Archive for Category: "Blog"
HHAM Blog Day 16: The Four Elements of Hip Hop
Jamie Crisostomo, Worldfest Series “Hip hop isn’t something you just do. Hip hop is something you live.” Many people I know who love hip hop repeat this mantra to me every time I talk to them about HHAM. They tell me that hip hop isn’t just about the music, but about the lifestyle and history [...]
HHAM Blog Day 14: Polarization of Hip-Hop in China
John Tsiang, WorldFest Series In China, hip-hop is an underground art form. With its basis in self-expression, shuochang, or “narrative,” as it is known in Mandarin Chinese, it is everything the authoritarian government stands against. While mainstream pop floods the airwaves, hip-hop and rap have taken a grassroots fan base and have grown from there. [...]
HHAM Blog Day 13: Sampling in Hip Hop, a Culture of Community
Katie Hoeberling, Worldfest! Series I’m gonna be straight with you. Music is pretty important to me, but I wouldn’t say hip hop is exactly up my alley. Don’t get me wrong, I fully appreciate a good beat and intelligently styled lyrics, but I probably wouldn’t be able to hold a hip hop-focused conversation very far [...]
HHAM Blog Day 12: B-boying
Olivia Huang, WorldFest Series B-boying (or B-girling if you are a female dancer) refers to the street dance style of breakdancing. Even though today its music is not limited to hip hop, but also to other genres remixed to prolong the musical breaks, breakdancing (or breaking) was the first hip hop dance style and develops [...]
HHAM Blog Day 11: Nujabes
Deanna Nguyen, Worldfest Series Nujabes, a hip-hop producer and DJ from Japan, is widely known and respected for his hip-hop influenced instrumental tracks and remixes. His recording name originates from his Japanese name, Jun Seba, spelled in reverse order. Though not much is known about his past, he began his musical career in 1998 at [...]
HHAM Blog Day 10: The Rise of Female MC’s
Kenn Dela Cruz, WorldFest Series To quote the first line from one of James Brown’s most famous songs, he sings, “This is a man’s world.” This short, yet concise line holds so much truth because when you look at the history a woman holds, women have dealt with handfuls of adversity and deprivation of rights [...]
HHAM Blog Day 9: Merging Cultures
Sameen Naqvi, WorldFest Series Hip-hop has become an major intersect at which people from various backgrounds can come together to share and appreciate each other’s struggles. This type of collaboration is perfectly personified by the Denmark based hip-hop group Outlandish. The group consists of Isam Bachri, born in Denmark of Moroccan descent, Waqas Ali Qadri, [...]
HHAM Blog Day 8: Cultural and social contextualizations of American Hip Hop language
Arjun Saggu, WorldFest Series We find ourselves in the early 1970s, 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, the Bronx, New York City. The birthplace of Hip Hop. Through the four pillars of dancing, rapping, scratching, and graffitiing that maintain themselves at the heart of Hip Hop culture, I have discovered that language begins to qualify itself as more [...]
HHAM Blog Day 7: Ghanian Hip Hop-The Missing Link
Over winter break, I went on an adventure with UCLA’s Global Medical Brigade. We went to Ghana, Africa. Yes, Africa. None of us spoke Fante. None of us had ever been on a trip like this (first American GMB in Ghana, yee!). But we all shared a dire need to bust a move. The village [...]
HHAM Blog Day 6: An Icon of Revolution
Rujuta Gandhi, WorldFest series #Jan25 Egypt – Freeway, The Narcicyst, Omar Offendum, Ayah, Amir Sulaiman (Prod. by Sami Matar). It’s hard to miss the headlines about the Arab Spring. A year later, some uprisings have reformed governments while others have only been met with suppression. But how did the youth vocalize the need for change? [...]
