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What's up? Are you in da house? Hip hop in Kunming
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Now listen up yo'all!
Remember how there used to be a push to have a universal language? One more useful than the strange one called English.
Well, the other night in Kunming I was witness to a new universal language - and a growing worldwide culture. And it really sucked.
The venue was a bar called Shelter, around the back of Kunming Zoo - yes, the same place where that girl got mauled to death by a tiger recently [The six-year old was waiting to have her photo taken with the tiger when a camera flash went off and the circus animal bite the girl on the head - the zoo has since paid 340,000 yuan or about US$45,000 to the parents. Yes, in China you can get in the cage with some animals for photos. In 2001 a worker was killed by a Bengal tiger at the same zoo].
Shelter is actually an old bomb shelter, presumably from the war against Japan in the 1930s and 1940s, and from the top bar you descend down a concreted walkway, passing through low gates where you have to duck to avoid hitting your head. While safe from any tigers, at the downstairs bar an aural assault was about to begin.
Hip hop, which hales from black and Latino communities in the US, and traces its roots to black slavery and the ghetto, has spread around the world. 'Hip Hop Nation Language' is now a 'universoul-sonic force' according to researchers, being adopted and adapted by youth around the world. Including places like China.
So how are the 'word warriors' and 'street linguists' turning language on its head and fighting against the system in China? By parodying hip hop.
At least that's my impression from seeing the boys of South Silk Road and Tang Ren Ti. South Silk Road - or SSR as they subtly shouted maybe 50 times during the night - are made up of US expats with some years of living in north-east Asia under their low-strung belts.
Now resident in Kunming, they are trying to take over where the mid-west missionaries left off in imparting a foreign culture to a generally ambivalent audience. For a group of four - possibly five - white boys, they certainly dressed the part with the appropriate label streetwear including branded baseball caps worn backwards, hoodies, baggy skateboarder jeans and expensive sneakers. And those guys also behaved on stage like they were black, mixing a combination of juvenile delinquent disinterested slow body movements as if retarded from sniffing glue, trademark hand gestures, and of course, the coarse language which would be 'beeped' if broadcast on TV.
These guys were bad - and oh so good, sorry phat.
They seemed to take themselves very seriously - I saw one of the members rush to the toilet a couple of times before the performance. And their self-promotion egotism somewhat detracted from their 'music', but the novelty of a hip hop group in south-west China meant the night was one of the most entertaining I'd every had in Kunming. Even some of the audience in the house, were, like, getting down, getting crunked [letting loose, having fun] and chillin'.
But overall the audience, largely expat residents, seemed curious about the cross-cultural aspects of the performance and the oddity of white guys trying to be like black guys. Some of us moved to China to get away from such pretenses.
SSR's star is guest Hu Xuan, who goes under the name Tang Ren Ti. A former journalist based in Guangzhou, he returned to Kunming last year to help pioneer Yunnan's hip hop scene. Adding a local flavour to the international language of hip hop, he uses the Kunming dialect of Kunminghua in all his songs.
In a item on the website www.gokunming.com about his album 'Jazz-rap is in the city now' ('Hu's lyrics forego the gangsta rap-influenced trash-talking that is growing in popularity in coastal cities in favor of a jazz-infused and thoughtful diary of modern life in urban China') Hu said why he liked Kunming:
Kunming is nice because it's a lot slower than other cities and it's not trashed by heavy industry like most of the cities on the coast.
He says hip hop is universal:
It's not America's, it's not Africa's. It belongs to anyone who can feel it. One thing I like about hiphop is that it's a way to discuss your surroundings. But Chinese don't need to talk about selling drugs and killing - these guys [Chinese rappers] didn't grow up in that kind of environment. Chinese are smart, yet there are so many rappers here just imitating others. We can create our own music, there's no need to copy American gangsta rap.
I wonder if SSR could take his advice, and try to generate something uniquely Sino-American, rather than rely on trying to be something they are not - at least I hope they are not like their stage personas in real life.
While I thought the evening's performance was entertaining in a funny kinda way, I think I shared a similar reaction to many of the audience. That is, the harsh language, the messages of sex, violence and drugs, and the walking advertisements for US culture and clothing don't really cut it these days.
In the early days of hip hop and rap, when it started in poor black inner city 'hoods, the slang had some currency. Now, the language is mainstream, the audiences are largely white and mainstream, and those white tennis shoes, oversized polo shirts and baseball caps from US basketball teams or universities seem just too commercial. Perhaps Ali G spoilt it for us all.
I've heard now that teachers are using hip hop in teaching, to get students into figurative language.
For example:
simile - 'I move fast like a cheetah on the Serengeti'
metaphor - 'You are an ant, while I'm the lion.'
alliteration - 'Five freaky females finding sales at retail'
hyperbole - 'I fought a million rappers in an afternoon in June.'
personification - 'Alright, the sky misses the sun at night.'
paradox - 'The poorest man is the richest, and the rich are poor'
So while the night was worth its 10 yuan - US$1.30 - the entertainment value of the group faded as the evening wore on. And by that time we were all pretty much over the 'what's up' and 'yo, yo, yo'.
Maybe I need to show them more respect.
Anyway, check out these sites:
the hip hop translator - http://www.yourdailymedia.com/media/1133602505
Bill Maher on rap translations - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pm2wTGgYAw
translator - http://www.ighetto.com/html/jive.shtml
translations of songs - http://www.raptranslations.com/translations/
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| 16. | What's up? Are you in da house? Hip hop in Kunming - Kunming, China May 04, 2007 (  1 ) |
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