6.3: Positions in the Field

Looking Through the lens of hybridity

“All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.” – Toni Morrison^[8]

Hidden in the liner notes of your favorite albums are the names of the authors/architects of new worlds. Their words and harmonies outline utopian versions of uncharted spaces saturated in the hues of human expression. From spirituals to Hip Hop, Black musicians have redefined the sonic landscape of America while challenging and disturbing social norms through the incendiary melodies of the Black soul. The spirituals serve as a foundational point for Black music. The church is often the first site of musical instruction for young musicians, but it also serves as a temporal bridge that links the past to the present while creating a fissure to explore the future. Flowing from the hymns, listeners are bathed in the cathartic waters of sorrow and joy. These emotional states become the impetus where the acts of remembrance are celebrated through the movement of the body and soul. The Black musical tradition can be witnessed in all forms of popular music, which has transcended the borders of the United States and even includes the Caribbean stylings of bachata, bomba, calypso, dancehall, salsa, reggae, and countless others. Building upon Hall’s theories of culture, Black music has a history and is impacted by the movement of individuals and the blending of cultural practices.

The history and adaptability of the Black community have allowed them to preserve and sustain their Afrikan ancestry while creating a new hybrid identity throughout their diasporic existence. Stuart Hall explains how this diasporic identity is caught in a constant cycle of reaffirmation by writing that:

The diaspora experience as I intend it here is defined, not by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity, but by the concept of ‘identity’ which lives with and through, not despite difference; by hybridity. Diaspora identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference. One can only think here of what is uniquely- essentially - Caribbean: precisely the mixes of colour, pigmentation, physiognomic type; the blends of taste is Caribbean cuisine; the aesthetic of the cross-overs, of cut-and-mix, to borrow Dick Hebdige’s telling phrase, which is the heart and soul of Black music.^[9]

Though Hall references the hybridity of existence in the Caribbean, the philosophies directly align with the continually evolving African-American identity. Additionally, Hall references that Black music is one of the manifestations and outlet for diasporic identity. There is something innately distinctive about how ephemeral experiences such as culinary arts and music can, for a fleeting moment, transport the body and consciousness into space outside of time. Dr. Cornel West explains how the heartfelt groans associated with Black religious and secular singers acknowledge "the deplorable plight of the downtrodden people."^[10] As practitioners of the Black music tradition, community members can connect and remember a past filled with heartache and pain, which are reaffirmed with every elongated moan flowing from the "sorrow songs."

Singing spirituals aids in galvanizing the community while paying homage to one’s historical past. Spirituals are sung during times of jubilee or intense moments of sorrow. Although separated by unnatural borders, children of the Afrikan Diaspora share a commonality with their kinfolk, a connection cemented in song and carried among the wind for one another to hear. Alejandro L. Madrid explains this unique parallel by positing that "like in Negro spirituals, capeyuye lyrics feature the sense of loss, melancholy, and hope that characterizes Afro-American spirituals singing. Recurring topics include impermanence, the need to be always prepared for death, and the reunion of family members in the afterlife."^[11]This religious practice associated with Black Christianity allows for the adoption of the spirituals, which is fostered through the sorrow brought upon by colonial subjugation. The transference of Christianity and the beginnings of hybridity were formulated only by the constant contact and conflict with European settlers. Hall argues that the European presence and hegemony over the colonial subject influenced the development of a diasporic identity. Additionally, Hall suggests that the New World "is the space where the [creolization, assimilation, and syncretism] were negotiated.”^[12] Forced assimilation, whether through the hands of Americans, British, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Spanish, or any other European nation, inflicted deep physical and psychological trauma upon the bodies of enslaved Afrikans that even the lacerations can be felt generations later. Black identity is a convergence of multiple cultures marinated in the sorrow and trauma of coloniality. Even though this history is marred with enslavement, dispossession, and genocide, the singing of the spirituals provides a space for salvation and hope.

