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POETRY & POWER

my experience with the breakbeat poets–by mia capobianco

2/14/2016

7 Comments

 
Our class had the incredible opportunity to speak with poets Safia Elhillo, Quraysh Ali Lansana, and Tony Medina on Monday. All three of these writers contributed to the (insanely impressive) anthology The Breakbeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. Here is the Amazon link, but definitely ask around at your local bookstore to see if they've got it stocked!

I want to start off by saying that Hip-hop and poetry are two of my favorite art forms; I read poetry and listen to hip-hop every day. Although I've thought about the intersection between the two a bit, I feel like I've never fully considered it. It seems like something I should have pondered (and still should), as it could really benefit my writing practice.
My time with the anthology and with the BreakBeat Poets allowed me to think about the relationship between poetry and hip-hop formally and socio-politically. I'm so grateful to have been exposed to work that I probably wouldn't have come upon on my own (I specifically loved Safia Elhillo’s work and "Pluto Shits on the Universe" by Fatimah Asghar).
Yet when I was reading the introduction to the anthology, I noticed that almost all, if not all, of the hip-hop artists mentioned were male artists or groups that were part of rap's classical period (circa '79-'93). Later, when someone brought up the commercialization of the hip-hop industry, Medina mentioned that he believed much of the rap of today isn't any good, quoting "Versace" by Migos. He said that nowadays good, true hip-hop artists like Kendrick Lamar are few and far between. This kind of struck a note with me. There's this notion of high-brow (KRS-One, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, etc.) versus low-brow rap (Gucci Mane, Fetty Wap, etc.). I've gone back and forth— thinking, and then doubting, that there is some sort of hierarchy in terms of what is good hip-hop.
But who is to determine what is good hip-hop? What are the criteria?
I have come to believe that most, if not all, of hip-hop is valuable, save for tracks containing hate speech and the like. I think labeling certain styles of hip-hop as "enlightened," while claiming others are less respectable, boxes artists in and forces people to believe that one style of an art is inherently more valuable than the other.
I brought up this question of conscious/"backpack" rap versus other genres with the BeakBeat poets, and I believe we're on the same page. Still, I can't help but wonder if they truly view all rap as equal. For the record, I can't say I truly view all rap as equal, and I don't know if anyone does; it makes sense to view the stuff you started with and the work that really resonates with you as number one. But I wonder: What are the implications are of creating a hip-hop hierarchy, especially when it comes to taking cues from hip-hop and using them in other forms, such as poetry? Isn't there something to gain from the 808s of trap? Or the Last Poets' influence on gangsta rap? I know there's got to be, and I look forward to experimenting with it in my own work.
Which brings me to the next point I want to discuss: the writing workshop led by Medina, Elhillo, and Lansana during class time. They asked us to take several minutes to pen a poem about where we are from, like we were repping our roots in a hip-hop track. When I was told to think about where I'm from, I immediately wrote down "Simsbury," thinking about my hometown in Connecticut. But as I was writing, I realized that my thoughts about Simsbury have been greatly shaped by its relationship with Hartford, which is very near by.
At the 2000 census, Simsbury was 95.3% white. The median income for a family was $155,769 as of a 2011 estimate. At the 2010 census, Hartford was 29.8% white (whites not of Latino background, 15.8%). The median income for a family was $22,051. Unsurprisingly, there are racial tensions. And they were especially felt in Simsbury's public schools growing up. There is this (well-intentioned but ultimately fairly unsuccessful) program called the Hartford Region Open Choice Program, in which children/young adults from Hartford, chosen by lottery, attend public schools in neighboring suburbs.
You think it would go without saying that these students should be guaranteed the same quality of education as students several miles away from them. Yet, the impetus is put on the family to apply, maybe get in to the program, and then have to travel to and from school, a place where they are viewed as "other." As if it is somehow their job to acquire a quality education, while children in towns like Simsbury (read: white children with wealthy families) are entitled to it.
During my time at Simsbury Public Schools I observed so much ostracizing of students from the Choice Program and so many racially-charged microagressions.
I didn't think about it much in high school. In fact, I pretty much just thought about myself in high school. But in the last few years as I have attempted to grow my consciousness, I've been grappling with these dynamics and my role within them. I got to thinking about all of this during our writing workshop, and I ended up writing a poem for my Intermediate Poetry: Forms II class this week that both draws from hip-hop and from my experiences with racial tensions in Simsbury. The prompt was to write a blank verse poem, somewhat inspired by the work in Philip Stephen's The Determined Days. It’s a multipart piece, and I'm going to leave off by sharing the first section:
 
