"You feel me?"-reflections on recognition
In keeping with hip hop comm(unity) traditions, codes and values, it seems appropriate to ask, "you feel me?" This common linguistic device, this signifying is the shortening from what would be considered more "grammatically" correct question, "do you feel me?", or for those a bit further removed from this vernacular of communication, "do you understand what I am saying?". So my question to you, is "you feel me?" Have my sonic archives, reflections, and poetics created a narrative of critical recognition? Have we come to a space of understanding where borderlands are no longer places of loss, (dis)placement and death? They are transformed into spaces where our roots spread, our networks grow and our reach of resistance strengthens one another.
Hip hop is my comm(unity), when I reflect on the spaces I occupy they are infused with it. It is the air that we breath, the words we express and the love that we hold. The world that this project was create in is late night tacos wtih b-boys in my kitchen, teaching youth to reclaim space through visual culture (graffiti writing), tweeting friends to see what Wu-Tang song resonates. It is organizing around issues that face our (g)local struggles. It is a world where sometimes 140 characters is all that you need. It is pain and laughter. The radical act of decolonizing our diets, hands to soil. It is transcreating with people you may never meet.
The values, cultural traditions and counter hegemonic resistance strategies of hip hop cut across the strata of intersectionality. The narratives told by emcees from around the globe brings the violence of coloniality from the margins to center. The increased connectivity of mass communication technology creates transnational networks that weave together the experience of migrancy and (dis)placement. The cultural producers and collectives in this project use hip hop as a means for facilitating resistance strategies within their local context, creating powerful assemblies to act collectively organizing around issues of social education (counter hegemonic framing), gentrification (forced internal (dis)placement of the poor), labor organizing (capitalist repression) and police brutality (state sponsored violence) to name a few. These local collective engage with transnational networks to create and sustain their networks across the world. These networks are space where we build solidarity and senses of belonging that reject border imperialism. The lived experiences of network members resonates in the same questions of belonging and identity that are found from "periphary"and spaces in between. Identities within coloniality are fragmented, they are cut by categories of exclusion, we are neither something or nothing...we argue we are everything, a multiplicity of experiences, infinite point of connection. A politics of the oppressed, a simple assertion, "I got your back, you got mine", a space where migration, movement and flow are beautiful. So I ask again, "You feel me?"
Hip hop is my comm(unity), when I reflect on the spaces I occupy they are infused with it. It is the air that we breath, the words we express and the love that we hold. The world that this project was create in is late night tacos wtih b-boys in my kitchen, teaching youth to reclaim space through visual culture (graffiti writing), tweeting friends to see what Wu-Tang song resonates. It is organizing around issues that face our (g)local struggles. It is a world where sometimes 140 characters is all that you need. It is pain and laughter. The radical act of decolonizing our diets, hands to soil. It is transcreating with people you may never meet.
The values, cultural traditions and counter hegemonic resistance strategies of hip hop cut across the strata of intersectionality. The narratives told by emcees from around the globe brings the violence of coloniality from the margins to center. The increased connectivity of mass communication technology creates transnational networks that weave together the experience of migrancy and (dis)placement. The cultural producers and collectives in this project use hip hop as a means for facilitating resistance strategies within their local context, creating powerful assemblies to act collectively organizing around issues of social education (counter hegemonic framing), gentrification (forced internal (dis)placement of the poor), labor organizing (capitalist repression) and police brutality (state sponsored violence) to name a few. These local collective engage with transnational networks to create and sustain their networks across the world. These networks are space where we build solidarity and senses of belonging that reject border imperialism. The lived experiences of network members resonates in the same questions of belonging and identity that are found from "periphary"and spaces in between. Identities within coloniality are fragmented, they are cut by categories of exclusion, we are neither something or nothing...we argue we are everything, a multiplicity of experiences, infinite point of connection. A politics of the oppressed, a simple assertion, "I got your back, you got mine", a space where migration, movement and flow are beautiful. So I ask again, "You feel me?"
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