New Jersey

"To host the number one Hip Hop festival in the United States" — that is Larry Goldman's vision. Two years ago Mr. Goldman, president and chief executive officer of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), charged Baraka Sele, curator/producer of NJPAC's World Festival: Alternate Routes, with bringing this statement to fruition. Over four days this fall (October 31, 2002 through November 3, 2002) NJPAC became one of the first major U.S. performing arts centers to host a festival dedicated to exploring and promoting Hip Hop.

Opened in 1997, NJPAC is located in the heart of Newark, New Jersey and has been a catalyst for downtown development in Newark, a city in renaissance. It is the sixth largest performing arts center in the United States and has an annual budget of $23 million. NJPAC is the home of the Grammy-award winning New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and hosts a wide range of programming for residents of the state and visitors from around the world. NJPAC's World Festival: Alternate Routes brings local, national, and international artists to its stage to explore the intersections of race, culture, and ethnicity. It is the perfect home for Planet Hip Hop: International Hip Hop Festival.

What is Hip Hop? Depends on who you ask. Ask your kids or your grandkids — they know. The definition is constantly evolving. Most hip-hop experts agree that hip-hop music began in the 1970s in the urban U.S. Its four elements included: 1) Breaking (an original dance form that emerged in the early 1980s) 2) MC'ing (spoken word/composing and performing lyrics) 3) Graffiti (painting images and words in public spaces/a visual art form) and 4) DJ'ing (turntable disk jockeys who use their own mix of records to entertain and “move” an audience). Today, Hip Hop is a billion-dollar, global industry with a culture that includes clothing, performance art, and music. Hip Hop includes “gangsta” that can portray violent and misogynistic images to “conscience” that promotes activism and individual and collective development. Through performances and panel discussions, NJPAC's Planet Hip Hop spent four days exploring the history, evolution, and impact of Hip Hop.

With institutional support from NJPAC, Ms. Sele developed a team of four guest curators and a Hip Hop festival advisory council of local artists, activists, and funders to develop and execute Planet Hip Hop. The curators were Baye Adolfo-Wilson, Esq., executive director of a community development corporation that is restoring the historic Lincoln Park district in Newark and a member of the Black August Collective promoting conscience Hip Hop concerts in the U.S., Cuba, and South Africa; Danny Hoch, a playwright, actor, director, teacher, and producer who has won two OBIEs among other awards and is the founder of the New York City Hip Hop Theatre Festival; Kevin Powell, an activist and author who is arguably the leading hip-hop journalist, was a founding staff member of Vibe magazine and writes regularly for periodicals like Rolling Stone, Essence, and Newsweek; and Toni Blackman, who is the U.S. ambassador for Hip Hop and has traveled the world to find and connect hip-hop artists globally.

The Hip Hop Festival was a huge success. NJPAC engaged a new audience and explored a new genre while establishing a blueprint that other major performing arts centers could follow in presenting this type of programming. Artists from New Jersey and other parts of the nation, and from England and South Africa (invited Cuban artists could not attend due to new travel restrictions imposed by the U.S.) blessed the stages of NJPAC with music, spoken word, dance, and film. A few highlights: the South African performers that came and spoke of their struggles and their desire to connect with common interests in the U.S.; Chuck D's keynote address that covered, among many themes, community-building and education; panels with Afrika Bambaataa, a founder and elder of Hip Hop; and Muhammida El Muhajir's documentary Hip Hop: The New World Order. Ms. El Muhajir documented the manifestation of hip-hop culture in Tokyo, Havana, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Rio de Janeiro, and Johannesburg. Most events were standing-room-only and the spirit of the Hip Hop Festival was uplifting.

Jam Master Jay, a member of the pioneering Hip Hop group, Run DMC, was killed tragically the week the Hip Hop Festival began. Each artist, panelist, and speaker spoke about this tragedy. Each mentioned that Jam Master Jay was a peaceful, family-oriented man whose music was entertaining without offense. There was a renewed call for the end to violence, materialism, and misogyny in Hip Hop in Jam Master Jay's memory.

I love the best of Hip Hop. Kudos to NJPAC for hosting its first — and destined to be the best — Hip Hop festival.

For more information about NJPAC please visit www.jnpac.org. For information about Planet Hip Hop, please contact Baraka Sele at bsele@njpac.org.

At the time of Planet Hip Hop, Saleemah Abdulghafur was program officer, Victoria Foundation Inc., Glen Ridge, New Jersey.