Mazi Mutafa (no pronouns) discusses the sacredness of the cypher, and the expansiveness of Hip Hop as a music and culture. Mazi Mutafa is the Executive Director of Words Beats & Life inc, a non-profit based in Washington, D.C. that teaches, convenes and presents Hip-Hop around the world. Mazi Mutafa began this organization as an after school program dedicated to creating transformative learning experiences in non-traditional classrooms, teaching the elements of Hip-Hop.
Transcript:
Paige:
What’s up everybody it’s Paige. We’re here to talk today with Mazi Mustafa about all things Hip hop. It’s power. It’s sacredness. It’s interconnectedness. Today, he highlights the power of Hip hop to build community and share stories. He’s currently working on a book discussing his personal life and the organization he runs called Words Beats & Life.
Mazi Mutafa:
Ayo. This is Hip hop, it should be promoting love, peace, unity, and having fun.
Speaker 3:
Welcome to Radical Futures Now. On this podcast, we connect with social justice leaders around the world to talk about how to organize, how to be in movement and how to build radical futures now.
Paige:
I’m just going to let you introduce yourself [inaudible 00:00:56] today. Tell the people who you are. So I was wondering when I was learning about you and researching when you were growing up, what did Hip hop look like for you? What was the culture at the time where you lived in the time period of Hip hop?
Mazi Mutafa:
You know, in all the years I’ve been being interviewed no one’s ever asked me that question. And what I think is most interesting about it is that when I was a young person, a literal young person, Hip hop was all around because I would travel to visit my grandparents and my great aunts in New York city. And it’s really only as an adult looking back that I realized that Hip hop was all around. My grandfather and I used to go to the racquetball courts and handball courts in the Bronx. And looking at pictures from my childhood, they’re all covered in graffiti. And it’s like literally seeing how I was a part of Hip hop, almost my entire life, because I really didn’t get into the culture or the music until college. I was one of those kids whose parents really kind of dictated the radio.
Mazi Mutafa:
So I grew up listening mostly to R&B, a lot of Marvin Gaye, a lot of James Brown, all kinds of music like that. That was really driven by my mother who though she was a Puerto Rican woman, she was raised in foster care for part of her life. So she grew up in large part around African-Americans. My father is an African-American. And so those are my earliest recollections of Hip hop, literally seeing it, which is also why books like Tricia Rose’s, Black Noise, which is one of Hip hop’s first academic books is not about the music per se, but about the soundscape of the music, like the sound of horns, the sounds of cars, the sounds of trains, which all once again, reminded me of my own childhood but as a kid, I didn’t think about that necessarily Hip hop.
Mazi Mutafa:
I remember doing backspin’s on the linoleum in the kitchen, just because that was a thing. I remember my parents buying me my first Hip hop tape, which was a Fat Boy’s album. And so my earliest recollections are going to New York City to visit my family. And then kind of bringing things back to my home.
Paige:
Yeah. The book that you mentioned, it reminds me just of the importance of people’s soundscapes that they live in that influences so much of what comes out in the Hip hop music, for sure.
Mazi Mutafa:
Definitely. And not even just the soundscape, but also the geography. Lots of people talk about West Coast music being connected to cruising, this idea of people in low riders, driving long distances. So the music feels like the place that it comes from. The same thing is true for like screw music coming out of Texas. So the geography of a place and the soundscape of that place have a huge influence on the people that live there, you know? So that that shows up in what it is that they create. The stories they tell.
Paige:
Right. Most definitely. I mean, I’m from LA. So the cruise culture is definitely huge for sure. I just actually went to a cruise car show in my neighborhood last week, so yeah.
Mazi Mutafa:
That’s what’s up.
Paige:
Yeah. What was the theoretical foundation of your Hip hop and educational practice? So you talk about going to the Bronx and growing up listening to Hip hop music, but yeah, where does that theory kind of come from too?
Mazi Mutafa:
When you say the theory, what do you mean?