Let's play a game. What's whiter: paper, snow,
or boys with names like Dylan? Whole milk, skim
milk, soy milk, almond? Blank computer screens--
the ones on brand new iMacs—error four
oh four—or gauze? Before the blood and all,
I mean. Our denim-slathered asses sit
around the cafeteria table--
Rebecca, Emma, Dylan, Me. We slurp
the last of lunch's morsels with tired straws
and tired minds. We sound like crackling fire--
beneath an ornate mantelpiece, or cleansing
a modest home of life, or something. Kids
from Hartford sit behind us. One of them,
the tallest, ambles past, eclipsing us
with shadows cast by seemingly giant limbs.
Rebecca calls him King Kong. Laughing, feet
up, Dylan drinks his chocolate Muscle Milk.
Its brownness pools between his cheeks. He sucks
and sucks and sucks, still sucking once it's gone.
7 Comments
Rejjia Camphor link
2/14/2016 10:37:09 pm

This is very interesting to think about. I've never really thought about it like that, that hip hop in the sense may have boundaries between good and bad hip hop. I do think though all people do put them into these categories and not because hip hop has changed but because there was a time when people used hip hop to speak to the world and I think nowadays people have lost that poetry sense of hip hop. Today it's all about rapping and not necessarily the essence of the implications of hip hop: to tell a story and write words that mean something. Great post though, thanks for making me think about this.

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Allison Schingel
2/15/2016 11:34:17 pm

I was glad when you brought up the supposed binary between conscious hip-hop and (non-conscious? apolitical? mainstream?) other forms of hip-hop. It was something that I came into the class wanting to discuss. It seems as though it's easy to point out what is intended to be political content, but it's also very easy to make a certain lyric or stanza into something highly political. Beyoncé's back-up dancers at the Super Bowl wore berets in the style of the Black Panthers, but Beyoncé herself rarely offers explicit analysis of her own work in the same way that Kendrick Lamar or Killer Mike & Run the Jewels do. And yet Beyoncé is far more popular than those artists, and so she reaches a larger audience. You could make the argument that she's doing more important work, but it all seems to come down to what argument you're making.

I have my preferences when it comes to hip-hop (I have my preferences when it comes to music in general; don't we all?) but I agree with you that it seems improper to impose a hierarchy. There are so many different ways to make a difference in hip-hop and poetry and art in general, and it's limiting to exclude all the work of any certain artist just because they're not generally "conscious" or political in their intentions.

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Aubrey Almanza
2/15/2016 08:41:05 pm

Hi Mia, thanks for posting about our time with the Breakbeats poets and contributing your personal insight as we continue reflecting. Interestingly, we approached this subject and our assigned reading from two completely different ends of the spectrum. I never listen to rap, nor do I read any kind of modern or experimental poetry. I have only ever studied the history and development of "classical" poetry. Therefore I found myself extremely unprepared for our reading in the New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. In fact, I was continually shocked, jarred, disturbed and often cringing at the material! Some of the images were so graphic ("Breaking and scraping along the concrete until your limbs bleed... best dry hump beneath a staircase, best heroin-induced vomit nod") and I've truly never read anything quite so frank and explicit.

I think the reason for this is because in academia, as in hip-hop, we do have this high-brow/low-brow distinction that you mentioned. I think most of my professors would find Breakbeat poetry too "low" to study. I think we tend to ignore the raw emotion and difficult imagery present in it, in favor of safe, understood and accessible works of literature and poetry. But which leaves you feeling more? Which leaves you most intrigued? Which is more powerful when read aloud? I'd argue Breakbeat poetry is far more powerful, and is worth reevaluating our systemic, academic elitism for.

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Ruth Landry
2/15/2016 11:39:27 pm

Hey Mia! I loved this post, and I also thought that the conversation about high culture/low culture was particularly interesting. Although I don’t know much about rap, I feel as though I am always considering this in literature—the merits of what is most popular versus what is reviewed the New Yorker. My dad firmly believes that what is popular is what is most important and by his estimation Fifty Shades of Grey will be discussed as serious literature in college classrooms. While I’m inclined to disagree with him, I do get annoyed by people who dismiss books (and movies and music) that aren't “serious.” To a certain degree, I think that the best art is art that makes people feel understood or art that people can “connect” to. If someone feels that they are better loved and able to move forward in their life, then I think my writing has done it’s work. And most of the time, people are going to connect to Taylor Swift songs (i.e.: what is popular) over Joanna Newsom (i.e.: what is laudable). That being said, what excites me about our study of poetry and social justice is that it includes a new aim for our writing—to educate and to witness and to represent. Of course, I think that art that doesn't aim to do this is still worthy. However, I think that that is also the main criticism that I have for most popular art—it doesn’t really matter that Fifty Shades of Grey isn’t well written; it matters that it basically advocates for domestic abuse.

