H I P H O P

singer, Mary J. Blidge

HIP HOP & POVERTY

There is a deep sentiment among our young people that believes the ultimate chase, or goal in life is to 'chase paper' or get a lot of money. Making money is a concept they grasp within their paradigms of want. Want seems to lead them outside of intelligence so necessary to the acquisition of material wealth. Perhaps it is the harsh background millions of them come out of that maintains their steady relationship with ineffective thought processes, and tactics that have a minimal power to change their circumstances.

Hip Hop has become the music of a generation much to the delight of many of us older musicians and artists who knew and understood the importance of poetry receiving high status in the national consciousness as far back as the 1950’s, ‘60’s, and the 1970’s! But the business of music is another creature with its own creative process, needs, and feeding pool. And talent, in the vernacular of sales, and business is product much the same way soldiers are cannon fodder to the political, and business entities that instigate, and profit from war.

The missing element in Hip Hop is the Teacher. The children of this generation are largely abandoned to the images created to sale an idea of themselves to the profit of music business people, and their creative marketing people who are artists without the community touch that parents cannot feel comfortable about as the music goes into their children’s conscious minds day after day. Ignoring the basic tenets of Hip Hop the community of Hip Hop on the international level operates without the balance its founders laid, and our children dance and groove with the music in a disjointed way without the Teacher providing Balance.

This moves into the specifics of my concern: money, and this is where parents can become a part of the Hip Hop culture without feeling outside of a phenomenon. Our children are getting lost misunderstanding money, its place, how to view it, and relate to, acquire and manage it. In the groups of young people I work with one consistent theme is the lack of knowledge about the mechanics of dreams becoming reality in a relationship with money. Central to this flaw is its source. And that would be us: the parents, and guardians who drew the paradigms, and misconceptions around money within our children. ~Gregory E. Woods (Dawn Wolf) Keeper of Stories

[For further study into resolution: Dagara Medicine Wheel]