
line from his poem, “Sympathy.” I then ask them to draw
correlations between his experience and hers as an African American.
What do they have in common? Why did she choose to make this
connection?
Usually,
my more advanced students get that right away. But when I say, "You
know how E40 uses the looped metaphor, 'We be to rap/what key be to
lock.'”
They
say, "Yea!" And then I explain that that was not his
line—that he's referring to a line by Q-Tip of Tribe Called Quest:
and that that line was also later used by Diggable Planets in the
song, “Cool Like That.” So now the concept, application and
usefulness of allusions become more clear to students who often have
difficulty in understanding and internalizing this complex idea.
They
build on the conversation, "Oh you mean like when Jay-Z says,
'All I need in this life of sin/is me and my girlfriend,' he's paying
tribute to Tupac and trying to compare himself to him.'
They
take over as I smile widely and say, "Yes! And why do you think
he did that?” The allusions link together like the greased gears
of a pressed lock. My work and theirs becomes so much more relevant
and lively. They connect with a genre they once held at a distance as
overly technical or foreign (the academic).
“Look
at what I found Ms. Keeble!” One student shows me some writing
technique Jay-Z uses in his song, “Minority Report” as we read
and write creatively and critically about Hurricane Katrina. “I
hadn't even noticed that, Omar Beautiful.” My students begin to
integrate home and school. One they own; one they begin to
own—quickly. Their sense of agency capitalizes.
And
what does this have to do with that young teacher lady who said that
she uses the hip hop lyrics to get to the "real" poetry?
Well,
I think it's pretty clear. Our students have a wealth of knowledge
that is genuinely creative, rooted in the majestic, and culturally
relevant. They know the quality of poetic composition of artists
like, Wale, Common, Talib Kwali, the Roots, J Cole, Lupe Fiacso, and
I could go on. That composition consists of all the elements of what
we call classical poetry, accepting that it is not written in sonnet
form (alas)--but quite commonly a 32 bar pop song--that originated in
the African American church. When will we give credit to an American
classic creation and qualify it as a real
and valuable tool in the teaching of our young people who are so
completely able to immediately comprehend all its complex meanings?
The failure to do so leaves our nation's students disconnected from
the relevance of their own educations and power of their own art
forms. Hip Hop, like jazz and rock and roll, is a genuine, although
often disrespected true American art form that our students have
known their entire lives. Educators and students might be better off
learning something of it, and using it to connect our students to our
goals.