Paige:
To me, what I was thinking about that the theoretical framework is with like the five tenants of Hip hop, they have a variety of things that are involved, right? You have like a philosophical, mental, but you also have a physical, you have like… So I was thinking about the theoretical framework in terms of what’s the theoretical glue to all of this? How do you understand all of those parts in your Hip hop, your educational practice specifically?
Mazi Mutafa:
Got you. Got you. I mean, I think that one of the things that is interesting about being a person that has witnessed all of the elements present in communities and witnessed kind of the elevation of individual elements for either commercial or competitive purposes, thinking about the addition of breaking to the Olympics or the lifting up of rap music as the primary way in which people think about Hip hop or thinking about the influence of graffiti on larger kind of marketing and commercial efforts to share stories using public transportation or public spaces, or even the transformation of public spaces. I think what’s interesting to me is that Hip hop has been the vocal and the silent influence for most of what is called pop culture today or just kind of popular music, even simple things like the idea that when you listen to music that there’s a blend, is that whether you’re listening on something like Apple Music, the way that that goes from song to song, there’s a blending aspect that literally was created by a Hip hop DJs.
Mazi Mutafa:
I think that in terms of the way I think about all those influencers and their impact on pedagogy is recognizing that Hip hop is pedagogy. That it is a way of teaching and learning that speaks to the ways in which people feel most comfortable expressing themselves, telling their stories. And its been really interestingly teaching young people who are very much so into breaking, but are not very verbal because their expression is with their body. They’re talking with their body. The same thing is true for producers. Everybody in Hip hop, that’s not a rapper is generally not a very verbal communicator especially, at a young age, because they’re still trying to figure out kind of who they are and how they feel and that expression shows up and what it is that they create.
Mazi Mutafa:
I think one of the gifts of running an organization that employs those creatives once they become older and more mature and kind of have a creative perspective is that those folks are verbal. They’re able to explain their own kind of trajectory in their creativity and that becomes a model for those young people who might begin as less verbal, begin as kind of less able to communicate, but I also think that part of it to be fair to those young people that ability to communicate what they think and what they feel is not just a reflection of the form of art they practice it’s actually, I think, a larger reflection of their educational experience, where you have to think back. And maybe you’ve had a different experience than me Paige but I don’t remember being asked how I felt in school unless I was a problem. I don’t remember being asked to express the things that I wondered about. And so whether that’s in my home life or in my school life like young people’s opinions and ideas and expression are generally not cultivated.
Mazi Mutafa:
And so that shows up in their practice but when you think about MCs, like an MC is usually that kid who was in the cafeteria who still spin their written or freestyle. So their form of community building is verbally expressive. And they’re playing a role of bringing people together, whether that is for people to applaud or to give them words to rap to. Their practice is a communal practice versus the practice of creating beats for a lot of folks is solitary. The practice of doing graffiti in a book or on a wall for a lot of people is still solitary. It’s not a thing that they’re generally doing to engage verbally with community. And so what I love about the work we do is we create space for those nonverbal creatives to talk to each other and to learn about each other’s stories and to build a space whose pedagogy puts their life and their experience and their expression at the center of everything that we do. To me, that’s Hip hop.
Paige:
Wow. That’s so beautifully said. Yeah. I think what stuck out to me, what you just said was just centering people’s genuine curiosity in what they want to see in the world and what they want to create to be in that world. And yeah, I never really thought about the nonverbal components of Hip hop because I think I usually think more on the DJ MC side and I always feel like they’re talking. So I never really thought about so much about the breaking and the graffiti in that way. Yeah.
Mazi Mutafa:
I was going to say one of the reasons why I’ve even had to think about it is because we’ve been running afterschool programs for 17 years. And we’ve seen the kind of personalities that are attracted to different elements. You know, my theory gets jumbled when you have a young person that operates across disciplines, who is an MC but is also a producer and is also a breaker. And so I think that it’s important to recognize that what I’m saying it might be true for many it’s definitely not true for all, but I also think that the value in nonverbal communication shows up in things like… I’ve been in conversations with breakers who don’t know the legal names of people who they danced with. They know their B-boy name, but they don’t know what their mother calls them.
