DJ Kool Herc: The Man with the Master Plan

By: Jeff Chang (Stanford University) // From What’s That Sound? An Introduction to Rock and its History, Fourth Edition, by John Covach and Andrew Flory (W. W. Norton & Company, 2015) When Cindy Campbell and her brother Clive “DJ Kool Herc” Campbell threw a party in 1973, they had no idea what they were about …

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 3

By: Felicia Miyakawa (Austin, TX) // The video above captures part of a “cypher,” an improvised dance where participants show off their best moves while onlookers beatbox in a circle around them. Here dancer Amirah Sackett demonstrates “popping,” a type of dance closely associated with Hip-hop culture, popularized by dancers like Jorge “Popmaster Fabel” Pabon in …

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, …