RAP’S FAMILY TREE:
Oral Poetry of the African Diaspora

Long before rap scandalized button-down establishment types (think Tipper Gore) for what they perceived as scurrilous or misogynistic or incendiary lyrics, it had won the respect of cultural critics of all stripes as a vital and highly sophisticated urban art form created out of humble circumstances.  But what hip-hop’s admirers—and in many cases, rappers themselves—were slower to appreciate was how the form had evolved within an even richer context and a deeper poetic tradition than the youth culture of mid-1970s South Bronx and Harlem.  Rap’s Afro-Caribbean roots in such established forms as Jamaican deejaying and Trinidadian calypso—roots with tendrils stretching all the way back to the griots of West Africa—were dug up fairly late.  But now, armed with this “radical” knowledge, young poets across the African diaspora are not only discovering common themes and practices with their scattered kin, but producing new poetic hybrids at a breathtaking pace.

This course will allow you to get some small sense of the breadth and sophistication of the cultural and poetic traditions from which rap sprung (and with which it’s continued to evolve and interact).  Through in-/extensive audition and analysis of raps, dub poems, and calypsos, you’ll develop a familiarity with some of the aesthetic systems that govern performance poetry; and through introductory and supplemental reading, you’ll gain an understanding of some of the institutional and political problems that such marginal cultural practices have both weathered and provoked:  the perceived illegitimacy of orality, “dialects,” and creoles; the inadequacy of national or “minority” literary paradigms for discussing diasporic culture; and the difficulty of forming alternative critical standards for evaluating new aesthetic forms.

Course requirements:  Since these colloquia are loosely based on the seminar model (a model with a built-in propensity towards dullness) your principal responsibility will be to do everything in your power to keep us from falling headlong or sliding languidly into a tedious rut.  There’ll be times when I need to tell you (or claim to tell you) some “true facts”; but colloquy means conversation, so you’ll be credited largely on your overall engagement in our collective talk—that is, on the degree of intelligence, inquisitiveness and enthusiasm you show, both in responding to one another and to the materials under scrutiny, and in helping to control the direction and flow of the conversation (both in-class and/or on-line).

In order to prime the colloquial pump, I used to require everyone to write down, before each week’s class, some informal responses to the things they’d read and heard, to the tune of around 500 words per week.  But several years’ worth of complaining colloquians have convinced me that, though they ultimately found this forced labor intellectually valuable (I kid you not!), it finally amounted to too much work—together with the ton of reading I’ve become famous for assigning, that is—for a 1-unit, pass/fail class. 

So I’m doing a 180 and putting you on the honor system:  the airwaves are open (i.e., I’ve set up a discussion forum of which you can avail yourself), and it’s up to you to fill them.  Forcing yourself to think about what’s passed before your eyes and into your ears hard enough to put it into bytes and pixels is one of the best ways I know of to shape inchoate thoughts into something more pointed and coherent.  Not only that:  if you do it ahead of time, it gives you ready-made material—however threadbare—to air more thoroughly in class (and it gives other people something provocative to think about beforehand and pick up in class, as well).  A class session can be a lot more interesting if you’ve had a chance to read, hash over, and maybe even respond to what other folks are thinking before you all sit down in a room together.

But even if you’re not swayed by all my “this medicine’s good for you” browbeating, I’m still beggin’ you:  treat the listserv as a supplement (or complement) to our infrequent meetings, a chat room you can enter whenever you want during the 166 hours per week when our class does not meet—to solicit spontaneous conversation about the texts, the class in general, or relevant extra-curricular matters; to air gripes, pose questions or make announcements; to comment on something that someone did or didn’t say in class.  Be freewheeling but civil, take control of your own education, and have fun.  (Access the discussion forums from the class web page.)

Required texts:  Since the study of performance poetry takes us a bit beyond the pale of ordinary literary studies, you might expect the reading load here be a bit heavier than some other 1-credit colloquia.  Most of the required reading is pretty enjoyable, I think—thought-provoking, at the very least—and I’ve already pared it down from the last time I offered this course.  But if it gets to be too burdensome, we’ll figure out how to cut back still further.  (Hey—you can always skim.)  Keep in mind, too, that we’re compressing a semester’s work into eight weeks. 

The primary texts are ones that I’ve put together on the class website (address above).  Because most of this material is copyrighted, and because most publishers have adopted an uncharitable position as to what constitutes “fair use” for educational purposes, you’ll be asked to enter a username and a password (foundon the print copy of your syllabus; e-mail me if you've mislaid it) to gain access to it.  If you need instruction in using e-mail or in “browsing” or printing from the Web, see me or one of your more experienced colleagues immediately.  If you’re not web-literate, see me NOW, so that I or someone else in the class can orient you in the next day or two; otherwise, you’ll be screwed.  In order to make full use of three of the four texts, you’ll need a pair of Walkman-type headphones, and the computer you’re using must have the RealAudio plug-in installed (as all campus lab computers already do).  The list:

One other recommended text is available (in limited numbers; let me know if I need to order more) at the HSU Bookstore:

·         David Toop.  The Rap Attack 3: African Rap to Global Hip-Hop, expanded 3d ed.  New York and London: Serpent’s Tail, 2000  ($22.00).