Mazi Mutafa:
And I always point that out because one of the things that tells me is that you don’t communicate with them about their life outside of the circle. And I understand that part of that is, a Hip hop space is also about people recreating and re-imagining themselves. Creating their own identity, but even the identity that I create for myself is still, that’s my Superman. There’s still a Clark Kent when I’m outside of the circle. There’s still this person that I am when I’m not in this space that it seems like a lot of folks in Hip hop don’t really take the time to get to know, verbally, through storytelling the people who are in their circles outside of that circle.
Mazi Mutafa:
And that’s true for me as well. I just did this series of interviews with people I have known for more than a decade. And I ask them questions that I’ve never asked them socially and learned so much about them and their families and their histories, that I never would have known had I not set up an interview. These are people that are my friends. And so, I bring it up only because it’s knowledge of who we are outside of the jobs or the skills that you have, I think is a kind of limitation to really deep community.
Paige:
I think something that you said earlier reminds me of what I’ve been up to during the quarantine is, I’ve been going to these DJ live Twitch streams. So I’ve been going to Natasha Diggs, UniVibes vibes, the whole Soul in thorn family. And I feel like we spend so much time together. We get together at least every Friday for Natasha’s live stream. And yeah, I really don’t know who some of these people’s families or their jobs are, but I know that it’s so-and-so’s birthday today and we’re celebrating and so-and-so likes to do this when they dance on the live stream. And, yeah, there is a sense of community that’s very different than just knowing, oh, I see you every day. I know your government name. I know what your mother calls you. Yeah.
Paige:
You talk about the structure of the cipher and this idea of the sacred circle. And I feel like I’ve been able to witness it a little bit when my guy friends will get together, they’ll cipher out a beat. And there’s something really magical that happens between them. Can you expand on that idea of the structure of the cipher?
Mazi Mutafa:
I mean, I’m, I’m really building on the legacy of folks like Tony Blackman, who has this concept. Who has these workshops and trainings she does around the cipher. I describe the decipher as a sacred circle of interconnectedness. And I think I begin with the word sacred just because I want people to recognize that it’s not just this cool thing that happens. It’s a spiritual experience that we are allowed to witness. And that part of the responsibility of the people that make up… Actually, let me back up. Let’s assume everybody who’s listening doesn’t know what a cipher is. So a cipher is usually a word used to describe a circle that is made up of people who surround someone performing, whether that’s a set of MCs in the cipher or whether that is a set of dancers in the cipher, in the middle of that circle.
Mazi Mutafa:
And so the reason why I call it a sacred circle of interconnectedness is one is that spiritual piece I just talked about, but the interconnectedness is the witnesses. It’s the people that literally make up the circle and they are not just witnesses, but they’re protectors of that space. They’re the ones that help make room when people come out of the cipher, come out of the center of it to become a part of the circle. And this idea that no one is always at the center. I think it’s also really powerful that people move in and move out of the cipher. Move into the center of the cipher, and move out into the body of the cipher, which I think is also really powerful from a leadership point of view or a community building point of view that. It’s not about one individual, it’s about everyone playing their role and everyone feeling when it’s their time to come into the center of the circle to share their gifts, to share their talents, to share their point of view.
Mazi Mutafa:
And I feel like that is one of the things that Hip hop has to teach to the whole human family, but the other side of this is that the cipher, as a first of all, the word cipher comes from the Arabic word, it’s also in Urdu, which is, [foreign language 00:14:49] which just means circle. There are so many kinds of dance, particularly, that happen at the center of circles. So this is something that predates Hip hop its part of, kind of human DNA. I’ve been watching videos of people, particularly in the Middle East and in Asia, and even in the United States who practice forms of dance that happen at the center of a circle. And I think it’s important to acknowledge that particularly for those dancers and for those MCs who come to the center, their ability to have their bodies where their voices/their energy, transform a space is also part of that sacred practice of creating spaces that are transformation.
