EM magazine ::Vol. 02 + Issue Eleven

In recent academic texts and popular print, studies and research have demonstrated the various ways in which “authenticity” is constructed in Hip-hop culture. Although Hip-hop culture is relatively young, discussions clearly suggest that it was not created out of a vacuum. Some often situate Hip-hop as part of a racialized lineage of art forms, seemingly the offspring of earlier African American expressive cultures. In Errol Henderson’s article “Black Nationalism and Rap Music,” Henderson claims that Hip-hop fuses the historical African American art forms of jazz and poetry from the Black Arts Movement, creating the “Most conductive source of the current of African American culture[1].” Furthermore, Henderson suggests that rap music should promote Black Nationalism that is not only pleasurable, but also functional for African American communities[2]. Henderson’s analysis is dialogic, as it constructs rap music as inherently “Black by claiming its ancestors of previous African American nationalistic expressive cultures that served specific functions for their particular conditions. The essentialization of Hip-hop as distinctly African American appears somewhat problematic. A brief examination of Jazz and the Black Arts Movement reveal how expressive cultures are not completely defined by race.

Black expressive cultures such as Jazz and poetry formed spaces that created a sense of community, but simultaneously setting boundaries of participation. Scholars that have researched and analyzed Jazz and the Black Arts Movement have demonstrated how constructions of “Blackness” can be rather exclusive, even of African Americans. David H. Rosenthal, in Hard Bop, claimed that “the Negro music that developed in the forties had more than an accidental implication of social upheaval associated with it... ...the music resulted from conscious attempts to remove it from danger and mainstream dilution of even understanding” (Rosenthal). African American ownership over Jazz would eventually fail as White musicians learned how to play Jazz through observation and eventually taught White American how they “tamed” Jazz. Jazz served as a tool of claiming identity, both for pleasure, but as a political act of resistance. Yet, as we look at the Black Arts Movement of the sixties, and seventies, we see expressive culture that is not only racialized, but also determined by class, gender, sexuality, and religious faith.

The Black Arts Movement of the sixties seemed to reveal how “Blackness and African American culture was no longer inclusive of all people of African descent. Although, Henderson proposed that cultural nationalism was inclusive of notions of gender, class, and that it was also able to define culture and “Blackness” on their own terms, it appears the cultural nationalisms of the Black Arts Movement speaks otherwise. During the sixties, there was a growing discontentment with the Civil Rights movement. While major strides were being made during this moment, and as some African American communities achieved social mobility, many were becoming increasingly frustrated with the increased violence directed at African American communities. What emerged from this was the “The Black Aesthetic” (1971), which according to Addison Gayle, was meant to reform African American art. Black art was now supposed to have been functional, politicized, collective, and resistant to assimilation to White American mainstream[3]. Although poets, such as Amiri Baraka and Nikki Giovanni, emphasized in their poetry anti-White sentiment, the art did not merely focus on interracial tension, but also intraracially. Poems suggest that being of African ancestry was no longer sufficient in being African American. Amiri Baraka’s poem “Poem for Half White College Student” questions the racial identity of upwardly mobile mixed race children by criticizing their cultural aesthetics, which are represented by White cultural figures[4]. In addition, other poems constructed “Black authenticity” as being based upon hypermasculinity, anti-Semitism, and working class status, creating boundaries of what “Blackness” needed to be, than what it really was[5]. Contrary to what Henderson’s understandings of cultural nationalism, the Black Arts Movement appeared extremely exclusive. In Henderson’s piece, Hip-hop is compared to the Black Arts Movements, for the potential for social change and cultural purity from the art movement of the sixties. A look at Hip-hop history is necessary in understanding how racial authenticity was constructed over time.

Hip-hop emerged from the South Bronx, New York during the conservatism and anti-black backlash of the post-civil rights era; and rapidly grew and gained popularity during the Reagan and Bush administrations of the mid eighties and nineties. Despite the legal gains made in the Civil Rights era, the increased conservatism in the seventies and eighties greatly reversed these gains and aggressively implemented policies that cut federal aid to education and refused to challenge segregated education, housing, and hiring. Furthermore, economic devastation resulted from the gradual de-industrialization of the United States. Federal policies benefited big businesses as it allowed them to move out of urban spaces and overseas to exploit “third world” labor, leaving many working class Americans jobless.[6] As Affirmative action and community programs dismantled, people of color continued to find themselves marginalized. However, it was under these conditions that predominantly Black and Latino youth were creating spaces of pleasure, recreation, and community amidst the urban decay. The South Bronx, a predominantly Black and Hispanic area, became the breeding ground for the new expressive culture of Hip-hop.

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