Hip-hop exchange program to bring musical glory to China

Soon to join Buick automobiles and American blue jeans as one of the US’s few exports to the People’s Republic of China is hip-hop. After months of work, the McNally Smith College Of Music and Shenyang Conservatory Of Music have put together a deal to export the former school’s hip-hop diploma program to the home of the Giant Panda.

Local artist Toki Wright, along with other staff from McNally Smith, traveled to China late last year to meet with their Eastern comrades, and have just unveiled the collaborative effort, which will bring top-quality hip-hop instruction to enthusiastic, culturally confused students.

If you’re not sure how a musical genre comprised of hundreds of years of evolving African rhythms and black social issues relates to college kids in China, you’re not the only one. There has been some question about the compatibility of the controlling Chinese government and hip-hop music, as the genre is almost necessarily subversive and socially explicit, but, says Wright of the program, “I make sure to stress that you always express yourself freely and powerfully in hip-hop music. That might not mean the same thing to kids in China, but that is one of the things they will have to interpret their own way.”

More on this at the Star Tribune.