Mazi Mutafa:
Usually, when people try to tie Hip hop to African-American traditions, they’ll talk about things like the call and response of the church but, depending on the way it is that you practice, dance is also a part of that, shouting is also part of that. This idea that kind of allowing your body to be taken over by something bigger than yourself as a religious practice is I think something that I’ve witnessed in MCs when they’re just building concepts verbally out of nothing. Non-conceptual rhymes and conceptual rhymes that they’re building on the spot or that person who’s improv-ing with their body in that moment, connecting the language of dance in different ways. We’re able to witness that kind of sacred practice in a “secular environment.”
Paige:
Yeah. The protection of who can come in and who can… Not who as in… That’s not an exclusive. The protecting the happens kind of like when you give yourself up in that way and you allow that change and transformation to happen when you’re in the center. And then to know when you come back to the rest of the circle, that the rest of the community will hold you. Yeah.
Mazi Mutafa:
And that they see you. And that they see you at the center that they celebrate you, that they witness your creative brilliance. And then after you’re finished that they welcome you back into the rest of the community.
Paige:
The way that you talk about Hip hop just really reminds me of approaches that activists have towards movement work about interconnectedness, about having a sacred and spiritual connection to other people. And the community building aspect of it is really powerful, the way you describe Hip hop.
Mazi Mutafa:
But it’s rooted in its history. The idea that Hip hop began with a block party or a back to school party. That is about bringing people together to celebrate something and bring together kind of these disparate artistic forms into shared space so that they could reimagine what they would mean to each other. And the fact that Hip hop is created by children of movements, whether that’s black power or that it’s civil rights, you name it. This idea that the people that have done the work in creating the culture are literally the children and grandchildren of people who were the mothers and fathers of movements.
Paige:
I think something else I was thinking about in terms of who the generation of Hip hop is, I was reading this article. I can’t remember the name, but they were talking about the women in Hip hop and what role women have with MCs with rappers, with DJs. And they talk about mothers and grandmothers giving their young boys records. And that the older women were able to pass on legacies of music so that they could break it apart, mix it up. And just talking about the intimacy of the home too, and bringing music into that in that way. Yeah.
Mazi Mutafa:
Yeah. I got a chance to see a presentation, it might’ve been by the same author. It was at a conference in California called, Show Improve. And the article that was being presented was by this academician that did interviews with the pioneers of Hip hop and learned about things like Afrika Bambaataa. One of the things he’s credited with is having really diverse music and introducing that to DJing and Hip hop but part of the reason why his music was diverse is because his mother’s musical tastes was diverse. He literally borrowed her records, had to write her name on them because he had to return them after the party. That the same thing is true for Kool Herc, that this idea that their musical tastes were shaped by their mothers and their mothers record collection.
Mazi Mutafa:
Is part of the history that’s a race. And part of the reason why it’s a race is because part of the narrative about Hip hop is that Hip hop was created by people who made something out of nothing. People who are downtrodden and didn’t have blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, as opposed to, no Hip hop was actually created by people whose mothers loved them, whose mothers were practitioners, where consumers of culture who shaped their tastes. That’s a really different story than, look at what came out of the South Bronx. No, South Bronx had life before Hip hop. No doubt there were fires. No doubt there was poverty, but there was also life and culture and creativity and imagination that were all there but Hip hop didn’t just spring out of nothingness. It actually grew from roots of musical traditions of movement traditions that were participated in by the parents of the founders and forefathers or foremothers.
Paige:
Most certainly.
Mazi Mutafa:
[crosstalk 00:20:34] mothers was the first erasure of women in Hip hop.
