Probing the Fifth Element

(Inspired by my students, who often teach me better than I do them.)

Hip-hop,
an art,
a culture,
a movement,
a way of life.

Building community,
Organizing politically,
Activism and art,
melded.

B-boying, b-girling,
breaking,
Bronx,
boroughs, battles
for respect, and dialogues
on truth, power, knowledge.

I came to hip-hop old,
reared on old Hindi film songs
and American rock and roll,
music often created by blacks
and made profitable for whites.

College, the second time around,
acquainted me with colonialism,
and its ways of knowing:
using arts, sciences, maths created
in the colonies
to control the colonized.

Four elements define hip-hop
breaking -- the b-boying, b-girling
rap -- emceeing
deejaying
graffiti -- writing
And then there's the fifth element
-- self actualization through knowledge.

What's that mean?
That was assignment #1
that I gave the students.
They acted like they didn't know.
I was at a loss
because I wasn't sure
I knew.

Then the papers came.
Music and self-expression of the oppressed.
A way to call attention to the plight of blacks.
Of the marginalized.
Of the silenced.
Not mainstream.
Something spiritual, and beyond commodity.
A way of knowing your place
in the world.
A dialogue.
Something that can't be bought or sold.
What hip-hop was meant to be.
Why hip-hop matters today.

Can you quote it? Cite it?
What are your sources?
How do you quote, cite, find a "source"
for what's inside you?
Probing, pushing the understanding of the fifth element
brings those questions to the forefront,
maybe, perhaps, possibly.

The dialogue continues.