The study of a hip hop dance crew reveals a symbiotic relationship between community and self-expression, which may serve as a model for music educators tackling issues of multiculturalism in their classroom culture and curriculum.
The purpose of this project was to examine ReFresH: a hip hop dance crew, largely comprised of Asians and Asian-Americans, based at Northwestern University. As the study progressed, ReFresH members revealed their organizational aims and views of hip hop to be uncannily relevant to many of the issues that are raised when multiculturalism is implemented in a music education setting. Implications for practice are described based on these findings.
I conducted some preliminary research on topics I felt would be related to my study of ReFresH: music consumption, popular culture in Asian-American studies, Asian-Americans in hip hop, and hip hop itself. This is what I found:
Reception, consumption, and audience remain understudied topics in music studies (Wong, 2001), and these are forms of music-ing that educators must consider. Dance theorist Randy Martin’s conception of the audience opens up the notion that when people listen to music, they are making an act of choice and perception; this is a critical moment of representation and they are, in a way, listening to themselves (Wong, 2001).
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The study of Asian-American music consumption offers unique and much-needed insights on Asian American culture.
Despite having over 150 years of history in the United States, Asian-Americans continue to be overlooked in the “official record” of American history and culture, and are often limited to representation through sound bites and stereotypical images. As Oliver Wang puts it, “Asians have worn their difference twice, first as foreign immigrants, second as racialized objects (2001, p.440).”
Music has been a site where Asian American communities could be imagined symbolically, in resistance to the denial of that collectivity in the American political, social, and material world.
“many rap groups, of all ethnic backgrounds, were under the sway of politically oriented hip hop… This was music meant to educate, incite, organize, and illuminate, music ‘for the people,’ for the promotion of ethnic pride and power. Asian Americans were no less attracted to this clarion call than anyone else (Wang, 2001, p.457).”
Jin, in his first BET battle
Jin, in his second BET battle
However, to see Asian-Americans appropriate a culture whose origins are very distinctly African-American has raised some eyebrows, as well as questions regarding ownership.
Deborah Wong described watching the performance of Filipino-American rapper La Quian, and asked,
…if rap is the genre of young African-American urban men, what is it doing in the mouth of a young Filipino immigrant? Does he have any right to it?
