Hip-Hop Diplomacy, Part 4

The scene: Two teenage boys—doing their utmost to appear cool—loiter against a concrete wall in Patna, India. Two smiling teenage girls, deeply engaged in their own conversation, walk by the boys, who immediately start whistling, cat calling, and ogling, demanding the girls’ attention. The girls ignore them, but the boys follow them down the street with cries of “Oh, sexy!” and “What’s your name, baby?”

Hip-Hop Diplomacy, Part 2

By: Felicia Miyakawa (Austin, TX) // According to Hisham Aidi, the State Department’s primary reason for using Hip-hop in diplomatic overtures is to prevent Islamic radicalization. In a lengthy essay published in Foreign Affairs, Aidi describes instances in which these efforts have failed, not because immigrants went on to radical acts, but because government officials …

Hip-Hop Diplomacy, Part 1

By: Felicia Miyakawa (Austin, TX) // Earlier this year, Hisham Aidi published a book (Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture, Pantheon) that drew public attention to a new phenomenon: U.S. cultural diplomacy that uses Hip-hop as a “weapon.” Cultural diplomacy is not new, of course. During the Cold War, for example, …