Mid-Term Essays

Africanisms: Are They Part of Present or Just the Past

It’s Giddings’s belief that Jay-Z’s work and particularly his lyrics can aid in illustrating African Cultural characteristics. These characteristics are innate to African Americans since, throughout most of U.S history, African Americans were not allowed to integrate into European American culture through practices such as slavery and segregation. Since Jay-Z is arguably one of the most accomplished hip-hop emcees’, his musical works are known world-wide, providing a framework for examining and understanding the value and contribution of hip-hop towards African American cultural core values.

Giddings has talked of the 4 Africanisms: oral, spiritual, and communal and matrifold that is seen in the work of Jay-Z. To start with, oral value is seen as prevalent in African American culture. This preference for oral communicative forms has a broad axiological expression in hip hop music (Katz, M. (2017). In the culture, the African Americans as discussed by Giddings are the emcee skills by Jay-Z as well as his professional insistence on freestyle rap something that illustrates the oral tradition. Live concerts are some of the venues where oral tradition is experienced. Giddings has provided evidence of the oral tradition by giving an example of the marimba Ani.

The hip hop artists can read the mood and the impulse of the crowd and with this; they can engage the audience throughout the entire concert. Jay-Z is said to have previously violated the MTV broadcast in the name of getting connected with his audience as the audience was singing his lyrics with him. Jay-Z's lyrics are the hip hop’s aesthetic core. He has a good poetic replete combined with his masterful humor and irony showing that he is a true character of the oral tradition. The African oral tradition demands honesty, sincerity and authenticity (Meyers, 2017). Jay –Z has proved to show these values.

The second on is the communal core values, which he dictates much of these instances of being able to break through the veil that inhibits optimal engagement between him as an emcee and his audience (Xu, & Zhang, 2019). He is a man who investigates the pervasiveness of the African communal values. Giddings, for instance, says that in one of his albums, Jay –z admitted to dumping down to the audience for optimal profits. Jay Z also embraces the role of an emcee as a street representative and he drugs and poverty plagues taking on flawed educational systems such as in the verse where he says that” school made me sick, teachers said I was too crazy”. In another, he indicates the component of the communal value by collaborating with the other artists in the music industry despite him having made it in music showing commitment to an extended self. He builds community awareness through his rap.

Thirdly, when it comes to the spiritual core, Jay-Z uses the tradition of personifying something evident in the Africans spiritual value of recognizing reality as a composite both tangible and elusive. For instance, in his song Lucifer, jay has reflected the African American tradition. In the song, he says that “lord forgive him he got them dark forces in him but also got a righteous cause for sinning” (Giddings, 2011). Giddings has successfully shown the spiritual value regarding how Jay-Z has used the African American culture by talking of Lucifer used as a metaphor referring to the devil.

Lastly, the matrifocal principle which alludes to women appreciation in the unique, indispensable and complementary role that they play in the relationships, the family, the community and the society, in general, is seen in his music. The song cry as Giddings has cited proved this point. He fantasies about the romantic conquest of all women from various races. The value of women is seen in his rap from them being primary care providers, primary educators, husbandry among others.

Giddings arguments connect with F&H text chapter 1 in that both of them have shown how Africans inherit, negotiate, innovates and perpetuates African culture in different areas across generations. Similarly, the American culture in the two shows the importance of the community and the culture in Africa. For instance, F&H text follows ancestral Africa and their tradition just like Giddings is talking about the culture of the African Americans through Jay-Z.

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