Reiland Rabaka - photo by Glenn Asakawa
Associate professor Reiland Rabaka of ethnic studies had no television while growing up in the projects of Austin, Texas, and reading was his escape. Today a vast bookshelf covers an entire wall of his office, adorned with works by Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston and Ayi Kwei Armah. Former Coloradan student writer Erika Usui (Jour, Jpn’09) caught up with him to discuss the role hip-hop music plays in his classroom.
What was your inspiration to pursue degrees in music and African American studies?
In junior high school I saw a book with an African American on the cover for the first time called The Souls of Black Folk (Barnes and Noble Classics) by W.E.B. Du Bois. A librarian had recommended the book to me, and it’s something that changed my life. I found a deep, profound connection with Du Bois and he became a sort of an intellectual father figure, if you will.
How did that initial spark with literature lead to your work now?
As a jazz musician, as well as an academic, I wanted to develop a relationship between hip-hop studies and critical theory. Hip-hop is a multiracial, multicultural, multilingual, multireligious and multi-issue music form that speaks to an entire generation, and the “Introduction to Hip-Hop” course provides a forum where students can talk about race, gender, class, sexual orientation and religious affiliation through the lens of contemporary culture and literature.
How has CU received your hip-hop curriculum?
There were not very many universities that offered bona fide courses in hip-hop at the time [spring 2006], so the department had many questions. I made it clear I wasn’t just a critical theorist, that I wasn’t going to sit around and analyze rap lyrics.
I’m using popular culture as a pedagogical tool. Through hip-hop, students get interested in women’s studies, history, sociology and ethnic studies. The course is like a catch-all class that allows me to bring different kinds of theories into the conversation, so students can use these theories to grapple with the world we live in. They eventually catch a theory fever, so to speak. And with many students from different majors gravitating toward hip-hop studies, I think the curriculum has been a perfect fit for CU. The fact that I have had such a receptive student body with double-digit waiting lists [with a class size of about 100 students] tells me that students take this work seriously.
So I take it you like it here at CU?
Definitely. My students are a work of art, and I’m helping to sculpt, mold and shape them, while they do the same for me. That’s the beauty, the joy of teaching here. My pedagogy is that it’s education for liberation. Education for social transformation. I came here to excite. I came here to inspire. I came here to transform people. To give students a new conception of themselves and the world.