For the mere fact after centuries of torment and forced migration, African-Americans have found their river Jordan in the wakes of the Atlantic, Mississippi banks, or any other shore that the lost tribes now call home. However, underneath the break, the humming of the spirituals can still be heard emanating from the pulpit. Dr. Cornel West states that the "rhythmic singing, swaying, dancing, preaching, talking, and walking- all features of Black life- are weapons of struggle and survival.”^[13] Furthermore, West implies that the performance of the Black musical tradition liberates the soul and solidifies “bonds of solidarity.”^[14] The singing of the spirituals bonds the Black community through the commonality of struggle and perseverance while connecting them in a dialogue among past generations along the ancestral plane.

The rumblings of the syncopated rhythms sprawling from the subwoofers of passing automobiles or personal earbuds are constant reminders that the legacy of Afrikan culture has not faded. Culture has a unique ability to erode the walls of erasure. As each generation passes down the sorrow songs to the next, the vibrations of the Black musical tradition will endlessly reaffirm African-American identity. This reinforcement of heritage is possible due to music’s ability to preserve cultural memory through orality. Barbara Savage elaborates upon the power of the oral tradition by documenting that "many rural Black Southerners had forged a chain of memory to that history which they consecrated through song and ritual, continued to rely upon for daily inspiration, and passed on to their children."^[15] Additionally, Alejandro L. Madrid expands upon the significance of language and the power of musical performance by writing:

Language works as a distinctive and very personal marker of identity but also as a bridge or window for the racialized or gender bodies to enter other worlds. In the case of capeyuye, language plays a fundamental role in the kind of performance that this musical practice advances. The Creole English of capeyuye chants allow Mascogos to enter a space where the past lives in the present; as such, it makes capeyuye into an audiotopic moment that allows for a communal recognition in the present based on the imagination of the past (“when everybody spoke English”).^[16]

By engaging the spirituals, the Black community is able to honor and commune with those who have ascended beyond the realm of the living. Christina Sharpe believes that the individuals who lost their lives during the Middle Passage are still among us and reside “in the time of the wake, known as residence time.”^[17] Maybe if we "shout" loud enough or hit the right key, the door to the residence time will unlock. Nevertheless, this takes an element of faith, a type of spirit that will keep you searching for a promised land. The same faith that fueled the enslaved to keep singing and fighting for liberation. As Sharpe employs the theory of wake work to explain the resilience of Black life caused by the traumatic lineage of the Middle Passage, we must observe music's role in healing the gashes left behind from generational bondage and its audacity to inspire hope.

Soundtrack to a Movement

Music, similar to culture, is constantly evolving. The spirituals laid the foundation for gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues (R&B), and rock n’ roll, but the liberatory expressions of sorrow and joy remained resilient. As artists began experimenting with secular music, the Black church became a paradoxical incubator of radical thought and stifling social norms. On the one hand, young clergy members and their flock demanded that the United States government provide fundamental civil rights and end the racial apartheid that divided the nation. Though united in the common struggle for civil rights, a schism began to develop in both the means and way liberation was to be forged. Black respectability became the church's cornerstone and the face of a movement. But as gospel singers started to stray from the traditional spirituals and dabble with carnal-driven songs of rapture, the church often became their harshest critic. The lavish music pumping from nightclubs garnered the precarious attention of the church, which during the 1950s and 1960s was not equipped nor ready to address the budding sexuality emitting from acts like Big Mama Thornton, Muddy Waters, Little Richard, and even Sam Cooke, who may seem tamed compared to musicians of this era. Their voices forever altered America sonically and socially. Sam Cooke may be remembered for his silky runs that celebrate the universal truths of joy and love, but the lasting impact of “A Change is Gonna Come” has become synonymous with the Civil Rights Movement.

Originally written as a response to Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” pushed the singer into another trajectory paralleling his cross-over appeal with white America. Known primarily as a pop singer, Cooke’s musical journey began in the church, like many other Black musicians. Looking back through his musical catalog, it is evident that Cooke effortlessly infused pop with gospel styling. Recorded and released in 1964, the same year of Cooke’s murder, “A Change is Gonna Come” leaves its audience in a shaken state of disbelief. In some respects, Cooke sonically transported his audience to church, who desperately needed a sermon predicated on creating and witnessing a long-awaited change.

