Candidacy Statement

Introduction

My expedition through the path that is doctoral candidacy, has taken me on an exciting excursion. My research has forced me to be a reflective practitioner and reverse engineer the metacognitive^[1] understanding of my academic journey. For this project, I will start at the beginning and work forward, although my path has been non-linear, as you will see.

Let’s begin with me as a child growing up in the south, Montgomery, Alabama, to be exact. Montgomery is considered by many people to be the birthplace of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. Montgomery is where a young Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was reverend at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and helped coordinate the Montgomery Bus Boycott^[2] in which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. My formative years researching and learning about iconic black figures through my formal education, which was often by teachers who looked like me. To say my beginnings were humbled would be an understatement. I’m old enough to remember seeing government cheese in my refrigerator but too young to recognize exactly how it tasted. My mother was a hairdresser who eventually owned her salon in the basement of our house. My father was an Army veteran who transitioned into a blue-collar construction worker and all-around handyman who had vices of drugs and alcohol, which led to him having more than his fair share of run-ins with the law. As a result, his presence in my childhood was sporadic until I was about fourteen years old, and by that time, I moved away from home to attend an arts-based boarding school in Birmingham, Alabama.

Growing up black and gay in the south during the late ’80s and ’90s was an exciting time. The church had its outlook on homosexuality, and so did hip-hop music, and neither one favored it, at least not publicly. To take it a step further, both saw it at best a subversion of nature or, at worst, a condemnation to a social purgatory where all roads lead to shame^[3]. Perhaps, I would posit, that what I found magnetic was the sequencing embedded deep into the genetic code that connects me to the syncopated rhythms that would emanate from both^[4]. In the black church, the choir is the central voice singing quite literally Gospel music, which musicians almost always sing with underpinning chords from the organ, piano, or chords from a guitar, or bass, or the percussion of a drum, or tambourine. Many of these instruments and rhythms not only connect Gospel music to hip-hop music, but an instrument like the drum connects back to the origins of the African diaspora^[5]. This musical influence of the African diaspora, specifically the use of the drum within music such as Bomba, and other forms of Afro-Caribbean music^[6]. To be clear, I’m not trying to claim a broad-based conspiracy that both black church culture and hip-hop culture, the chief creative oratory outlets of the black community, devised a plan to target the LGBTQ+ community. However, I do indict that homophobic hostility could easily be found in both entities. So, this begs the question, “why would I find myself turning to societal structures that that seemed not to support elements of my being that I identify with?” The answer is simple, my ability to identify with the elements I did believe in allowing for an objective distancing of the phenomena existing within the culture in order to critically analyze and acknowledge the occurrence of that phenomena, the hypocrisy of the phenomena, and the inconsistencies of my reality while accepting parts of myself that society was saying I shouldn’t.

The primary focus of my doctoral studies will be an examination of the phenomena of hip hop culture from using an arts-based research approach with a critical race and postmodernist theorist lens analyzing the artistic elements of collage, pastiche, and visual bricolage that have been tenants of hip-hop culture and their potential applications in traditional and non-traditional classroom settings. In Spring ’19 took a Participatory Action Research^[7] (PAR) course with Dr. Ramon Robles. PAR is very profoundly rooted in Boalian principles associated with Theatre of the Oppressed^[8] (1979). Some of the underlying vital principals that come out of the field of PAR studies have provided me with the ethical basis for my research as I, too, much like many PAR practitioners believe that the participants are the experts of their own experience. I also ascribe to the optimistic world view of hope and healing^[9] through using the lens of hip-hop as an entry point into the cultural happenings of who Dr. Christopher Emdin refers to as the “neo-indigenous,” with an investigative look at restorative practices of black and brown communities particularly by the youth who feel restricted and out of place in traditional classroom settings.

Through ingenuity and determination, a movement that began in project housing on Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, NY, would spawn a global phenomenon that has provided pathways to creative expression to people all over the world. I first encountered hip-hop as a creative outlet when I was in the 7th Grade. I joined a hip hop group in my home town called the 334 Boyz, representing our local area code everywhere we went. The allure of the bravado and performance was strong. I remember writing lyrics in my bathroom or whenever the inspiration to do so would hit me. I remember the cipher sessions where I would feel inferior to the other artists around me. I would listen to their wordplay and mental dexterity in amazement. I couldn’t understand how the human brain could move that fast and how a mind, body, and spirit could be so intertwined in a state of flow,^[10]although I was never the best at the impromptu nature of flowing, also known as freestyling I never gave up. I saw this as a necessary skill to develop to sharpen my mental and verbal skills always to be ready for a verbal duel: not unlike a scene out of Shakespearean text witnessing Tybalt and Mercutio throwing verbal daggers in Romeo and Juliet. Perhaps, if I were a research practitioner in neuroscience, I could fully appreciate the synapses firing through the human brain at the moment of being locked into a cipher. I imagine what I’d see is the mind working in conjunction with the body making decisions regarding words, patterns, emotions, and logic in milliseconds.

