Hip-Hop As A Verb

We need brave new words to birth a brand-new world. Hip-hop is turning 50 this year and it is clear that it is beyond music and is a unifying cultural vehicle. Hip-Hop is also an embodied practice. In Hip-Hop as a Verb, we will dive into the doing of Hip-Hop, connecting students from their dreams and ambitions into community actions and sharpening performance skills. Each participant in this course is preparing to be a part of a collaborative Hip Hop Festival that makes space and platforms for Hip-Hop artists at CalArts. Students who take the course should be prepared to fulfill some role, whether as a performance artist, creative director, poster designer or volunteer to help put on the event. Hip-Hop as a Verb will explore the process of making the medium of Hip-Hop: the first 4 meetings will cover recording, publishing, song to distribution, roll out, making merch, and all the steps in between. Students will be introduced to systems of reciprocity meant to subvert within an industry built on exploitation. The 5th and final meeting of the course will conclude with a performance at Leimert Park's KAOS Network, home of Project Blowed and where so many local legends have come through, from Open Mike Eagle and Kendrick Lamar to Dojacat.
Hip-hop is not something that happens privately. You're not just nodding your head to a beat: it is a communal head nod, a collective "go ahead." You're agreeing with your body that this voice and this beat should be in existence. In the course, we will practice performance and everything needed up until the time we hit the stage.
Driven by the students' questions, the course aims to answer "How does one hip-hop?": We verb.