I have become a big Marc Lynch fan. For those of you not in the know, Marc Lynch keeps a nifty little MidEast issues blog called Abu Aardvark which I’ve been reading for awhile. He’s also written some books which I admittedly haven’t read (but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t). But today, I became a fan when I stumbled upon this article in the Guardian’s Comment is free section.

The article, entitled “How Eminem can save the Middle East” at first struck me as a bit naive, in the sense that it was written by a hip hop outsider. Reading on, however, it began to struck a chord.

The idea of hip hop as cultural diplomacy is obvious in Morocco. Two years ago, a Fulbrighter named Josh Asen put together a concert called I Love Hip Hop in Morocco, with some funding from the American consulate. The concert, which traveled from Meknes to Casablanca to Marrakesh, featured local hip hop artists (including a then fairly unknown Bigg), DJ Key (Morocco’s most famous DJ/producer), a pair of Brooklyn DJs, and an American rapper named Sha Stimuli.

Coincidentally, Asen’s project started out with the name “Eminem in the Medina.” With the help of assistants, he videotaped the concert series, interviewed the artists, and has made an as-yet-unreleased documentary (don’t tell anyone, but one of those “assistants” passed on the trailer to me last year and it is AWESOME). Here’s what Asen said on the Fulbright-MTVU site:

My project, titled “Eminem in the Medina”, sought to examine both the influence of American Hip Hop and the rise of an indigenous Moroccan Hip Hop movement. By the end of my Fulbright year, I wound up helping to produce the country’s first Hip Hop festival by convincing the American Embassy to sponsor the event. The festival, called “I Love Hip Hop in Morocco,” was, for many Moroccans, their first time seeing Moroccan groups perform on a professional stage, not to mention American artists as well. In addition, it sent an extremely positive message of support and solidarity from the American diplomatic mission.
The Fulbright grant gave me the opportunity to bridge large cultural gaps through a shared passion for Hip Hop, not only with the young artists I interviewed, or the 30,000 fans at the festival, but also with audiences worldwide who will soon be able to see the documentary film I made about my experience, called “I Love Hip Hop in Morocco.”

He also stated that from the documentary experience came a model for cultural diplomacy - “Hip Hop Diplomacy.”

But Asen’s project isn’t the only one to hit Morocco - last year, the American Cultural Association invited a Muslim hip hop group called Remarkable Current to perform at several of the American Language Centers around Morocco. I was lucky to attend their Meknes show - not only did they invite (ahead of time) young artists from the city to open for them (my brother-in-law included), but they performed such a wide range of material, from covers of popular funk songs, to anthems praising God.

The Institut Francais is in on the game as well, hosting numerous concerts throughout the year, including a hip hop themed event last May. Hip hop is in full force in Morocco.

So, what do I think? Well, I live with a hip hop loving husband who seems to feel that it’s gone too far here - that Moroccan rappers are throwing American gang signs and wearing Yankees caps when they’ve never even seen a televised baseball game. He feels that a lot of international hip hop artists simply parrot the originals, that their use of words like “nigga” is simply ingenuine. On that note, I tend to agree.

On the other hand, artists like Bigg have made hip hop their own. Nevermind his Yankees cap, his winning album was called “Mgharba Tal Mout” (Moroccan Until Death), and he has made his opinions eloquently known (see this interview, translated here into English). I was fortunate enough to meet him on the set of his video, Bladi, with Azed and Ahmed Soultan; he was incredibly genuine, in my opinion, and his English was excellent (in this TelQuel interview, he mentions Whitney Houston as helping him to learn it). Most importantly, he raps in darija, Moroccan dialect.

H-Kayne is another example of originality - their beats are unique, their song “Aissawa Style,” into which they incorporated traditional Aissawa beats was an enormous hit throughout the country, and they’ve managed to garner a following as far away as France. Like Bigg, they too rhyme in darija.

So, if you ask me, it all makes sense. Kids here or there, rich or poor relate to hip hop. Moroccan music is percussive, hip hop is percussive, and the lyrics nearly always represent the underdog, a position that a lot of people feel they can relate to.

But more than that, in my own classroom, I have seen how hip hop lyrics are the most understood facet of American culture.  I have watched a fellow teacher use hip hop as a learning tool and have seen the results.  I personally believe hip hop, as a musical style, to be an art form, and a tool for activism.  It has changed the American landscape over its past thirty-odd years of mainstream existence and is clearly filling in some gaps in the youngest generation.  As Lynch puts it:

But what hip hop can do, perhaps, is build political awareness and engagement across the Western-Islamic divide. D’Souza may hate it, and it won’t help Bush. But the angry, diverse and mobilized voices of hip hop show Arabs a side of American culture that resonates, and gives young Arabs and Americans something in common to talk about.