2013 Number 1  | < Back to Contents

Speaking Out

Hip Hop Takes its Place in Academia

By Rebecca Gross

Zhalarina Sanders and Taylor Scott performing in Shock. Photo courtesy of OMAI/First Wave

In 2004, Willie Ney brought a team of high school students from Madison, Wisconsin, to the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Festival in Los Angeles. Ney, who was working in an outreach capacity for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was enthralled by the creativity, talent, and passion that he witnessed, calling it a "transformative experience." But he was also struck by the realization that he was the only university-level representative in attendance. "There was no integration of higher education with these students, who were brilliant writers and thinkers," he said. "There are thousands of poets out there, but universities are not recruiting them. They're recruiting athletes."

When he later mentioned this observation to a UW-Madison board member, he remembers noting that "whichever university taps into this goldmine of talent for scholarships is going to be on the cutting-edge of higher education in the 21st century." Word got back to the school's vice-chancellor of administration, who sensed the truth in Ney's idea. In a bold institutional leap, the university founded the First Wave Hip Hop and Urban Arts Learning Community in 2007 with Ney at the helm. It is the country's first university-level scholarship program to focus on hip hop culture.

Housed under the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives (OMAI), First Wave is a community for young artists to further develop their practice of spoken word, performance, poetry, or music, with a combined emphasis on academics, artistry, and community activism. As they've explored their personal narratives through the arts, students have published chapbooks, produced their own albums, and performed their work across the world as part of the First Wave Hip Hop Theater Ensemble. They also receive professional training from faculty members such as OMAI Artistic Director Chris Walker, and work with visiting artists such as hip hop forerunner DJ Kool Herc, slam poet Mayda del Valle, and spoken word artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph.

Since its inception, the pioneering program has awarded four-year, full-tuition scholarships to 15 incoming students each year. Today, there are 63 students in First Wave, 80 percent of whom are low-income, often first-generation minority students from inner-city schools. It is, admittedly, an unlikely group of students to find at UW-Madison, whose student population is 87 percent Caucasian.

"We definitely had people that didn't believe in what we were doing and that wanted to see us fail," said Danez Smith, a member of First Wave's first graduating class and the program's current creative and academic advisor. "They didn't think that you could bring a lot of young brown artists into this university space and that they could succeed. What happened was that we have one of the highest retention rates of any other scholarship program, we have one of the highest GPAs of any scholarship program. Our students aren't just performing artistically, but they're performing academically."

Of course, artistic and academic performance is often one and the same for First Wave participants. Students have created 20-minute, one-person performances instead of final papers, and others have used performance to explore concepts they have studied in their physics class. Recently, a group of First Wave students traveled to New York to perform a piece that explored civil rights in the modern era. "[Their work] still has the same amount of research, still requires them to go and read, still requires them to dive into the history of the [subject]," said Smith. But rather than pulling all-nighters in the library banging out a paper, First Wave students are "actually trying to bring it to life."

Janel Herrera, Thiahera Nurse, Andrew Thomas, Christian Robinson, and Cydney Edwards performing in Kingdom Bequeath. Photo courtesy of OMAI/First Wave

Although First Wave students make up a tiny percentage of the campus's 30,000 undergraduate population, their effect has been substantial. "They provide an energy and an excitement for faculty members because they're so dynamic, they're so engaged, and they're so committed to this academic enterprise," said Ney. He said that several longtime professors have told him that their semesters teaching First Wave students were the most exciting of their careers.

For other students, the program has also helped inspire what Ney calls a "cultural revolution." Although there have been racial incidents through the years, one of which resulted in a fraternity's two-year closure, there have also been signs of growing tolerance. Last summer, First Wave members performed at the school's new student orientation, called SOAR, which is attended by all incoming freshmen and transfer students. Their piece used spoken word, beat box, and vocals to explore the concept of multiple identities, and was followed by a talk-back. "It may have been, for many of these students, the first time they've had a substantive dialogue with communities of color," said Ney. In the end, it was the most highly rated program in SOAR's 30-year history.

Beyond the UW-Madison campus, the program has become a model for other universities looking to incorporate hip hop into their academic offerings. McNally Smith College of Music introduced a hip hop studies major in 2009, and the Hip Hop Education Center was launched at NYU Steinhardt in 2010. The University of Arizona announced a new hip hop studies minor earlier this year, and a number of schools from Georgetown to the University of Connecticut have offered courses in hip hop in recent years. This summer, UW-Madison will be hosting its eighth annual Hip Hop in the Heartland institute, which offers teachers and community leaders training on how to incorporate hip hop into their work. "It's not that they have to do graffiti art and they come out and they're DJs," said Ney of the training institute. "It's that they understand the culture and the cultural framework. You've got to understand where the kids are in order to educate them."

Smith agrees, saying that poor academic performance is often a symptom of institutional disconnect rather than a student's laziness or lack of intelligence. "Hip hop is one of the best education tools that we can use in our classrooms today," he said. "That's what relevant to our students. That's the soundtrack to our lives, so trying to keep it out of the academic space is trying to keep our students out of the academic space instead of embracing who they are."

And yet, the education system has been slow to recognize hip hop's artistic and educational potential. Ney and Smith believe this stems from a number of factors, including a persistent discomfort with a minority-driven art form, and limited exposure to hip hop beyond the negative elements so often highlighted by mainstream media.

This resistance could put disaffected students at a disadvantage, as well as the institutions that might one day benefit from the creative thinking the arts can inspire. "These kids aren't threatening," said Ney of students who express an interest in hip hop. "They're your best assets for the next generation."

He points to his own students as living proof. One First Wave graduate was recently named the San Antonio Teacher of the Year. Another had a day named in her honor by the Boston City Council for her community leadership, and still others have gone on to law school and film school. Smith, who is himself a poet, actor, and playwright, was the youngest-ever Cave Canem Fellow, and is also a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee.

In his own case, Smith credits First Wave with helping him achieve his current accomplishments. He cites the opportunities afforded by the program, the inspiration and support he received from the First Wave community, and the empowering process of exploring his life through the arts. The success of the program and its students only serves as affirmation for what supporters of First Wave have known all along. "It shows that there is power and there is purposebehind the art that we're doing," he said.