If your primary interest in this class is rap per se then you should definitely buy and read this book for Week 7; it’s the liveliest, most comprehensive source I know of for learning the intricate domestic history (and pre-history) of hip-hop. 

Again:  I used to ask everyone to read every last bit of this stuff, but this time I’ve divided things into “required” and “recommended” reading (see the Calendar, below).  From Week 3 onward, while I want to urge all of you to do all of the reading (on the theory that the more you read, the more profound your understanding of the subject will be), I’m only asking a handful of people each week to do the “recommended” reading—and to fill the rest of us in.  That is, it’ll be their job to mount a kind of informal panel discussion for a few minutes at the beginning of class, in which they zero in on one or more of the week’s recommended texts and explain their relevance to what everyone else has read.  As a collective, that is, they’ll put their heads together and compare notes:  hash out, in front of us, what they consider to be the “gist” of the recommended reading (or, if there isn’t a main issue or “argument” per se, then its most salient facts) and explain—for the benefit of someone who hasn’t read it—how this might enhance our understanding of the calypsos, dub poems, raps, etc. on the afternoon’s agenda.  I want to emphasize:  this is not meant to be a formal presentation, just an enlightening conversation for the rest of us to overhear (and perhaps take part in).  Still, anything else the panel or its members could do to raise the collective level of enlightenment (e.g., distribute talking points, reading notes, discussion questions, or pithy quotes, either in class or ahead of time via Critical Tools) would be most welcome.

I’ve been known to scuttle my own democratic intentions by hogging the floor, and I may very well have a mini-lecture or some informal remarks that I’d either like to start class off with or work in at an appropriate moment later on.  Alternatively, I or someone else might be keen to single out some particular pieces or topics, or to pose some urgent questions or remarks, around which to focus part or all of the class’s attention.  But whatever the panel does can (and should) just as easily serve as an opening volley that suggests a direction for the night’s conversation.

Finally: I can make available an extensive bibliography of further reading for the rich and/or studious; just ask.

Grading:  OK, let’s come clean:  as far as I can tell, nobody really seems to know what sorts of standards or expectations to enforce in these colloquia.  Mainly what I expect is a seriousness of purpose and some sort of lively, critical engagement on your part.  (And I expect you to show up, of course:  missing more than one of eight classes will seriously jeopardize your fate.)  Since colloquia are only offered on a Pass/Fail basis, you need only do standard, “normal” work to receive a passive—er, passing—grade.  But since you’ve already marked yourselves as interesting, dedicated students of an extra-ordinary topic simply by signing up for this class, I hope that significant numbers of you will take it upon yourselves to do some stunning and outstanding work, especially since the pressure’s off.  You must complete all the requirements listed on this syllabus to receive a passing grade.  I won’t grant incompletes for this course

I’ll read and/or respond to any work you give me, serve as your panel consultant if you ask me (though you shouldn’t feel obliged to), and I’ll be happy to meet with you any time to talk about your progress and prospects, or about the latest Wyclef album, say.

CALENDAR

August 30th (Week 1):       

            Bureaucratic housekeeping.  Introductory lecture/discussion:  “Race,” Writing and Prestige. 

September 6th (Week 2):  

            Get Your Ass In the Water and Swim Like Me:  Signifying Monkey Swims the Middle Passage.  Required reading:  Thompson, excerpt from Flash of the Spirit; Roberts, excerpts from Black Music of Two Worlds; hooks, excerpts from “Performance Practice as a Site of Opposition”; Rohlehr, excerpt from “The Shape of That Hurt”; Gates, excerpts from The Signifying Monkey (all in the Weeks 2 & 8 Anthology).

September 13th & 20th (Weeks 3 & 4): 

            One Hand Don’t Clap:  Calypso.  Required reading/listening:  “Iere Now and Long Ago” (calypsos and headnotes).  Recommended reading:  any and all introductory articles in the anthology.

September 23d & 30th (Weeks 5 & 6): 

            Mi Cyaan Believe It:  Dub Poetry.  Required reading/listening:  Word Sound Have Power (poems and headnotes only).  Recommended reading:  any and all introductory articles in the anthology.

October 7th (Week 7): 

            Rock the Boulevard:  Birth of the Hip-Hop Nation.  Required reading/listening:  Roots and Branches Part 1 (introduction, raps/poems and headnotes).  Recommended reading:  Toop, The Rap Attack 3.

October 14th (Week 8):    

            Post-Modern Cross-Pollinations: Transnational Hip-Hop and Diaspora Aesthetics.  Required reading/listening:  Roots and Branches Part 2 (poems and headnotes).  Recommended reading:  Fusco, “Pan-American Postnationalism”; Tate, “Yo! Hermeneutics!,” and Paul Gilroy, from The Black Atlantic (all in the Weeks 2 & 8 Anthology); Tricia Rose, from Black Noise (“Appendix” to Roots and Branches).