Paige:
Wow. Talking to you about Hip hop makes me really remember why I love Hip hop. I think sometimes with the current era of music, I have sometimes ambivalence’s or conflictions with my love for Hip hop, but talking to you reminds me of the history and the strength that comes out of Hip hop. I was wondering if we could complicate some of the things too today, because I have a lot of just general questions and thoughts about Hip hop that I haven’t really been able to… What’s the verb I’m trying to use? Make compromises around. Like sort of the limitations around the 90s with the bling era and the more commercialization of Hip hop. And this question I keep coming back to is… This might be a little bit of two separate questions, but how can we criticize and use Hip hop for social change when so much of the music is marketed towards a certain class of people.
Mazi Mutafa:
To rap music. For a range of reasons, including the fact that there’s a whole generation of people who didn’t have to find Hip hop. Hip hop is everywhere they look it’s in their commercials, it’s on television, it’s on the radio, but that generation of people has parents or older brothers or cousins who are part of the generations that had to find it and had to create it themselves. Someone posted this the other day on Instagram and I’m part of the generation that used to listen to the radio and capture songs to create mixed tapes because it wasn’t on all the time. It wasn’t every place. And that there wasn’t one specific narrative being pushed.
Mazi Mutafa:
And so I think that the beauty of this moment is recognizing that in my generation, I’m 43-years-old, but the same thing is true to a different degree to this generation via things like SoundCloud. This idea where you’re able to curate your playlist, think about the things and discover music. It’s not on the radio. It’s not being driven by some major corporation necessarily. It’s still organically being created by someone who has a story to tell that has value to them and the people that listen, but I think the other piece in terms of decentralizing rap music, as the frame around which we envision what Hip hop is, is to recognize that people have been breaking since the early 70s, early 80s, and innovating the dance all over the world.
Mazi Mutafa:
The same thing is true for graffiti. Graffiti started their arguments about where it started in terms of multiple Genesis’s in terms of California, Philadelphia, and New York, but wherever it is that it started in the form that we think about is kind of old school graffiti it’s been innovated in Germany, innovated in Uganda, innovated Brazil. So, recognizing that that Hip hop is not just those pictures that I see from my own childhood, but it is those commercials that you see today. It is the pictures that you put on your wall or save on your phone, or like on Instagram. That it’s bigger than whatever limitations we want to put on it, to understand it, to restrict it, to criticize it. It’s bigger than that. It’s bigger than whatever it is our criticism is because there’s someone or people all over the world, re-imagining what it means to express themselves verbally, express themselves musically, express himself kinesthetically.
Mazi Mutafa:
And because of that, because it’s a living culture versus a dead culture like ancient languages or religious texts that are about times that were thousands of years ago, because it’s living. It’s always growing. It’s always evolving. It’s always changing. And because it’s leaderless, it’s always going in multiple directions. It’s not this steady beat of Hip hop is this. And it’s always been this. And it’s always going to be this. It’s got to change. It’s got to change for a few reasons, one of which is that the innovations in it are usually driven by young people. And one of the things young people don’t want to do is be their parents when they’re young.
Mazi Mutafa:
So when people are upset about what’s on the radio or what their children are listening to, would you really feel comfortable if your children are listening to the exact same music you were listening to when you were their age? I hope the answer to that question is no, because if they all are listening to the same music then that music is dead. It’s not changing. Anything that is alive is always changing.
Paige:
That’s funny. That’s really funny. Ricky and I were having a conversation when we were preparing for this interview to talk about specifically, that question, but also trying to think about maybe those are some of the limitations that we see in the US but there’s so many re innovations, changes that are happening around the globe with Hip hop. Just thinking about just Gilbert and his work in Uganda. And we’ve been trying to get Gilbert to talk about it on the podcast, but yeah, I think what you’re saying is true is, I think sometimes I talk to people and maybe it’s because I talked to older people too, and maybe that’s not necessarily true, but they talk about, “Oh, your generation doesn’t know how to talk about love in the music. They don’t know how to talk about community in the music and it’s just all commercialized or feeding a certain image.” And I think it’s important to think about what you were saying. To decentralize rap music and Hip hop.
