What we do is of our choosing. Michelle Pfeiffer’s role in Dangerous Minds sticks out to me. “When I go to my grave my head will be high.” Slightly intense for a high school class, especially in the morning, but not to high school students who must grow up quicker compared to their counterparts. The Condition Of Black Life Is One Of Mourning as a New York Times article has written and it seems as if every decade there is a new life to mourn. I am an artist and we live to express. Words have put many undeserving men into positions of power, words have taken prominent lives too soon but words have spread messages that can stretch just so the right ears can hear them.
The bulk of my childhood was spent in church. I feel this foundation helped to set the right tone in terms of giving and receiving love, although I did omit certain sayings like “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” though never giving up my right to fight for equality and general will. Throughout my childhood listening was a more important tool than speaking. Although my tongue made me seem foolish as a child, so I guess it was in my best judgment to observe. As an adolescent I couldn’t help but feel a sense of hopelessness towards the lower class struggle that I was in, this comes from hearing stories of life while living poor as well as the older black community making sure I knew who Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass were, why they died and their fight for us.
The connection within the church resembled a small community, those who looked out for each other emotionally within a time of need. Having that sense of a community is what drives Hip-Hop artists to make their tighter communities stronger. Seeing that most Hip-Hop artists are devoted to a religion in some way it makes sense that the religious communal ideas crossover into a growing Hip-Hop community. Most of the secular music throughout time even sounds similar to sacred music. The yin and yang. While the yin could be the music or the art, still having the humility to be judged and be able to take criticism the expresser takes their art very seriously and uses the lessons of their life to portray reality, and the yang is actual life, although exposed to hardships at a more immediate base, the trials of life forces oneself to only strive for better.
As my time in the church faded because of my father’s livelihood I turned to a different community feeling that I had lost one. The new community that I was apart of felt similar to the old one, only I felt as if we played the roles of preachers, deacons and ushers, with material items playing the act as idol. Subconsciously I made sense of the chase with the thought of the pastors’ house in the gated Fairfield community and the deacons’ home in the quiet area of Suisun thinking that if they weren’t men of God they would boastfully speak of their possessions. After a while things became just that to me and I found myself searching. Noting that curiosity is a big umbrella of a vice it isn’t a big wonder that I found myself in the sciences of the arts.
The culture of Hip-Hop typically extends beyond the music. Naturally geography, as well as upbringing, tends to be the bulk of where one’s culture comes from. The act of expression is at the core of Hip-Hop, as is the core for most art, however since the integration of African-American culture as a whole which is very prominent in world culture today, from simple things such as clothing, which has spread from the inner city communities into the broader country that is the United States, to the music which does take from former blues and soul artist but transforms it to fall onto the poverty stricken communities who accept aggression because of instinct. Instinct is the primary trait to have in areas where liquor stores outweigh book stores making knowledge secondary and depression prominent, without community leaders or city-funded programs recreation, recreational substance use and entrepreneurialism is what most turn to in these environments.
A close friend of mines told me I would be selfish to think that others don’t think the same as I do. He was referring to youth, and their inspirers, the one’s who think outside of the box in the square mile that they were born and kept in. Being that people of color were submerged in the act of unquestioned obedience and silence once given the free will to express in an art-form, as opposed to it being referred to as an opportunity now, people of color haven’t stopped. Present-day minorities remember people of color were sentenced to death over perjury as well as anything oppressors could find to further the cause of a rightful death so it is innate in the artist to tell the truth of their circumstance while highlighting the path that lead to the state of aggression towards unions, structure and government.
The truth is not argumentative. Once one hears the truth, the absolute truth, you accept it and move on. While truth and opinion are cousins there must be a line drawn between them. As an opinion forms, sits and cultivates it is belief that is the only thing that keeps the strong opinion from dying. Belief and faith are one in the same, as church tells us in our readings and in our times of struggle. The truth does not rely on faith, it does not rely on belief, for the truth is as honest as it can get. Illegitimacy, or lying, comes from doubt to rely on others or yourself. As a young Americanized-African male growing older I relied on my truth. I took note of the past lies of big government and the sugar coating of corporations was the premise of the United States American culture and artisans were the only true participants of the culture.
The culture of the African-American community has grown to be loved yet resented. Artists were some of the first to be integrated into the broader suburban areas of the community. Integration with artists led free conversations with individuals and the wider public. But with these artists came feelings, feelings that African-American sociologists have recognized and encouraged. The sorrow of the communities that were forged and forced together by those claiming to be doing God’s will has led the oppressed to a stronger connection with God or a total rejection of the whole state, still realizing that God would want all to be equal. In these communities you’d see people rather laugh than cry accepting humor and self-determination as a way of feeling that everything will work itself out.
Hip-Hop is in a somewhat beautiful state right now. The access to recording at your fingertips has given voices to some artists you’d likely never hear given the lotto of the recording contract business. Artists have accepted the roles as businessmen and are self-educating themselves in the jargon and lifestyle of CEO’s and executives, replicating this US form of culture Hip-Hop artists have acquired wealth to distribute amongst their team. Bigger artists having bigger budgets for videos and tours while underground artists act on a more personal level and develop relationships with those in their city. All trying to help ‘their’ community.
The access to knowledge will be the turning point in inner cities. Inequality has become more prominent in a post-colonial, post-slavery world with the growing attachment to possessions and the monopolizing of properties along with a living subconscious or verbal necessity of distinguishing one’s self from another. As a society we have a tendency to come together just to highlight our differences, in the work world and as individuals, this would be perfect if our purpose was to genuinely brainstorm and fuel ideas, howsoever we’ve come to take pride in our own differences and snarl at the unstableness of others. Nevertheless our traits and interests will define a community and we need the participation from every single citizen if administrators and executives of sovereign states turn a blind eye, we will not. Art is for the people it isn’t for the artist; the brutality of man has been silenced with the hereditary passing of businesses, where upper castes have families to familiarize them with this knowledge of economics; lower class culture has a harder time attaining this information. This is where government should step up, but most have failed by the hands of greediness, so this is where we the people step in, when we feel the questions we have to advance the greater public aren’t being answered by God in our private home, and our public home, being our sovereign state, is busy up top entertaining each other; we must extend our hands to our community and continue to raise our tribes and villages with morality in conversation in place of religion, and while trade and corruption have overlapped each other trade is the only way to truly appreciate various cultures. In my opinion artisans help bring different cultures together, accepting cultures makes our small world that much more united, as collaborations go artists were some of the first people to be accepted by other cultures, followed by philosophers, mathematicians, different forms of government etc. Though helping us come closer with each other now does not deplete past strife, new beginnings are to be made, we can be the humans to make them, or inspire them.
jbbartram-illu
2087
origamiaround
dededos
germansingergirl
turnnoffyourmind