There are four main pillars of hip hop culture, emceeing, break dancing, graffiti, and djaying. Many of these pillars such as djaying comprising of components of music that previously existed, and the vocals would only serve as a bridge on the breaks of a record^[11]. This style of sampling would become a cornerstone of the art form keeping in line with one of the markers of post-modernist art, pastiche. Pastiche, in many ways, is an homage to the work of past artists. This homage can be either through the direct imitation of the language or style of an artist or by the inclusion of said artist’s work within your work. We see examples of both in hip hop, which draws its musical influence from Funk, Motown, Bebop, and Scat music of the early 20^th century, so hip hop, in many ways, is a pastiche to black culture. Hip Hop very similarly to Jazz started as a counterculture movement as a response to mainstream white culture’s co-opting of other forms of music like Motown, Blues, Disco, and Rock. Hip Hop also exhibits many elements of post-modern art, as Modak^[12] states, “Postmodern art favours [sic] certain features as intertextuality, allusion, juxtaposition, discontinuity, fragmentation, self-consciousness, ambiguity, inability to face the real world, and emphasis on de-structured de-humanized subjectivity” (2). Hip Hop, which started in the late 70s during the last days of the disco era, was ahead of its time and laid the groundwork for the modern hip hop movement to follow. In my research, I’ll examine the use of post-modernistic elements that Modak refers to above to draw a connection between the fragmentation of black culture and the necessity of hip hop as a narrative form to tell the story of the black experience. I’ll try to make a case for using a culturally responsive pedagogy the integrates elements of hip hop in classroom settings. Indeed, in the absence of a civic education curriculum in the state of New York, I think there is not a better medium to engage youth in civics than through the praxis of hip hop informed activism^[13]. The debate over what subjects are worthy of being included in the curriculum, in my opinion, is corresponding to the ideology of many Eurocentric predominately white institutions (PWIs) asking “what problems deserve of a solution”? Across multiple sectors of daily life, we see the needs of people of color (pocs) being left out and or outright dismissed, in the conversations being had by those in power around what issues are deemed worthy of solutions, which more often than do not include the voices of the marginalized communities most affected by their decisions. As a result of government policies designed to make sure the gap between the haves and have nots grow we see: a healthcare system burying families both literally and figuratively; a public education system that is more focused on doing something quickly vs. developing criticality; neighborhoods being redlined and gentrified; incarceration rates that have more black people in prison now than were enslaved in 1868^[14]; and black family wealth equaling approximately $5.04 to every $100.00 held by white families^[15]. Not to say that Black and Brown people have not made inroads in America in both public and private industries. However, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Many of the topics mentioned above from the need for criminal justice reform, to gentrification, to healthcare legislation, to harsh economic disparities could easily be dissertations in themselves taking a mixed-methods approach to examine both the quantitative and qualitative effects of the sins of a nation against its people through a critical race theory and capitalistic political lens. However, this particular excavation focuses more on the curricular gaps in the American education system and how the institutional knowledge that has been valued by academic institutions since the beginning of the traditional American education industrial complex needs to be replaced or at least balanced with the intuitional knowledge that young people of color bring into the world and most certainly into the classroom.

This ability to objectively distance from reality is a crucial aspect of hip-hop culture, which can be heard in the music and interpreted through visual artworks, e.g., graffiti, which develops at an early age what I like to call a “creative criticality.” Creative criticality, to me, is the ability to use the imagination as a conduit to analyze and reinterpret the world around you using some form of artistic expression, e.g., visual art, dance, theater, music, creative writing, etc. as a vehicle for the articulation of ideas. The notion of creative criticality is not new. My theory could be interpreted from the philosophical works of a pioneer in the field of education, the lateDr. Maxine Greene in her book entitled, Variations of a Blue Guitar^[16], when she talks about developing skills of perception in order “to see the world as if it could be otherwise.” Dr. Greene’s theories went on the be the foundation for aesthetic education^[17] as it relates to teaching the arts. Aesthetic education is more about using the ‘work of art’^[18] as a gateway into critical inquiry for the learner. It was less about using the arts as a way to build skills in say playing an instrument, or reciting a monologue, or learning a dance routine, and instead it was more about using a work of art in sharpening the skills of perception to build a ‘habit of mind.’ Dr. Greene’s theories would later be developed into the Capacities for Imaginative Thinking by Lincoln Center Education (called initially capacities for imaginative learning by Lincoln Center Institute). There are ten main capacities for imaginative thinking, and they are all happening on a continuum at any point during a lesson. Rarely would one capacity only be engaged at a time? Although there are ten total capacities, I’d like to highlight the following: noticing deeply, create meaning and reflection. These three capacities also play a crucial role in developing a critical hip hop conscience. Rather it is Sugar Hill Gang, Jay Z, or Blueface; one needs a mindful hip hop conscience to capture the vibe of the culture in a song. For instance, when Blueface urges youth culture to “Buss down, Thotiana”^[19] in his slightly off the beat music, he is tapping into the hyper and oft times toxic masculinity of hip hop culture and encouraging promiscuous behavior and the objectification of women^[20]. Now, you might ask, “how did this song become a hit with so much demeaning innuendo?” Well, therein lies the rub and the duality of existence in America.

