Black history event focuses on music's influence

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Feb 8, 2007 | by T.S. Mills-Faraudo

REDWOOD CITY

TOO MANY hip-hop artists are promoting violence and homophobia and degrading women in their lyrics. At least that's according to a hip-hop generation anthropologist who spoke Wednesday as part of Canada College's Black History Month celebration.

"It's not OK for people to make money on the backs of humanity," said Dawn-Elissa Fischer, education outreach coordinator at Stanford University's Hip-Hop Archive, an organization which holds roundtable sessions about hip-hop and social issues.

Fischer, who is also a filmmaker and teaches courses on the hip- hop culture at the University of Florida, spoke to a crowd of students and teachers about this controversial issue.

The theme of Canada's Black History Month celebration is examining black history through music. The day also included a lecture on the originsof jazz from Pascal Bokar Thiam, a University of San Francisco professor of music and performing arts, and a performance by the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir.

Mentioning the recent rash of shootings in East Palo Alto, Fischer said some hip-hop lyrics are giving children the wrong messages when they talk about homicide and guns.

"We can talk about the positive aspects of hip-hop, but we're at a point where we need to look at the things that aren't so positive and the lethal effects they have on people," she said.

Some hip-hop artists, she said, also tout hatred of women, rapping about rape and sexual harassment and showing videos in which women are barely clothed.

One audience member said he felt white men get away with degrading women, while it's not acceptable for blacks to do this.

"When white men degrade white women, it's not OK," she said. "When white men degrade black women, it's not OK."

Fischer also talked about the positive aspects of hip-hop music on society.

Hip-hop, she said, is rooted in African culture, and humans create culture to cope and to resist. With this in mind, she said hip-hop artists have often used the music, graffiti and dance associated with the movement as a way to express problems in society like poverty and to rap about how they will rise above them.

"You get these messages in early hip-hop of people saying, 'Don't give up,'" she said.

Aja Butler, coordinator of student activities at Canada, said she made music the theme of this year's celebration because it has been so prevalent in black history.

"Black people use it as a form of expression, validation and protest," she said. "Black History Month always seems to focus on the Civil Rights Movement, but I think it's important to show the other aspects of black history."

Staff writer T.S. Mills-Faraudo covers education. She can be reached at (650) 348-4338 or tmills@sanmateocountytimes.com.