“A Change is Gonna Come” is Cooke’s testimony to America’s maltreatment and legacy of anti-blackness. The haunting song equivocally forces white America to self-reflect on the cruel nature of Jim Crow and the painful realities of indifference. Over generations, “Change” has been described as the quintessential protest song of the Civil Rights era. However, its prophetic poses envision a society that has the potential to reach the mountaintop of deliverance where sorrow can begin to fade into jubilation. Born out of the tent revivals, Cooke’s butter tenor voice provides the soundtrack to an era reeling from racial bigotry and white supremacy. For a brief moment, the combination of Martin Luther King’s dream and Cooke’s utopian vision of change could be witnessed on a November night in Chicago. President Barack Obama’s presidential acceptance speech echoes King and Cooke's posthumously awaited reformation. Through the genre of soul music, the spirituals continually awaken its practitioners to push beyond the social dissonance and actively provoke the spirit of progress.

Cultivating Joy in the Face of Poverty

Hip Hop culture was born from the response to economic and social plight. As a direct response to harsh conditions, this musical genre became more than an artistic outlet. At the ethos of Hip Hop lay four elements: DJing (Turntablism), B-boying (Dance), MCing (Spoken Word), and Graffiti (Written Word).^[18] The four elements of Hip Hop provide the validity needed to establish this art form as a new culture. Hip Hop transcended the genre into a unifying ideology that brought together the diversity and commonality of Afrikan diasporic cultures from the Caribbean.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): The Four Elements of Hip Hop. (CC BY; Alexis Paul Monroy via source)

As Blues and Jazz ascended from the oppression of the southern Jim Crow society, Hip Hop was nursed by the necessity to escape the extreme conditions of ghetto life. During the 1970s, New York City experienced a fiscal collapse that nearly drove politicians to declare bankruptcy. In the documentary Blackout, historian Joshua Freeman describes the drastic measures New York City politicians took to fight off bankruptcy. Freeman explains that the federal government would offer a lifesaving loan:

If New York City adopted austerity measures. That meant cutting public services, laying off tens of thousands of workers, and other kinds of measures that assured them that they would get that money back. This big cut in public services at a time when the private economy is in very bad shape, it means hardship. It had...[an]... immediate impact on New Yorkers and particularly on poor New Yorkers. People can't send the kids off the streets into the library. It's not there anymore. They can't send them to the after-school athletic program to keep them safe. It's not there anymore. So, there's a lot of anger, and also, I think a sense of abandonment.^[19]

As the city cut funding to public agencies, streets and parks remained open, acting as havens for adolescents to assemble. The Blues found its voice in the agricultural fields of the Mississippi Delta, and Jazz was perfected in the boisterous clubs of New Orleans, but Hip Hop is the incarnation of New York City street life.

The parks and streets presented liminal spaces from which Hip Hop could evolve. In the article entitled “Liminality as Cultural Process for Cultural Change,” authors Jennifer Howard-Grenville, Karen Golden-Biddle, Jennifer Irwin, and Jina Mao describe how liminality generates a “symbolic realm, creating possibilities for people to experiment with new cultural resources and invite different interpretations that hold potential for altering the cultural order.”^[20] The parks provided the essential space where Caribbean migrants and African-Americans could interact and exchange cultural philosophies through the sonic wavelengths of music. The four elements of Hip Hop forged an original style and expression that has affected language, fashion, art, and movement and fundamentally altered the state of consciousness for an entire impoverished community. Hip Hop was the healing agent that the five boroughs of New York desperately needed to address the devastating effects of poverty, racism, and despair in a crumbling, concrete jungle.

The constant influx of Afro-Caribbean and Latinx migration created highly diverse cultural contact zones, which laid the foundation for intercultural exchanges such as music, dance, and language through intangible cultural heritage that immigrants carried from their place of origin. Contact zones are areas where diverse populations congregate, usually trading goods in markets or participating in religious ceremonies at churches. For many Hip Hop youths, the contact zone would be found in the streets and parks of New York City, where different forms of music, dance, and expression could be experienced.

