Origin Myths in Hip-Hop?

Last week during class, one of my students asked a question that has been sticking with me (and I am paraphrasing): "Was hip-hop a revolutionary art form or something that evolved from earlier movements?" I loved the question and it has been bouncing around my brain for the past week. How much does hip-hop owe to James Brown, George Clinton, Sly & and the Family Stone etc.? Are these guys the inspirations for or co-inventors of hip-hop? This question certainly provides a nice transition to evaluating how the reigning origin myths of hip-hop explain the messy reality of the movement's beginning.

This week's readings (from That's the Joint! and Can't Stop, Won't Stop) underlined this question about the powerful need for origin myths in hip-hop, whether they revolve around 1520 Sedgewick Ave, TAKI 183, or Grandmaster Theodore's accidental "invention" of scratching. What purpose do these stories hold? Why do these stories continue to get told and circulated? (FYI - a recent episode of PBS's "The History Detectives" examined the 1520 Sedgewick story). Hip-hop needs an origin myth perhaps to validate or legitimate its status, suggesting that despite a 30 year plus history and billions of units sold, it still lacks institutional recognition. The language of "revolution," "invention," and "origin" help create cultural capital and thus make it "worthy" of social recognition. Perhaps, this teaches us about the "life-course" of cultural movements.

The specific origin myth, however, is revealing. Regardless of the involvement of Puerto Ricans and Jamaicans in the earliest days of deejaying, graffiti, and b-boying, hip-hop gets coded as "Black." It seems like both the hip-hop nation and the general American public (and perhaps the global audience of hip-hop) have a deep desire to code or frame hip-hop as authentically "Black" as part of the origin myth. Another aspect of this myth is that is intimately rooted to urban street life even if some of its most successful acts (i.e. Public Enemy, Run DMC, etc) have pretty solid middle-class roots. It seems like the hip-hop nation is deeply invested in positing itself as oppositional (against dominant culture?) and this stance relies on the figure or metaphor of urban Black males. There is some irony in labeling hip-hop as "street" as hip-hop has become deeply commodified, making billions for record companies and millions for some artists. Certainly, hip-hop is bigger and more complex than this origin myth, but the myth has an enduring power. It probably is even growing as the hip-hop nation becomes even more heterogeneous!

I don't mean to suggest that hip-hop has not been profoundly influenced by African American cultural sensibilities and the historical debates within African American culture. Of course, it has. Rather, the question is how do American cultural assumptions about race shape our understanding of hip-hop and its history. Not to be too melodramatic but the stakes of framing the "origin" of hip-hop may very well be a key to shaping future understandings of race in American culture. Do we want to continue to view American history through a simplistic black-white binary or do we want to understand the complex and paradoxical ways that race, ethnicity, class, gender, and national origin intermingle and operate in American culture and society?

So, what is the origin of hip-hop? Is it the beginning of the Atlantic slave-trade, was it Clyde Stubblefield and the "Funky Drummer," was it when Kool Herc first became a DJ, or when taggers became writers? I don't know, but I do know that we need an origin myth for hip-hop (and just about everything else too) to help ground our understanding. But sometimes that origin myth hides as much as it reveals. It also can tell us as much about "our" fears and hopes as it does about the actual thing itself.

(FYI - I just realized that K'Naan's "Does it Really Matter" was playing on I-tunes when I finished my blog entry!)