Lessons Learned in the Layla Lounge Lecture Hall

Last night (April 19, 2009), I got to experience Hip Hop live. And it was--alive that is. The billing included DJ Cam Jus, Omar Offendum, Cristopolis, Flex Matthews, and DAM. The actual lineup--expanded by some surprise guests--offered ethnic and stylistic diversity. Hip Hop is everywhere, and everywhere it is has talented performers. And they were there last night.

As it was a Hip Hop show, it was also about culture. The political culture of the event was grounded in struggle, oppression, survival, and overcomeance. It circulated around Palestine. As it was a Hip Hop event, there were messages and there were calls to action.

I learned last night about an area charity dedicated to fighting U.S. ignorances about the Palestinian struggle. The representative told the audience that each person could inspire change and spread truth and bring down injustice--and it could all be done in five steps. And if each person in that room follows those five steps, I have no doubt that good things will happen. This was a lesson in simplicity. It does not take much to improve the world. The work can be counted on one hand--and when working together, those five individual fingers generate the power of a mighty fist. Lesson No. 1: keep it simple.

That was the first of many lessons taught that night by wordly professors.

Lesson No. 2: Learn through experience. Several individuals, just getting their footings in the world of verse and rhyme, took the stage and addressed the crowd. Female and male, young and ready, nervous and excited. My mantra has always been that the best way to learn anything is to jump right in and do it. One's best counselors, editors, instructors are his or her experiences and mistakes. The most efficient way to learn how to handle a microphone is to hold it, turn it on, and speak into the head. This is how one adjusts pitch and volume properly; learns about distance-relations between the mouth and the mic; figures out if anyone is hearing the sounds. Turn it on, and start. And they did, and I'm sure they learned a lot being up there in front of us. And we learned a lot too: we learned who they are, we learned what they love, and we learned what they believe. And we witnessed their experience. They went from students to teachers in a matter of seconds, and they became veterans of the Layla Lounge stage within minutes.

A third lesson...

The lesson that I had already learned but wanted others to gain was in No. 3: Music is the universal language [the focus to be on DAM here but applicable to all of the artists that performed last night]. DAM's members were professors to a crowd of all backgrounds, intellectual levels, rhythmic abilities, and levels of intoxication (it was at a lounge after all). DAM has a good beat--this is essential. With each bass boom, a head and hand bounce, capturing the music and the flow--each time grabbing more than the decibel before allowed. Music is music--no translation necessary to make it move the listener in one way or another.

And while the lyrics travel with that music, and stream into the ears and the eyes and the brains and the hearts of the participating audience, they are not always afforded that same instantaneous ubiquitous luxury. Evenso, if a listener didn't know what the word meant last night, he or she experienced how it felt, traveling through the ear canal and being analyzed by brain cells. And as DAM delivered those words, he or she also saw the the words vibrating lips, creating furrowed brows, igniting beads of sweat, pushing fists up, and then quieting with a smile and some humor. The sensory experiences were in, out, around, up, and down-and it may have been "in one ear, and out the mouth" at points, but it was not "in one ear, out the other" if the audience feedback and applause was any indication.

With this teaching method, DAM effectively professed about Palestine: about the experience of living in Al Lid, of the camraderie between brothers, about the lengthening legacy of Hip Hop music and its reach to the corners and insides of the Middle East, and about the heinous crimes committed by "Israel." I understood; many, like me and unlike me in my Arab heritage, understood.

There were uber lessons learned by and impressed upon the audience last night in the Layla Lounge lecture hall. And if my gut-feeling is right, I was not the only student who left there motivated to keep studying and overcoming.

My hope is that people were paying attention. My feeling is that they were--had we been tested on the knowledge that was spread from that stage, my feeling is that I would not have been the only one to receive a grading of "Alif Alif."

~~
P.S. Lesson No. 2.01-2.99: Do not heckle Flex Matthews unless you are ready for a tongue-lashing, verbal victimization, and harmonious humiliation. Flex shared a story about how he handled a "boo-er" at a Baltimore show. Flex Matthews reciprocated the effort and heckled-back at the poor kid. He replayed for us the rhymes with which he ripped and ridiculed that unsuspecting person. That was my favorite rhyme in his set--and I told him so, and he laughed =).