Mazi Mutafa:
Yeah. I feel like adults, they say things like that or adults that don’t have relationships with young people outside of their family because I would say that I totally disagree with that point of view. I think that where they are right is that the music on the radio doesn’t know how to do those things, but when I go to slam events or to poetry events or open mics, young people are more than capable of expressing love and intimacy and the challenges connected to those things. Challenges connected to identity. As a matter of fact, I feel like the thing that younger people have done that’s better than people of my generation is like, sometimes my wife and I will listen to like old R&B, like Jodeci. And we love it. We know every single word, but older music is not as complicated as life actually is. It’s actually simpler. The formulas for telling stories about love are in some ways kind of the fantasies of that generation, like this is what love looks like. You meet someone, you love them, you fall deeper versus like, nah, it’s actually complicated.
Mazi Mutafa:
And I think like this is really part of my own approach to media is even this idea of storytelling is not something unique to rap music. It’s also not unique to R&B music that comedy also tells stories that poetry also tells stories. And so if you broaden your view to see more than what is immediately in front of you, it’s clear that this generation is able to tell more complex, more nuanced, more involved and in some ways realer stories that look more like truth than sappy romance. I find it difficult when people are critical of any generation that they’re not actively paying attention.
Mazi Mutafa:
And if you’re not actually willing to give people the benefit of the doubt that they’re full human beings too, who are able to express many different things, it might just take different forms. Just because you’re not making a mix tape of all your favorite love songs to send to the person that you care about, doesn’t mean that your ability to share reels on Instagram of songs or of places or of images that inspire romance for you, isn’t valid. You know what I’m saying? Have a bigger perspective of like you all as a generation have access to things we never imagined existed. So, we should at least give you the courtesy of having a wider view of ways in which you’re able to express love or community or connection while at the same time, encouraging you to become a part of the things that we recognize as ways of expressing love and community and connection. It is truly a gift. Communication is give and take. It’s not you listen while I talk.
Paige:
Right.
Mazi Mutafa:
Does that make sense?
Paige:
Most definitely. Yeah. I’ve been listening to a lot of seventies, disco, eighties disco recently, that’s been my new musical endeavor and I think you’re right. It’s kind of simple sometimes about the love stories. And I’m really glad that you share that perspective about how this generation is able to complicate some of the love stories a little bit more. Yeah.
Mazi Mutafa:
You also got to remember my particular generation are the children of divorce in a lot of instances. And then the generation before us is the generation of unhappy marriages that just lasted a long time. Of course, there are great marriages that lasted a long time, but there were also a lot of miserable marriages that lasted a long time. And so rather than being critical of people who are more hesitant or expressive in a different way to like really step back and say like, I’m part of a generation now of black men who love and take care of and are involved in their children’s lives because we were the generation whose fathers weren’t there. You know what I’m saying? And I think it’s important that we’ve decided to change the narrative just like every generation should be trying to change the narrative and not just be what our parents were.
Paige:
I’m going to switch topics a little bit, if that’s all right. I was just curious, I know you are the executive director and you’re also a scholar. What are you working on these days? What are you writing about?
Mazi Mutafa:
Well, I’m actually working on this book. I did an article for a manual on engaging the black boys in educational environments. The name of that article is Words, Beats & My Life. And it was basically telling the story of this work. And I’m really interested in going from that article to developing a full book that really tells the story of the work and the impact. It’s interesting being in a position where I’ve worked at the same place and on the same project for the last 22 years because I include the two years that I could do this as an undergrad, as a conference. And now the 19 years close to 20 years as a nonprofit. Being able to recreate how it is that we do the work that we do, but wanting to tell that story so that it doesn’t need to be a situation where someone has to imagine how we did or why we did whatever we did as an organization, but they can actually read the process, the thoughts that went into it, the approach.
