Hip Hop and the African American Dream Essay

Spoken-word music arrived in America for the first time with slave ships from West Africa.   Ethnomusicologists have traced the roots of hip hop to the dance, the drum, and the song of West African griots or storytellers.   The pairing of word and music is recognized as a portrayal of the painful 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 director of the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College in Chicago attests: â€Å"Speech-song has been part of the black culture for a long, long time† (McBride).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   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 project of three thousand folks alight with party music.   Thus, Bronx turned into a music magnet, and hip hop was given birth to.   This birth led to the creation of dance styles, and graffiti artists found a new job: to paint the word â€Å"I† loud and clear because hip hop is all about identity, that is, â€Å"I am the best† (McBride).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   James McBride notes: â€Å"Not since the advent of swing jazz in the 1930s has an American music exploded across the world with such overwhelming force.†Ã‚   As a matter of fact, hip hop is nowadays enjoyed by people from around 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 pot of gold to millions of dollars.   Agonizing over how their parents slave many hours a day, young African Americans long to make it big in the hip hop business with fame and riches. Works Cited McBride, James. â€Å"Hip Hop Planet.† National Geographic, April 2007.