Yago Zuazo

Hip-Hop Culture

The hip-hop origins started in New York in the decade of 1970, specifically in the Bronx district. The mixed culture between the residents and the block parties, which ones were taken from the Jamaican people, are the roots of this hip-hop element, the rap and the ciphers. The block parties were a performance at the street where the owners of big sounds-systems put the music loud for the people, and fight between them, fights which were materialized in words. The rap music was born when the DJs, motivated due to the competition, achieved to separate the breaks of the percussion and the MCs started talking and singing to the public over their favourite breaks. There are four elements inside the hip-hop culture; the spray paint in murals the graffiti, the urban dance called break dancing, and DJs and Rap which are related to the music. As I mentioned before about the rap, the other two elements were born too in the mix of cultures that happened in New York during the XX century. The graffiti consist in a way of plastic visual art, which is exposed on the streets; it has had an evolution since it was born, so nowadays are schools and different ways to follow, however a god graffiti writer always has to find her own style. This art, which was started like a personal mark by a Grecian immigrant (A.K.A TAKI 183), and has been punished by police since they have managed a public recognition in streets and also in some underground museums. Another part of this underground culture art is ciphers, a rap genre which consist in an improvisation, with or without music. Like a battle, participants fight between them, normally bulling the other one but always with a social report to the implanted system. The function of this jam sessions were to have a good time, but with the growing up of the rap in general and the ciphers in particular, competitions called cockfights have extended all over the world. The socioliteracy view exposed in the speech by Michael Newman, concerning with practices, genre, and ideologies of ciphers and researching their literacy, instead this shift has engendered disagreements about the meaning of literacy itself. But Michael, like some theorist take the Multiliteracies view that all forms of communication can be considered literacy. From this view Newman explains his intentions for including the ciphers at education area, and highlighting the theme that are being normal in social denunciation like competition, sexism, violence

Yago Zuazo and the American Dilemna. This last one has a lot in common with the roots of this rap movement, due to the racial situation of North America in the big part of XX century, the report consist that the American dream is not a real situation because there is a racial hierarchy.