Hip Hop and the African American Dream Essay

Spoken-word melody arrived in America for the first clipping with slave ships from West Africa. Ethnomusicologists have traced the grow of hip hops-skip to the dance, the drum, and the song of West African griots or storytellers. The brotherhood of word and music is recognized as a portrayal of the torturous journey of slaves who survived the passage. In early America, the slaves drew on the common elements of African music with their ring shouts, their field hollers, as well as their spirituals. Thus, Samuel A. Floyd, the handler of the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College in Chicago attests Speech-song has been part of the black culture for a long, long time (McBride). In the summer of the year 1973, an African American teenager in one of the Bronx River Houses, stuck a speaker in his living room window, ran a wire to the turntable in another room, and set the housing undertaking of three thousand folks alight with party music. Thus, Bronx turned into a musi c magnet, and hip hop was given birth to. This birth lead to the creation of dance styles, and graffiti artists found a new theorize to paint the word I loud and clear because hip hop is all about identity, that is, I am the best (McBride). James McBride notes non since the advent of swing jazz in the 1930s has an American music exploded across the world with such overwhelming force. As a matter of fact, hip hop is nowadays enjoyed by people from or so the world, and by all races. Still, the role of this music among the African Americans the race through out of which emerge the best hip hop musicians is crystal clear. For African Americans, the music represents the good old dream to hit upon a draw of gold to millions of dollars. Agonizing over how their parents slave many hours a day, modern African Americans long to make it big in the hip hop business with fame and riches.Works CitedMcBride, James. Hip Hop Planet. National Geographic, April 2007.