To fully understand the importance of immigration in Hip Hop, one must examine the movement and migration pattern of the Caribbean people to the United States. The 1965 Hart-Celler Act was the driving force that reshaped the cultural and racial demographic of New York City. The 1965 immigration legislation that Lyndon B. Johnson signed repealed the national origin quotas that favored white European countries during the first wave of immigrant migration to the United States.^[21] Prior to the Hart-Celler Act, migration from 1880 to 1920 was primarily dominated by white Europeans in search of employment in the emerging industrial economic might of the United States. For most European immigrants, the precipice was the landing at Ellis Island's Immigration Processing Station in the New York City harbor. Historically, New York City served as a critical immigration hub and home to millions of immigrants.

Just as New York served as the epicenter for the first wave of European immigration, the boroughs of the island would welcome the second wave of Caribbean migrants to the shores of the United States. New Immigrants in New York, a book written in 1987 and edited by Nancy Foner, researches the social, economic, and cultural impact of second-wave immigrants in New York City. Foner states that in the 1980s, “over half of the Barbadians, Trinidadians, Haitians, Jamaicans, and Guyanese… [as well as] …over three quarters of the Dominicans… live in the New York Metropolitan area.”^[22] This high concentration of Caribbean migration to one centralized area drastically transformed the makeup and sound of the New York landscape.

The proximity of the newly migrated Caribbean populations supported the blending of African-American and Latinx cultures. The birth of Hip Hop in the Bronx was no coincidence, and with the convergence of dense African-American, Jamaican, and Dominican populations, a fusion of cultures began to manifest. In New Immigrants in New York, Patricia R. Pessar examines the 1980 census for distribution patterns of Dominican-born residents in the United States. Pessar notes that of the 169,100 foreign-born Dominicans, approximately seventy-six percent called New York City home, with a vast majority residing in the South Bronx.^[23] The Bronx was a unique borough that could house and accommodate distinct cultures who, despite their varied backgrounds, were bound by their shared Afrikan diasporic roots.

This Afro-Latinx Diaspora transported significant populations of Caribbean people into New York and intangible cultural heritages. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization defines intangible cultural heritage as "traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge, and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts.”^[24] Historically, contact zones such as ports and trade routes typically foster cultural exchange. As new immigrants started to explore entrepreneurial avenues, businesses such as restaurants, convenience, and record stores began to line the streets of the Bronx, which allowed commerce to transform culture into an easily digestible notion. The influx of Caribbean people brought new traditions and vibrations, often centered around a musical backbeat. Furthermore, this migration boom brought cultural icons such as DJ Kool Herc and other critical elements to the Bronx and surrounding boroughs, which planted the seeds of Hip Hop.

These sounds and traditions were manifested by Hip Hop’s founder, DJ Kool Herc (Clive Campbell), an immigrant from Kingston, Jamaica. As a child, Clive Campbell moved to an apartment in a predominantly Jamaican enclave among an already established African-American population in the Bronx.^[25] The Bronx was the launching pad from which DJ Kool Herc introduced dancehall, an integral part of everyday Jamaican culture to New York adolescents. Dancehall is a DJ-driven block party backed by impressive public address (PA) and popular sound systems in Kingstown, Jamaica. Author and scholar Michael Eric Dyson echoes this sentiment in his book Know What I Mean?: Reflections on Hip Hop. Dyson states that “DJ Kool Herc came over from the Caribbean, transporting with him that booming sound system that was common in particular spaces in West Indian culture…[and]… that revolutionized and reshaped the sonic landscape in the Bronx.”^[26] It is this reference to a sonic revolution where the impact of Afro-Latinx Caribbean culture and migration assisted in the evolution of Hip Hop.

Kool Herc and other DJs also incorporated another iconic Jamaican tradition into Hip Hop, known as toasting, a precursor to modern-day emceeing. Toasting is when the DJ interacts with the crowd by chanting or rapping over the beat, eliciting a call and response with the crowd, which is common in Afrikan diasporic cultures.^[27] These intangible cultural artifacts were widely received due to the settlement patterns that saw thirty percent of the Jamaican-born population reside in the Bronx, according to the 1980 census.^[28] As Kool Herc continued to develop the skills necessary to keep parties rocking, the elements of DJing and B-Boying among Hip Hop emerged as a symbiotic response. B-boying is described as an aggressive art form that straddles the line of martial arts and dance.^[29]

