Publication alert! I co-wrote a book chapter about hip-hop in the music classroom with Toni Blackman, one of my major music education heroes and the central figure in my doctoral dissertation. It’s called “Building Hip-Hop Music Educators: Personal Reflections on Rap Songwriting in the Classroom.” It’s part of a new edited volume about hip-hop education that is freely available as a PDF, as all scholarly publications ought to be.
In case you are new to my whole deal, you may be wondering how I came to be writing about hip-hop education in the first place. There is a story there! I grew up in New York City during rap’s golden age, and had the music in my ears more or less constantly. But I myself was more of a Grateful Dead listener as a young person, and didn’t start taking hip-hop seriously until adulthood. When I started producing electronic music, it opened my ears to the instrumental side of rap, especially the sampling aspect. I also started working and hanging out with people who were much cooler than me, who got me listening to artists like Missy Elliott.
In grad school, I became involved with the CORE Music Program, which invited young emcees, beatmakers and other musicians to use NYU’s studios and classrooms, to connect them with mentors, and to build community. The energy at CORE’s Saturday afternoon sessions was extremely exciting. I liked the music that the participants were making, but I liked their ethos and vibe even better. There was a strong feeling of mutual supportiveness, even among people meeting each other for the first time. There was hardly any anxiety in the room, aside from what I was bringing in with me. This was remarkable, because I would describe anxiety as my main experience of NYU music spaces. I was already interested in rap as a music genre, but the CORE program made me want to immerse myself in hip-hop as a culture.
I met Toni at a CORE session, and found her immediately impressive. Soon after that, she gave a conference presentation at NYU, which included a freestyle verse (as all of her presentations do.) She asked for a volunteer to beatbox for her, and I was surprised to find myself raising my hand. I had never beatboxed in public before, but Toni has a way of emboldening people. When it was time to choose a dissertation topic, I thought, this is what I should write about. How did Toni get to be confident enough to freestyle in front of a bunch of strangers at nine in the morning, and how does she inspire that confidence in other people? To find the answer, read the chapter.
As for the writing process: the prose is mostly mine, the ideas are mostly Toni’s. I have now had this same collaborative relationship with several co-authors. If you are a music education visionary who needs your insights translated into academically rigorous yet accessible prose with citations, I am apparently your guy.