The Delaware Art Museum celebrates hip hop’s role in defining American culture with its 2nd Annual Hip Hop Cultural Summit.
From its roots in inner-city neighborhoods, hip hop culture has grown into a multi-billion dollar entertainment juggernaut. Iz Balleto is the Delaware Art Museum’s Community Engagement Specialist.
“Hip hop gave the people a voice,” he says. “It gave them a way to speak about social justice, it gave them a way to let people inside of what’s going on in the community, and this art form kept growing.”
Balleto says the summit is important for many reasons, including the need to make sure the impact of hip hop on the American experience is not forgotten.
“I wanted to make sure that that culture gets added to the archives,” he says. “I wanted to make sure that exists in history. I wanted to make sure when they, when we look back years and years, that there’s a story to tell about about the people, about how they were able to express through art how the world was changing because now you can’t turn on the TV or watch a sports show without hip hop being represented.”
In addition to panel discussion with guests like Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav, the event features competitive battles in elements of hip hop culturelike graffiti, breakdancing, and rapping.
Greg Watkins, better known as Grouchy Greg, is the founder of allhiphop.com and one of the event’s organizers. While much of hip hop culture stems from New York and Los Angeles, the native Delawarean says the First State has a rich, if not widely known, hip hop history of its own.
“In the early 80s, there were quite a few artists from Delaware, and in the early 90s as well, who released records that were very influential,” he says.
The summit will also feature visual art elements, including a photography exhibit of hip hop in 1990’s New York by T. Eric Monroe and work by local artists with themes of activism and social justice.
The Delaware Art Museum’s 2nd Annual Hip Hop Cultural Summit starts at 10am Saturday.
Delaware Public Media’s arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
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