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Madison
2/16/2016 12:50:31 am

I think it's interesting to consider who is making this popular literature/art/music that the academy finds too low-brow to celebrate. Thinking beyond hip hop (and possibly including hip hop? Truthfully I'm not well versed enough in that world to say) and into literature, as you are, Ruth, I think it is often the work of women that is so disparaged; anything made by women, for women, is considered "chick lit" or a "chick flick" and shunted to the side. To tie in to your point, I think Taylor Swift's music is gendered (I mean, I think her whole brand is about "girliness", about capitalizing on the normative trappings on femininity), and considered less musical/less important than the work of artists who might have the same habit of making repetitive music about personal breakups (Marcus Mumford comes to mind here, for example) but happen to be men. I think the problem with Taylor Swift isn't necessarily that she's too popular to be taken seriously, it's that she's too emphatically female/feminine (or at least, that doesn't help her case.)

I think women's work is so devalued in part because it is seen as small--that is, the concerns of women are not "weighty" enough to merit serious study. Just thinking about literature (esp. novels), men (purportedly, although this is certainly not true of all men writers and there are women writers who are concerned with these topics as well) write about war/fishing/business; women traditionally write about the home/relationships/the family. Therefore, we've come to consider these topics as somehow unimportant; or, rather, women readers are taught to read both as important (that is, both stories about war and stories about the family), while men (i.e. those men who head boards of education, departments, universities, etc.) feel comfortable dismissing women's books and films as diminutive. I think this is a failure in reading that we create when we forge a canon that is as androcentric as the european/american canon tends to be.

This is a bit of a departure from what we've been discussing in this thread/what Mia wrote about, but I think it's worth considering. I wonder if women in hip hop face these same struggles--I can only imagine that they do. Idk, I know it's frustrating as a woman writer to be looking at classes called "women's literature" like it's a niche subject when I walk into a Brit Lit class and read material written almost entirely by men. I'm sure people in class have opinions on this, being that we're mostly women, so I thought it would be good to discuss!

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Mia Capobianco
2/16/2016 06:53:08 pm

Thank you all so much for your thoughtful responses! I’ll try to address them all in one post (but sorry if I don’t touch on everything).
I think there is so much hip-hop today, and music in general, that is poetic and uses the art form as a platform to speak to the world. Yet, it doesn’t get the same sort of coverage by media outlets / doesn’t get the playtime it deserves. I think a large part of that is the subversive nature of the content. When media outlets (including radio stations) are controlled by large institutions/organizations/companies with their own interests, it might not serve them well to play music that might cause people to question said institutions. The same can be said for academic institutions that choose to highlight classical literature. It’s really unfortunate, and I think it does a disservice to the general public.
That being said, it can be extremely impactful when an artist (musician, poet, novelist, whatever) who has a large platform because she is highly commercial, generally apolitical, etc. decides to take a stand (a la Beyonce). Political statements from these figures might not be as potent/unsettling/revolutionary as those from more marginalized artists, but they spark important conversations. And it takes courage to risk your image/potential earnings by putting forth more subversive work.
Still, that doesn’t mean that every artist must be outwardly political in order to be praiseworthy. In fact, I believe that no artist has to be outwardly *anything* in order to be praiseworthy. I agree with Ruth that it’s frustrating that writers whose work isn’t following after a certain established literary canon get swept aside, as if popular literature is somehow less valid, or, to bring up Madison’s point, that literature written by women is somehow less valid.
I think these discourses can be applied to many creative fields; I’m very familiar with the amount of discrimination within the field of art history… but perhaps that’s a conversation for another time. In any case, I’m really glad we’re continuing to unpack our experiences with the arts both individually and as a class. Thanks for engaging with my post, all! I’m grateful that you’ve given me so much to think about.

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Faith
2/16/2016 11:13:30 pm

Hi mia! I really liked this blog post, I think it was both insightful and reflective. I would have to agree that putting a hierarchy on rap is not productive, it can both alienate and bring about a condescending tone to music that is not at all conducive to listeners with different backgrounds. Like you said, it is hard to control what we are being presented with by the media because they have their own very strong controlling interests. In the poem you wrote my favorite lines were "denim-slathered asses," and "we sound like crackling fire," that dichotomoy of diction is interesting and I would go further with that if you were to add more stanzas. Great first blog post!

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