Wednesday, March 17, 2010

The Power of Emotion...























"I'm not saying that I'm gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world"
-Tupac Shakur

A few years ago, maybe a little longer, a friend and I were having one of many conversations that we often had about hip-hop. The subject of this conversation: Tupac. Without giving too much away, my friend a skinny blonde from the the suburbs: a Tupac fanatic; and myself a one-time inner-city knuckle head: 'Pac detractor (and not because I was Biggie fan - I preferred Nas in those years).

Now, although I was not a Tupac fan, I ignorantly thought that my friend - based on her skin-tone and suburban upbringing - was completely dead to rights in her Tupac super-fandom. Tupac albums, books and other miscellaneous merchandise were all chalked up as filler and fluff in my mind for a hip-hop fan from the outskirts of the culture's nucleus, who clung on to one of it's biggest stars to prove that she was "down". How ignorant was I.

In professing my very foolish thoughts and theories about the laws of race, hip-hop and geographic interplay, my friend very simply, very calmly smashed my ignorance in one breath, stating: "Emotion is universal." Going on to explain that it was the feeling, the struggle, the pain, the joys that Mr. Shakur expressed in his music were universal emotions that could be related and manifested in the lives of a machine-shop worker, musician, school teacher or soccer mom. These feelings were not affectations, but real emotions that stream genuinely from the hearts and souls of these and all people regardless of their occupation, geographic location, race or age.

With those very simple words, the way that I have seen the world from that point on have been forever changed...

So today, this conversation, this moment of enlightenment was revisited as I watched the 2008 documentary, "Slingshot Hip Hop", a story described as being: "The stories of young Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank and inside Israel as they discover Hip Hop and employ it as a tool to surmount divisions imposed by occupation and poverty. From internal checkpoints and Separation Walls to gender norms and generational differences, this is the story of young people crossing the borders that separate them."

Now, the film as described does interest me, but that delineation is not what brought me back to the day that my friend taught me about the universal power of emotion; it was in actually watching the film, that reignited this moment. It was seeing in 2 youthful Palestinian men, appearing to be in their mid-twenties, working through their struggle to find their place in the world, amidst conditions and a sociopolitical climate that many of us here in the US may never know, a glimmer of hope in hip hop. And, even more pronounced, as the 2 wrote rhymes and composed and freestyled lyrics along to the beats that played on their simple radio/cd player in a small, disorderly bedroom like many nascent emcees do here in the U.S. (whether that room be somewhere in suburban cul-de-sac or an inner-city housing project) was the all too familiar backdrop - a Tupac poster. As these young men rapped of revolution, justice, struggle, war and peace I couldn't help but be taken by the power that the presence of Tupac's image and past revolutionary pronouncements had/has on these men and their struggle to be recognized in a world that renders them invisible... Much as it did to Tupac in his early years, and for that matter, hip hop as a whole.

The power of emotion is universal; there are no barriers that can blockade, stopgap or by any other means hinder feeling. Despite our external differences, no matter how many or little they may be in number, the fact that we all feel and emote the same, regardless and perhaps even - in spite of those differences - brings us all, the entire human race, that much closer.

My life has changed since learning the power of emotion...

For the better.

It's something to think about.

Peace,


http://www.slingshothiphop.com