On the one hand, we have our First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of expression that plays a crucial role in how we articulate ourselves through art form/s. On the other hand, hip hop is merely reflecting the themes of mainstream America to herself. Hip hop culture is but a refracted perspective of individuals who have been traditionally marginalized and shut out from mainstream society by a refusal of that mainstream society to allow those individuals to assimilate fully. For instance, is the objectification of women in certain hip-hop music that different from Hollywood movies in the mid-twentieth century that would depict a white woman being slapped, spanked, and kissed at will whenever the white male protagonist deemed it necessary as a behavior adjustment? The answer is “no,” and in both instances, the audience is experiencing fantastical representations of society. The theme of hip hop culture runs parallel to mainstream culture in everything from fashion to visual art, to food. Dare I posit that hip hop culture may not have been the intended image America wanted of herself. Still, with a long history of racial animus and economic disparities, it was the image America deserved.

^[1] Metcalfe, J., & Shimamura, A. P. (1994). Metacognition : Knowing About Knowing. A Bradford Book.

^[2] MCGHEE, F. (2015). The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Fall of the Montgomery City Lines. Alabama Review, 68(3), 251–268. https://doi-org.proxy.library.nyu.edu/10.1353/ala.2015.0020

^[3] Irizarry, Y. A., & Perry, R. K. (2018). Challenging the Black Church Narrative: Race, Class, and Homosexual Attitudes. Journal of Homosexuality, 65(7), 884–91. org.proxy.library.nyu.edu/10.1080/00918369.2017.1364566

^[4] Webber, T. L. (1978). Deep like the rivers : Education in the slave quarter community, 1831-1865. NY: Norton.

^[5] Manning, P. (2009). The African Diaspora : A History Through Culture. Columbia University Press.

^[6] Monson, I. T. (2003). African Diaspora : A Musical Perspective: Vol. 1st pbk. ed. Routledge.

^[7] Martin, S. B. 1. mar24@pdx. ed., Burbach, J. H. ., Lares Benitez, L., & Ramiz, I. (2019). Participatory action research and co-researching as a tool for situating youth knowledge at the centre of research. London Review of Education, 17(3), 297–313. https://doi-org.proxy.library.nyu.edu/10.18546/LRE.17.3.05

^[8] Boal, A. (1979). The theatre of the oppressed. London: Pluto Press.

^[9] Ginwright, Shawn A. Hope and Healing in Urban Education: How Urban Activists and Teachers Are Reclaiming Matters of the Heart. Routledge, 2016.

^[10] Komaniecki, R. (2017). Analyzing Collaborative Flow in Rap Music. Music Theory Online, 23(4), 1–19. https://doi-org.proxy.library.nyu.edu/10.30535/mto.23.4.8

^[11] Ewoodzie, J. C. (2017). Break Beats in the Bronx : Rediscovering Hip-Hop’s Early Years. The University of North Carolina Press.

^[12] Mandal, A., & Modak, A. (2013). The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: A Postmodern with a Postmodern Hero. The Criterion, (12), 1-6. Retrieved July/August, 2019, f from http://www.the-criterion.com/V4/n1/Annesha.pdf

^[13] Porfilio, B. J. ., Roychoudhury, D., & Gardner, L. (2013). Ending the “War Against Youth:” Social Media and Hip-Hop Culture as Sites of Resistance, Transformation and (Re) Conceptualization. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies (JCEPS), 11(4), 85–105. Retrieved from http://proxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eft&AN=97488190&site=eds-live

^[14] Barish, H., DuVernay, A., & Averick, S. (Producers), & DuVernay, A.(Director). (2016). 13^th [Video file].Retrieved from http://www.netflix.com

^[15]Ashman H, Neumuller S. Can income differences explain the racial wealth gap? A quantitative analysis. Review of Economic Dynamics. 2020;35:220-239. doi:10.1016/j.red.2019.06.004.

^[16] Ayers, W., & Greene, M. (2018). Variations on a blue guitar: The lincoln CENTER INSTITUTE lectures on aesthetic education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

^[17] Flannery, M. (1973). Aesthetic Education. Art Education, 26(5), 10-14. doi:10.2307/3191840

^[18] SJÖHOLM, C. (2015). THE WORK OF ART. In Doing Aesthetics with Arendt: How to See Things (pp. 31-67). NEW YORK: Columbia University Press. doi:10.7312/sjoh17308.5

^[19] Blueface – Thotiana. (2018, February 02). Retrieved March 3, 2020, from https://genius.com/Blueface-thotiana-lyrics

^[20] Morgan, J. (2000). When chickenheads come home to roost: My life as a hip-hop feminist. New York, NY: Touchstone.