The development of B-boying and DJing grew together with the discovery of the breakbeat. The breakbeat refers to the percussion break where everything stops except the percussion section. Kool Herc noticed that young party-goers would come alive during the percussion breaks. In Jeff Chang’s seminal work, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, Chang states that Kool Herc developed a technique called "the Merry-Go-Round."^[30] This technique makes use of "two copies of the same record, back-cueing a record to the beginning of the break as the other reached the end, extending a five-second breakdown into a five-minute loop of fury" where B-boys and B-girls would attack the dance floor with a barrage of ground and aerial dance moves.^[31] Early Hip Hop DJs would dig for hidden funk gems, but often or not, many relied on the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, to provide an up-tempo, percussion-driven song to fuel parties.

The presence of Afro-Latinx Caribbean migrants propelled a sonic revolution that would forever change the course of Hip Hop. Similar to the cultural artifacts that Jamaicans brought to the United States, Afro-Latinx migrants from Spanish-speaking Caribbean islands brought a lively form of music driven by hard percussion beats and accompanied by rhythmic dancing. Nancy Foner posits that Salsa, a style of Afro-Latinx dance music traditionally associated with Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Dominican populations, became "an important feature of the New York popular music scene" in the late 1960s and early 1970s.^[32] This vibration of sound and culture shook the tenements and streets of all five boroughs, the sounds of the clave and conga served as the heartbeat of a city that never sleeps.

In Joseph G. Schloss’ Foundation: B-boys, B-girls, and Hip-Hop Culture in New York, b-girl Raquel River explains that there was a “long-standing tradition of street drumming among New York Puerto Ricans and Cubans---in which African Americans also have participated---strongly influenced the music that was recorded as soul and funk, which was later played as breakbeats at hip-hop jams."^[33] This sonic evolution manifested itself in the music that pioneering DJs, such as DJ Kool Herc and fellow Caribbean migrant DJ Grandmaster Flash (Joseph Saddler), would select to play at block parties. The DJs and b-boys would help formulate the early Hip Hop sound by sampling soul and funk records. These records would be held as sacred canon to b-boys and b-girls, who only preferred to break to such bongo-fueled classics as "Apache" by Incredible Bongo Band, "It's Just Begun" by the Jimmy Castor Bunch, and “Give It Up or Turnit a Loose” by James Brown.^[34] The Afrikan diasporic tradition of syncopated drumming found its way once again into American funk and soul music through the popularity of Afro-Latinx Salsa.

As DJs were discovering and experimenting with new turntable techniques in order to refine the sound of Hip Hop, b-boys and b-girls were perfecting the footwork and laying the foundation for future generations. In the summer of 2002, New York Times reporter Alan Feuer profiled Crazy Legs (Ricard Colon), a b-boy and founding member of the influential Bronx's Rock Steady Crew, on the lasting impact of breakdancing in Hip Hop. Colon's b-boy style was self-described "as a mix of rhythm and blues, Bruce Lee moves, poverty and summer heat," all while salsa music blared from an adjacent basement party near Morris Park.^[35] Crazy Legs’ self-professed dance style illustrates the multicomplex cultural composition of breakdancing. Pioneering b-boys and b-girls would harvest dance moves and elements from the diverse cultures of populations living in New York City. The b-boy's affinity for the breaks in the music “points to a world view influenced by the experience of dancing to Latin music… [and the] … fusion of Caribbean and African American approaches, in turn, suggests a broader, more Afro-diasporic approach to dance.”^[36] However, b-boys and b-girls reached further past the Latinx and African-American dance steps for inspiration.

