Wrapping up our Participant-Observation

ANT/BLS3085: Anthropology of Hip-hop on YouTube. This has been a true exploration from the unknown. A bit like Columbus venturing into new territories thinking he found India because he didn't really know where he was going. But we ain't claimin' anyone else's land but we do have some stories to tell. As Plato said, "Those who tell stories rule society."

We participated and observed--true to the game of cultural anthropology. We brought the flavor and flow of hip-hop to a few moments--more or less. We experienced a new culture of hip-hop, we just never left the classroom or the front of a computer. Seems odd. How can that be keepin' it real in hip-hop parlance? We did, however, enter into a new world as outsiders venturing into hip-hop with little to go on but our past which is not YouTube's past.

Lots of things from our collective pasts are on YouTube. Like Bert & Ernie Tries Gangsta Rap or an early classic like Eric B and Rakim (Juice). But there is so much that is new. The mediation of culture across places viewed in all in one moment from your own room like the 2008 Phillipines All Stars Dance Competition or the new ways community is created by sampling genres not just songs like Paul Dateh's hip-hop violin (or not). Hey and I can't step over the power of Jelani Cobb's words from his book. Check him out!

This participant-observation study seemed tedious to many of you. It was you and the mediation of your computer screen, depending on where it is located, who you were with or not, and if you had any clue how to search for it. THIS WAS A WHOLE 'NOTHER WORLD and it wasn't pretty at first, but all first forays ain't pretty. There is always culure shock and resistance to a new way of thinking. This is why your Foucault's Remix (cf. preface of THE ORDER OF THINGS) was so important to getting us started. Can you NOW imagine another way of thinking? I hope so. Your view of hip-hop is forever changed and hip-hop has changed since the launch of YouTube in Feb 2005. So maybe there's something to get from it all. What? That's for you to say and me to find out now.

The way you all may have thought about hip-hop before this class was already shaped by YouTube. But in these last days of our course, it is imperative that you begin to take ground in what there was to notice along our journey now that we are nearly done. Create a vblog to wrap it up.

This wasa first foray into Web 2.0 technology for many. Now it's time to reflect and respond. To notice what you got that you may not even know you got yet. That's why this 10 DAY PERIOD is probably more important than the WHOLE class. What you got, IT'S JUST BEGUN (Ask Jimmy Castor or the Rock Steady Crew if you don't know what I'm talkin bout).

Let's start where I said we'd begin...with creating a vblog (video blog).
Let Ill Doctrine be our guide. He's a pro at videoblogging but there are many examples.

We also end the course in a new place in history, with a new president soon to be sworn in on Jan 20 and a black family in the White House and a world that thanks us for voting him in. What a great coincidence that MLK Jr.s B-day is celebrated on Jan 19. It's like Emancipation eve, or Election eve is a holiday, a national holiday. So it's fitting to feature these two vblogs by J-Smooth aka Ill Doctrine as models for vblogging (you could go another whole direction if you wish, too).