The Roots of Latina/o Hip Hop

Catalog description

The Roots of Latina/o Hip Hop: The Sounds of Struggle This course examines the musical, social, political, cultural, and economic conditions that brought about urban youth culture in the late 1970s in the Bronx. Special focus will be placed on the multicultural aspect of the birth of hip-hop, wherein youth forge an alternative culture based on the collected awareness of the plight of the urban non-White working class in America. Chican@ rappers will be examined in light of a 500-year history of Hispanics in the New World, the development of clashing musical cultures between the elite and the masses in California from 1850 to the 1960s, the development of music in Los Angeles from its founding in 1769 to the present, and historical issues of Mexican American communities.