B-boys and b-girls would pull from many key figures and dance styles to formulate the distinctive martial art dance form seen today. James Brown and Bruce Lee, two iconoclasts who forever changed popular culture, are referenced more than any other figures in the contribution of Hip Hop. Brown and Lee’s movements and bravado can be seen in the artistic display of footwork and body control in breakdancing. Joseph G. Schloss states that "many b-boys include Bruce Lee in their list of dance influences, and it is probably not a coincidence that the birth of b-boying dates almost precisely to the year in which Bruce Lee achieved popularity in the United States (1973)."^[37] The personification of Bruce Lee’s influence can be fully seen in the stylistic thumbprint of each dancer’s uprock. Schloss explains uprock to be a late 1960’s Latinx creation that “combined African American and Latin dance styles with a confrontational attitude and a few insulting gestures to create ‘rocking’ (also known as ‘uprocking’), the first modern battle dance of New York City.”^[38] Additionally, b-boying started to make a more robust connection to martial arts once the dancers began to transition to the floor, where the footwork and style resembled capoeira. Moreover, the admiration for Kung Fu movies extends further than the dance floor and can even be seen in the classic Hip Hop album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), a reference to Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon. The esteem and unification of opposing cultural dance styles into a new entity perfectly demonstrates the innate hybridity of Hip Hop.

The United States has a propensity to mask individuality behind assigned, generalized categories. The ability to self-identify for the newly marginalized Caribbean migrants of New York City was a complicated notion to grasp. The foreign land of America challenged the migrants to resist the shackles of homogeneity. Homogeneity tends to erase the cultural and ethnic diversity of individuals while shifting attention to racialized phenotypes as a way to categorize populations. The gradient of skin color often expresses this racial categorization. The arrival of Caribbean migrants to New York City disputed the white/black dichotomy that the United States has implemented for generations. Nancy Foner stresses “that Jamaicans… [were]… identified as ‘black’ by white New Yorkers and that Jamaicans themselves share a racial identification with black Americans.”^[39] Additionally, the Afro-Latinx community shared the same experiences as that of Jamaicans. Author David R. Roediger explains how early Italian and Jewish American Jazz musicians started to develop “close relationships and fierce identifications with the black community” due to the similar racial prejudice that each ethnic group experienced.^[40] This ethnic solidarity was strengthened through the shared struggles, racial discrimination, and musical appreciation each migrant community experienced together. Homogeneity may have camouflaged the multifaceted identities of migrants, but Hip Hop allowed a new identity to transpire.

Preserving cultural traditions and spreading awareness

The Caribbean cultural heritage of Hip Hop is identified through the inclusion of interrelated traditions that are sonically and visually represented in DJing and B-boying. However, the self-proclamation of ethnic identity in early Hip Hop is hardly exhibited. One emcee who defiantly bucked the powers of homogeneity was Wyclef Jean. The formation of the Fugees, an iconic Hip Hop group, directly exposes listeners to the members’ Caribbean roots and immigrant backgrounds. The Fugees comprised multi-Grammy winner Lauryn Hill, Pras (Samuel Prakazrel Michel), and super-producer Wyclef Jean. The group's name directly references cousins Pras and Wyclef's Caribbean immigrant identity. Author Emmett G. Price explains that initially, the Fugees had shorted the group’s name from Haitian Refugees.^[41] Nevertheless, the group's name openly celebrates the cultural and ethnic diversity at the center of the Fugees' body of work.

Prior to the critically acclaimed and multi-platinum success of the Fugees’ album The Score, a lesser-known song entitled “Refugees on the Mic” unapologetically announced to the world the Haitian disposition at the center of the Fugees’ identity. The song begins with Wyclef proclaiming, “I want all the refugees out there/To just put up your motherf**kin’ hands, you know you’re a f**kin’ immigrant.”^[42] The song is also accompanied by a highly influenced Caribbean sound that would later define the signature style that separated the Fugees from other Hip Hop acts at the time. Additionally, Wyclef does not attempt to hide nor mask the Caribbean accent and instead integrates the same vocalization techniques that define Reggae music.

Incorporating Reggae vocalization techniques into Hip Hop music has many contributing factors. The Emcee element of Hip Hop has many contributing factors. Prominent Hip Hop scholar Emmett G. Price states that the MC or Master of Ceremonies derives from a long "tradition of urban ‘griots,’ a name most often associated with the West African poet/musician who carries and reveals the local history of a community through oral tradition, who used the microphone to taunt, tease, testify, and please, Gil Scott-Heron, Pigmeat Markham, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Muhammad Ali, and countless others set the stage for the rise of the MC.”^[43] Additionally, Reggae artist U-Roy had a significant impact on the evolution of the emcee with toasting. An interview conducted in 2004 between U-Roy and DJ Kool Herc captures the kinship that connects the styles of Reggae and Hip Hop. U-Roy is quoted saying, “It is all family,” implying that both genres used similar foundations to evolve.^[44] The use of the Afrikan diasporic griot tradition coupled with Jamaican toasting can be found in the chromosomes of the MC.