Mazi Mutafa:
I think that one of the most important things I’ve tried to do in the last 19 years is convinced people that part of your priority in life should be either joining or building an organization. And in order to do that, and you don’t need to find people that you agree with about everything, but find people who you agree enough with to be able to work together on the same project. And now in this stage, I feel like the thing I’m learning is to not just find people who agree enough, but people who have their own ideas who can use this platform to be able to advance their own ideas, their own visions, instead of needing to go and create something new. I think that that’s part of my own growth as a leader is not just finding people who could agree with me, but people whose ideas I loved enough to be able to support them as they developed an advanced them.
Paige:
Right. Get organized. Get organized. Yeah. For our listeners, if they want to get more involved with Words, Beats & Life, where can they get more involved in? Or if you’re offering ways that people can get more involved with Hip hop, do you have any suggestions for all that?
Mazi Mutafa:
Yeah, I think I would say there are many words, beats and lives all over the country and all over the world. I think the first thing to do is to see if there’s something like us where you live, even if it’s a smaller version or even if it’s only focused on a particular artistic element, look local first. And I think that that’s important just because there are lots of either startups or just kind of smaller operations that need volunteers, need talent, need new blood and energy. So I’d encourage that first, but second, if someone was interested in learning more about Words, Beats & Life, you can visit our website @wblinc.org because of COVID, we’ve really moved to more of a hybrid model where we’re planning to continue to do virtual programming, but also to do limited in-person programming. For the last year, we’ve done things like concert series being broadcast from our homepage.
Mazi Mutafa:
We publish an academic journal of Hip hop twice a year. We do lots and lots of things. We talk about arts education, creative employment, cultural diplomacy, centering marginalized voices and for the culture as our priorities. So arts education is the work we do to provide programming for young people, but also now adult classes. Creative employment is about getting people into jobs like mine, to be arts managers of companies, theaters organizations.
Mazi Mutafa:
Cultural diplomacy is the work we do abroad and bringing people from abroad to the US. Gilbert knows this well because Uganda was the very first country we ever went to do work in, at the invitation of the Babuka foundation. The work we do to center marginalized voices is about lifting up people who are part of the Hip hop community that are often not seen or heard and lifting up their voices, so more people can see and hear and recognize their contributions. And then for the culture is all the work we do to just build community through Hip hop. That’s our jams, our concerts, all the things you normally associate with Hip hop. It’s doing Hip hop things for Hip hop’s sake.
Paige:
Cool. Dope. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. It’s been great listening to you talk about Hip hop and, yeah, I hope we can have you back again soon.
Mazi Mutafa:
Appreciate it Paige. And I’ll be honest, you asked me a bunch of questions no one’s ever asked me. And I’ve been doing interviews for years. So kudos to you for the thought that went into putting together this podcast.
Paige:
Oh, thank you.
Mazi Mutafa:
You and your team.
Paige:
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I try to come up with good questions.
Paige:
Man, I’m feeling really invigorated after that conversation with Mazi. I’m having lots of new thoughts about Hip hop. He really reminded me that there is a two way relationship between Hip hop and also the soundscapes and geography of the people that influence Hip hop. And that Hip hop influences the geography and the soundscapes of the people within Hip hop, just like the cruise culture in Los Angeles and graffiti starting out in the Bronx and throughout the US. He talked about Hip hop as a pedagogy that the theoretical frameworks that are within Hip hop come from Hip hop from the people listening and learning constantly. And that Hip hop isn’t just about rap music that we need to decentralize rap music to talk about all of the parts of Hip hop. It’s expansiveness and constant changes.
Speaker 3:
And that’s it for our episode today. The Radical Features Now podcast is housed under the Arcus Center for social justice leadership at Kalamazoo college. Special thanks to Trevor Lodium Jackson for our music and [inaudible 00:36:43] for our graphics. Be sure to follow us on our Instagram at Arcus Center. See you next week.