The hyphenated identity of the East-in-the-West Arab experience is the platform for a relatively under-acknowledged and highly talented group of hip-hop performers and academics. There are a number of artists who do so, but over the past decade there has been a particularly notable Arab gravitation toward hip-hop culture, which a new generation is using to challenge the post-9/11 construction of the Arab-as-enemy, the Arab as alternately Aladdin and Bin Laden. Hip-hop remains the home of underdogs-turned-lyrical-pugilists, people who have found the beauty and power of the musical message and have turned cultural alienation into artistic purpose. The slick and sanitized Top 40 sounds of the mainstream do lack the aesthetically radical vibe and socially conscious rhythms that made up the vertebrae of some of earlier hip-hop’s rhyme and reason, but the importance of hip-hop as a cultural haven for resisting and reclaiming power - whether with energy-releasing rhythm and loop or even politically-charged protest rhyme - has not dissipated entirely. Artwork (detail) from ARAB SUMMIT’s Fear Of An Arab PlaneĬRITICS DECRY MAINSTREAM HIP-HOP for leaving behind its innovative and revolutionary origins, writing eulogies for the era of Public Enemy and the spirit of Bob Marley.
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