In the vein of Gil Scott-Heron, Nuyorican poet Miguel Piñero often goes overlooked in the discussion and evolution of Hip Hop. Piñero, a Puerto Rican born poet and playwright, described the ghetto street life of New Your City through poetic prose. Author Regina Bernard-Carreño discloses that Piñero’s outlaw poetry “flowed in a way similar to the bags of heroin in that it was liquefied and injected into so many organic intellectuals that it gave constant reminders of actual experiences that reflected society.”^[45] Piñero’s skill and imagery are reminiscent of Hip Hop’s greatest emcees. In the poem “A Lower East Side Poem,” Miguel Piñero wrestles with the concepts of mortality and self-identity while paying homage to Loisaida, the Lower East Side of Manhattan:

So here I am, look at me
I stand proud as you can see
pleased to be from the Lower East
a street fighting man
a problem of this land
I am the Philosopher of the Criminal Mind
a dweller of prison time
a cancer of Rockefeller's ghettocide
this concrete tomb is my home
to belong to survive you gotta be strong
you can't be shy less without request
someone will scatter your ashes thru
the Lower East Side.^[46]

Piñero tackles the issues of crime, urban decay, and death while drawing comparisons to the Hip Hop classic “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five. Throughout “A Lower East Side Poem,” Miguel Piñero describes a love for Loisaida and an identity born and laid to rest among the streets. The only aspect separating the two classic street prose is the musical accompaniment, for both respective mediums use the power of the word to express ghetto plight.

Miguel Piñero did not succumb to the power of homogeneity that was common in labeling Afro-Latinx immigrants by skin color. Rather, Piñero self-identifies as a Nuyorican, a distinction that pays tribute to Puerto Rican heritage while embracing an identity as a New Yorker. Jorge Duany explains how Puerto Rican immigrants tend to create new blended identities in the United States due to the resentment caused by leaving the Island.^[47] This hybridity was a transformative power present in both Hip Hop and Nuyorican ideology. Afro-Latinx and Caribbean migrants formed what Benedict Anderson defines as an “Imagined Community" through the representation of the social norms and teachings of Hip Hop. In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, author Benedict Anderson paraphrases British historian Hugh Seton-Watson by saying the idea of nations is “imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”^[48] Notably, members of the Hip Hop community often refer to the collective as a "Nation." Membership in the Hip Hop Nation is depicted by the common vernacular, origin story, and consciousness that remains present in every convert's soul. Piñero’s life and writing embody the ability of Afro-Caribbean migrants to flow effortlessly in between the messiness of racial identity and nationality. Hip Hop’s sonic break chips away at the American racial dichotomy. In its rubble, a more nuanced reality is established where Afro-Latinx individuals can fully embrace their Caribbean hybridity that celebrates and centers their Black, Indigenous, and Latin ancestry.

Moreover, Hip Hop creates the necessary platform for artists to resist and address such suppressing actions. An artist such as Wyclef Jean actively shatters the racial dichotomy through the creation of the Fugees and the use of prominent Caribbean musical traditions. Jean's legacy has had a lasting impact by exposing America to the diversity that lay in the evolution of Hip Hop. Wyclef's body of work is both uniquely Hip Hop and Caribbean, highlighting the hybridity that immigration brings to the shores of the United States. Hip Hop is more than just music. Hip Hop has blurred cultural boundaries while influencing countless generations to rebel against social injustice through self-expression.

