Cracking the Global Hip Hop Nation’s semiotic code
Having only recently coined the term "Global Hip Hop Nation," uOttawa professor Dr. Awad Ibrahim is now focused on deciphering its complex code in order to better understand how hip hop is translated locally in communities around the world.
Specifically, Ibrahim wants to better understand how a spoken-word performer from Tanzania can invoke the code and signal to a "slam" artist from Gatineau that they are both part of the same Hip Hop Nation. To do so, he's turning to semiotics.
"I'm looking at basically three things: dress, walk and talk-so how do I get my passport stamped and access this nation?" says Ibrahim, a professor in uOttawa's Education department, who along with two other professors, H. Samy Alim and Alastair Pennycook, co-edited the volume Global Linguistic Flows. "For that you need semiotics."
In the three years since his arrival in Ottawa, Ibrahim says he's discovered a fascinating, vibrant hip hop community in Canada's National Capital Region.
"There is some really interesting stuff going on here. It's not L.A., it's not Toronto. I'm very hesitant about the categorization of hip hop, but what's important is that it has its own distinct flavour.
The self-declared hip hopper-he is a strong proponent of KRS-One's line "Rap is what we do, hip hop is who we are"-is also keeping busy with a side project that ties in nicely with his upcoming research. Along with graduate student Luwanda Scott, he has been walking around the National Capital Region taking photos of graffiti. He plans to publish them online and invite community input in order to better understand their meaning.
"Graffiti is an organic part of what I will be talking about in my work," he says. "When you're looking at not just how performers express themselves on stage, but [in the rest of their lives], graffiti is where it's at!"
–All photos taken at the legal graffiti wall on the corner of Bronson and Slater in Ottawa.
By David Weatherall