The Intersection between Hip Hop Culture & Education: The Museum Experiences

By Torman Jahi

The Intersection between Hip Hop Culture and Education- The Museum Experiences, takes you on a journey with Jahi, an MC, artist and educator as he travels to 20 museums around with world presenting Hip Hop as a world culture with life affirming principles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098313630

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© 2020 by Khmuny Publishing and Enemy Books

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.

Some names have been changed or omitted to protect privacy.

Cover design: Kelvin Fonville

Photo on Back: 2009 MOCA Cleveland

Proto Credit: Jahi

Thank You’s-

I want to thank everyone from the Charles Wright Museum-Detroit, George Washington Carver Museum- Austin, The Oakland Museum of California, MOCA Cleveland, Waco Theater-Los Angeles, Museum of African Diaspora- San Francisco, the deYoung Museum- San Francisco, the Northwest African American Museum, San Francisco State University, the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, the Khartoum Gallery-Oslo Norway, Science Gallery Museum-Dublin, Ireland, Terra Alta-Accra Ghana, Harvey B Gantt Museum-North Carolina, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, and Chabot Space and Science Center- Oakland. A big thank you to David Kennedy at Cuyahoga Community College-Cleveland, Ohio. Shout out to my family, supporters and friends. Shout out to Rahwa & the Univ. of Oslo organizers. Peace to Jessica Moss. To all of my close family and supporters, maximum love and appreciation. To Enemy Books, thank you for your support getting this book out to the world.

Visit us at: iamjahi.com for the latest calendar on The Intersection between Hip Hop Culture & Education for the 2020-2021 Season. Exclusive photos from this book can also be found under The Intersection tab.

ISBN: 978-1-09831-362-3 (print)

ISBN: 978-1-09831-363-0 (ebook)

The Intersection between Hip Hop Culture & Education

The Sacred Art of Emceeing

The Charles Wright Museum in Detroit, Michigan.

The Harvey B. Gantt Museum

Oakland Museum of California- Respect: Hip Hop Style & Wisdom Exhibit

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame February 2020

The deYoung Museum - The Intersection

The Intersection International

Honorable Mentions

Chabot Space and Science Center

Museum Call to Action

The Sacred Art of Emceeing

In 2009, I moved back to Cleveland. I had an opportunity to work with an organization that offered the best Hip Hop summer experience I’d ever seen. Youth participants received a whole summer of learning the 4 elements of Hip Hop, MCing, DJing, Breakin’, and Graffiti Art. At the end of the summer, it culminated into a concert featuring the youth and their artistic works. I have been a Hip Hop educator for 25 years, and I can tell you, Progressive Arts in Cleveland had the best Hip Hop camp in the world, hands down. I was humbled to have been a small part of their experience. While in Cleveland, I also finally reacquainted myself with turntables. The irony. In 1981-1982, I wanted two things: some turntables and a saxophone. My mother, as giving, loving, and resourceful as she was, couldn’t afford it. Thank God I had a God-given voice and love for words. It cost nothing to express them and to rhyme, and here I was 27 years later, in my bedroom in Cleveland, learning how to DJ.

Once I felt as comfortable on the turntables as I felt on the microphone, I knew it was time to play out and test my skills. The Museum of Contemporary Art was having the opening of an exhibit, and I pitched to DJ. I had a friend who was already a good DJ, playing at various places in the city vouch for me, because it wasn’t like I had a tour route of experience DJing out. What I had was a vast music collection on my laptop and Serato. I knew I could flip any genre, any tempo, and any style with the music I had at my fingertips. I just had to trust my instincts and technique. The opening went well, which started a positive relationship with the museum. I was really curious to know more about the education department, and how museums supported teachers beyond museum visits. It was this curiosity, and MOCA’s openness to share information about building tools for teachers that sparked the idea: The Sacred Art of Emceeing. I always call this the first name of The Intersection. I titled it The Sacred Art of Emceeing because I wanted to signal three things. One, the craft of Emceeing is sacred, which differs from popular. Two, Hip Hop is art, and Emceeing is high art. Three, I wanted to focus just on Emceeing, and distinguish it from the term rapping. My philosophy has been, everyone can rap, but emceeing is a skill. MCs are wordsmiths. They use words the same way a painter uses colors and canvases. The idea was to create a presentation backing up my idea, using video and audio from various artists that represented the definition I wanted to push. Then, I would open it up to community dialogue to get the community’s point of view. Lastly,

I would do a live performance with a band, 100% profanity free, life affirming Hip Hop to bring the conversation to life.

MOCA was happy to support the idea, and the space where the event was to take place had huge art pieces on the walls from students from the University of Akron and other places. It could have not been a better backdrop. The art on the walls lit up the space with the vibrant colors. It was inviting. I didn’t realize it then, but in hindsight, I was curating an experience that included the environment, the colors, the way the room was structured, where the band would be, the music to be played when people arrived – I was considering everything. I wanted the projection to take up the entire wall, so when I showed images of artists, visuals, or lyrics, they would be life size. I heard Jay-Z say once that you could just take Rakim’s words and put them on a wall to serve as art. I never forgot that and did just that, taking the lyrics to I Know You Got Soul and put them on a wall as an example of the sacred art of emceeing. Once everything was in place, the most pleasant surprise happened when over 400 people showed up, the museum had to scramble for more chairs, and there was a full standing in the back-of-the-room-only section. I was overwhelmed with joy. To come home to Cleveland, and have the community come out was everything. It was a great mix of Hip Hop heads, people who knew nothing about Hip Hop, those who were curious and felt more comfortable exploring because it was the museum environment, and folks who would have never walked through the doors of MOCA if it wasn’t for them knowing me, and that I represent Hip Hop.

I used Queen Latifah, Kurtis Blow, Run DMC and Jam Master Jay, Grandmaster Flash and The Furious 5, Public Enemy, Bahamadia, The Roots, Yasiin Bey, and others to drive home the point that there are high-level messages in the music, and the craft of using voice, time, and space to create a unique sound that cuts through are attributes these artists possess as MCs.

I started with Funky 4 +1 where Sha Rock says, Talk about respect/I won’t neglect/my strategy is for you to see from That’s The Joint produced in 1981. I wanted to make a distinction that MCs have always been saying positive rhymes and themes in their music. I like to cover Kurtis Blow as well because songs like Hard Times, 8 Million Stories, and If I Ruled The World set the prototype of how to talk about more