The Hippest New College Course in Town

Hip-hop has historically been the megaphone of the marginalised youth—a feisty, no-BS approach that reinvented music into something original and urgent. At its core, it has addressed the realities of life in a way best understood by those who sang and listened. In India, as it segues from derivative to original to mainstream, a university course seeks to take it back to where it all started—using it as a tool for communication.

A Voice of Reason
Set to commence on September 8, Mumbai University’s Department of Communication and Journalism recently unveiled a 15-week certificate course on hip-hop studies, which comprises the genre’s history, socio-political perspective, gender roles, revolutionary aspects, and analyses of music videos and lyrics. What sets it apart is its mission to make hip-hop a tool of meaningful communication and self-expression that goes beyond just music.

“Hip-hop is a spontaneous expression of what affects you,” explains head of department Sanjay Ranade, while talking about how he plans to harness the course’s theoretical aspects to help students articulate themselves better.

Ranade, along with 27-year-old assistant professor Yatindra Ingle (pictured on top), recently published a paper titled ‘It’s the lyrics, it’s the rhyme, it’s the words and the time, and what matters most is the idea of the song bringin’ the dime’ outlining how rap can be used as a communication device. “The rhythmic poetry in rap is often based on communication theories,” says Ingle, who first realised its confidence-boosting after-effects when he was in college and had read out a Marathi poem emulating the disposition of international rappers. “While artists like Dhinchak Pooja resort to cringe pop to communicate (where you may not like the song but it is so bad that you feel the need to tell others about it), others like Divine use the Narrative Theory to talk about their plight and social conditions through rap, even using slangs such as bantai and bacchi to make it more relatable. Even Maharashtrian communities like the Kolis and Agris rap in their native language to create an identity for their community, which is essentially Agenda Setting Theory.”

Do works of polarising artists like Baba Sehgal, Honey Singh and Omprakash Mishra, then, make the cut? “Even while artists like them use profanity, it is to attract an audience,” replies Ingle. “But our aim is to differentiate the old school with the new, and make hip-hop more meaningful.” The artists to be slotted for guest lectures would be vetted, and only the ones channelling the medium as a positive force would be invited.

Ground Realities
“Hip-hop has surely made me a more confident speaker, and even taught me how to control the crowd," says Dharmesh Parmar aka MC Tod Fod. "Even in my upcoming track ‘Mann Ko Shaant Rakh’, I’m trying to tell the people from my old community in Dadar, who are still fighting with each other, to stay calm and not let the devil take over them." Other artists like 23-year-old Prabh Deep emphasise on the responsibility of hip-hop artists. “After I dropped my album Class-Sikh, violence and drug rates in my area began to drop, which shows how important the image I am creating is.” At the same time, 26-year-old Azadi Records co-founder Uday Kapur cites international examples such as Akala’s Hip-Hop Shakespeare workshop to communicate the issues of oppressed communities.

This course is meant to be a stepping stone for a full-fledged hip-hop education scene in India. It aims to be interactive, with assignments that include blogging and organising events in order to network with the community. The plan also includes boosting real-life experiences for two exceptional students from the class through scholarships that would include dance workshops. Classes will also feature video conferences with international artists, including Pakistani rappers, to give an insight into how different hip-hop cultures collaborate and clash with each other. Says Ranade, “We want aspiring artists to take it more seriously, or even compare it to poetic parameters like Kabir’s dohas, rather than just complain about a girl."