Hip Hop is a galvanizing force that unites otherwise separate individuals into a collective community. At the core of Hip Hop lay the traditions of African-American and Caribbean immigrant populations. These wandering tribes found each other through the pounding vibrations of a funky breakbeat. Hip Hop was cultivated and harvested in the streets of New York City, but the seeds of the culture were derived from countless foreign lands. These seeds were manifested in the intangible Caribbean cultural heritages of dancehall, toasting, syncopated drumming, and the rhythmic footwork of Salsa. Just as the wind assists flowers in dispersing seeds, migration provides all the necessary components for Hip Hop to blossom. However, any horticulturist knows that seeds alone will not guarantee a flower to bloom. The surrounding environment plays a pivotal role in the germination process. The liminal spaces of the streets and parks provide the right atmosphere to bring together the diverse youth immigrant populations of New York City. Through contact zones, Caribbean immigrants were able to interconnect with the already established African-American residents to cultivate Hip Hop by fusing the unique cultural traditions that each population possessed. Over time, the uniqueness and contributions of the Caribbean culture began to fade as commercial success took Hip Hop from the streets to the suburbs. The fusion of these cultures created a vivid bouquet of sounds and rituals that could spring through the cracks of a crumbling concrete jungle.

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Endnotes

[8] Toni Morrison, “Conversation: Toni Morrison,” in Toni Morrison: Conversations. ed. Carolyn C. Denard (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008), 156.

[9] Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathon Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), 235-236.

[10] Cornel West, The Cornel West Reader (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999), 436.

[11] Alejandro L. Madrid, “Transnational Identity, the Singing of Spirituals, and the Performance of Blackness among Mascogos,” in Transnational Encounters: Music and Performance at the U.S.-Mexico Border, ed. Alejandro L. Madrid (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 177.

[12] Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” 234.

[13] West, The Cornel West Reader, 436.

[14] West, The Cornel West Reader, 436.

[15] Barbara Dianne Savage, Your Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 5.

[16] Madrid, “Transnational Identity,” 184.

[17] Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 19.

[18] Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), xi.

[19] Callie T. Wiser, dir., Blackout (2015; Boston, MA: WGBH Education Foundation, 2015), Digital.

[20] Jennifer Howard-Grenville, Karen Golden-Biddle, Jennifer Irwin, and Jina Mao, “Liminality as Cultural Process for Cultural Change,” Organization Science 22, no. 2 (March-April 2011): 522. JSTOR.

[21] Jorge Duany, Blurred Borders: Transnational Migration between the Hispanic Caribbean and the United States (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 38.

[22] Nancy Foner, ed., New Immigrants in New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 4.

[23] Patricia R. Pessar, “The Dominicans: Woman in the Household and the Garment Industry,” In New Immigrants in New York, ed. Nancy Foner (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 104.

[24] “What is Intangible Cultural Heritage?,” United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, accessed April 10, 2020, https://ich.unesco.org/doc/src/01851-EN.pdf.

[25] Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, 72.

[26] Michael Eric Dyson, Know What I Mean?: Reflections on Hip Hop (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2007), 71.

[27] Marcyliena Morgan and Dionne Bennett, “Hip-Hop & the Global Imprint of a Black Cultural Form,” Daedalus 140, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 184. JSTOR.

[28] Foner, New Immigrants, 200.

[29] Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, 115.

[30] Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, 79.

[31] Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, 79.

[32] Foner, New Immigrants, 19.

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[34] Schloss, Foundation, 17.

[35] Alan Feuer, “Breaking Out of the Bronx: A Look Back,” New York Times, August 27, 2002, ProQuest.

[36] Schloss, Foundation, 38.

[37] Schloss, Foundation, 52.

[38] Schloss, Foundation, 132.

[39] Foner, New Immigrants, 196.

[40] David R. Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 183.

[41] Emmett G. Price, Hip Hop Culture (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006), 155.

[42] Fugees, “Refugees on the Mic,” track 15 on Blunted on Reality, Ruffhouse Records, 1995, Digital.

[43] Price, Hip Hop Culture, 35.

[44] DJ Kool Herc and U-Roy, “Did Jamaica Influence the Birth of Hip Hop?,” interview by General GT, Whatzuptv, March 30, 2004. Video, 9:45, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guhdPYnq-gc.

[45] Regina Bernard-Carreño, “Nuyorican Identity,” Counterpoints 366, no.1 (2010): 86. JSTOR.

[46] Miguel Piñero, La Bodega Sold Dreams (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1980), 7-8.

[47] Duany, Blurred Borders, 7-8.

[48] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 2016), 6.