American Toni Blackman Takes Hip-Hop to Asia

Rap artist coaches teens to use lyrics, not violence

For rap artist Toni Blackman, who grew up in California and began writing poetry when she was eight, the magic happens when new hip-hop music is born out of global collaboration. She should know: the State Department's American Music Abroad Program featured the Toni Blackman Hip-Hop Ensemble in a month-long tour of Thailand where thousands of "wai roon," or Thai youth, participated in several concerts.

As the American cultural ambassador for hip-hop, Blackman and her band performed in concerts and led educational workshops throughout the country.

Blackman's live performances in Hat Yai, a city in Thailand's Muslim south, Chiang Mai, a mountainside city in the north, and Bangkok, where Blackman performed with Thailand's most popular rap star, Joey Boy, reached more than 1,200 young Thais. Millions more were exposed to Blackman via public and cable television and newspapers.

"The best thing about bringing American hip-hop to Thailand was being able to blend our music with a Thai aesthetic," Blackman told the Washington File.

Since 2001, Blackman has taken her hip-hop road show on behalf of the United States to Senegal, Ghana, Botswana, Swaziland and Poland, among other places. In Indonesia, where Blackman performed with traditional Javanese musicians, Blackman remembers the electricity of her collaboration with a traditional Indonesian orchestra using traditional instruments.

"It was beautiful," she said simply.

"Toni Blackman and Kronik are similar in that they both use hip-hop and a blend of other more traditional forms of music," Riza, the lead singer from the rapper group Kronik, which performed with Blackman in Jakarta, told the Washington File. "Toni incorporates soul and jazz, and Kronik incorporates traditional ethnic music."

Riza said Kronik appreciated the "bagus banget," or awesome, collaboration from the State Department because Blackman's tour brought together artists who would not have met otherwise. "Members of Kronik were especially impressed with Blackman band member Jeremy Mage's use of keyboards and synthesizers in hip-hop, and he gave Kronik casual lessons," Riza said.

Blackman's hip-hop workshop in Surabaya, Indonesia, included 120 high school students from public, private and religious local schools. Blackman encouraged the students to write hip-hop lyrics about their lives, coaching them to use art, not violence, to express their feelings and the importance of being open to other cultures. Blackman and her band then "freestyled" - freestyle is to rap what improvisation is to jazz - with hip-hop bands from one of the local secondary schools in a performance Blackman said she will never forget.

It is not likely the teens will forget that day either.

In the 1990s, Blackman offered hip-hop workshops to Washington public school teachers seeking re-certification. The idea was to put teachers in better touch with their students who were increasingly fixated on hip-hop culture.

"My Hip-Hop 101 exposed teachers to what their students were thinking about," Blackman said. "I also helped teachers learn how to use rap as a teaching method."

Blackman said the greatest challenge for hip-hop as it completes its third decade is for dance to possess critical elements of spontaneity, inspiration and soul.

"The inspiration is missing," Blackman said. "The dance looks great, because over the years hip-hop dancers have developed technique, but you can't feel it."

It is also challenging for younger artists to carve out a space for themselves in the midst of such a commercially successful hip-hop culture, Blackman noted. "You have younger artists fighting the very thing they want to be a part of."

Blackman's Asia tour was managed by Jazz at Lincoln Center and supported by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State.

Source: U.S. Department of State

judythpiazza@gmail.com

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