Living Hip-Hop: The Community-Based Organization as a Space for Educational Liberation

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Youth often interact with Hip-Hop outside traditional classrooms and inside community-based organizations (CBOs). Since many CBOs focus on centering and humanizing youth (Baldridge, 2019; Watson, 2012), these spaces become incubators of an innovative soul-stirring, truth-telling Hip Hop educational praxis. In this symposium, we explore and demonstrate how three Northern California organizations embody Hip-Hop pedagogies, and in the process, create Hip-Hop learning spaces. These CBOs create spaces for BIPOC youth to develop their own forms of cultural expression through Hip Hop, which is a tool that not only promotes engagement but, more powerfully, a sense of critical resistance. We argue that Hip-Hop curriculum that teaches all of the elements beyond music, and embodies the culture of creation, is a revolutionary curriculum.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Hip Hop Theories, Praxis & Pedagogies

Chair

• Pedro A. Noguera, University of Southern California

Papers

• Truth Transforms Into Freedom - Vajra M. Watson, California State University - Sacramento

• United Playaz: Bangin' in a Different Way - Rudy Corpuz, United Playaz

• Sacramento Area Youth Speaks: If You Got Something to Say, SAYSomething! - Patrice M. Hill, University of California - Davis

• Kingmakers of Oakland: I'm a King! - Chris Chatmon, Kingmakers of Oakland

Discussant

• Gloria J. Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin - Madison