Perhaps the most memorable and, for me, profoundly moving segments was a panel called "Chinua Achebe and the Hip Hop Generation." Falling mid-way through the last day of discussions, the panel traced the influence of Achebe's most famous work, Things Fall Apart, published in 1958, through jazz, funk, and hip-hop.
One of the speakers, Rob M., who spent years as an editor for hip-hop magazines like "Source" and "Vibe," discussed his multiple trips to various African countries over a period of ten years. He traveled for work and on personal business in search of the deep and abiding connections between contemporary African American experience and those of Africans. His remarks, and those of others about the connections, were enlightening.
Rob noted that, in his work as a magazine editor, he has been a close witness to the evolution of hip-hop from an "outlaw culture from the Bronx" into "the global culture for people of a certain age." Based on his extensive travels across the continent of Africa, he suggested that hip-hop culture is evidence of "Africa reconstructed in modern idioms." He added that, if one were to subtract the "pathology of slavery" from hip-hop, one could see African history and culture manifested in the art form.
Marcus G., another panelist at the event, who spent his youth split between Harlem and Dakar, noted that today's hip-hop captures something of Chinua Achebe's irreverence and dissatisfaction with the status quo. Hip-hop is something of a "disruptive" development that allows so many Africans of the diaspora to recover pieces of their culture and traditions. From hip-hop's focus on cadence, rhythm, and timing to its artists' efforts at storytelling, improvisation/freestyling, and cyphers, there are many connections to be found.
The panelists who spoke about hip-hop echoed previous speakers' remarks, noting that hip-hop, as did Achebe in literature, put people of African descent at the center of an art form. Toni Morrison is renowned for saying that it was not until she read Achebe's Things Fall Apart that she found that she could take the authority to position fundamentally African American stories at the center of literature. This was the genesis of books like Beloved.
Hip-hop, as did Achebe, breaks down the English language and uses it to express and define a radically different reality then can be found in mainstream culture. Despite its misogyny, hip-hop also seeks to answer back to or dignify elements of American culture that are dehumanizing.
Several people on the panel and in the audience mentioned that it was not until hip-hop group, The Roots (now the official band of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon), put out an album in 1999 entitled, "Things Fall Apart," based upon Achebe's novel, that they became interested in reading Achebe's work. As someone noted, The Roots were so distinctive in the late 1990s--here was a black hip-hop group playing instruments--it was nearly unheard of. The Roots are known to incorporate storytelling and jazz elements into their music. Here's one of my favorites from the album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJCHeEQV454
One thing audience members pointed out during the question and answer session was that hip-hop was missing a dialogue with the ancestors. The form, in general, does not acknowledge its own evolution, its roots, its heritage, its fore bearers. It owes much to spirituals, jazz and funk. The group The Roots is one of the exceptions.
Marcus noted that social media, despite all its faults, offers the opportunity for dialogue between millennials and their elders. As technology continues to evolve, so, too, will the cultures of the African diaspora.
