The first-ever “Can I Kick It?” hip-hop festival will be hosted Saturday from 12:30-9 p.m. in the Timashev Family Music Building, located at 1900 College Rd. N. Credit: Laurence Myers-Bailey | Lantern Reporter
A brand-new festival celebrating the 50th anniversary of hip-hop music is coming to Ohio State Saturday.
Ohio State’s School of Music and Department of African American and African Studies are set to host the inaugural “Can I Kick It?” hip-hop festival in the Timashev Music Building Saturday from 12:30-9 p.m. to honor 50 years of hip-hop.
According to the event listing on Ohio State’s website, the festival — which is free to Ohio State students and faculty — will include workshops with local hip-hop artists like Dj O Sharp, Trig, P. Dubbz and Nova, as well as a DJ panel and networking event.
Jason Rawls, assistant professor of hip-hop at Ohio State, said the festival’s main goal is to provide a place for students to not just learn about the history of the musical genre, but to learn about hip-hop’s role in the world of education.
“We’re trying to encourage the pursuit of hip-hop knowledge, art, scholarship, culture and responsible leadership,” Rawls said.
Stevie “Dr. View” Johnson, assistant professor of creative practice in popular music at Ohio State, said “Can I Kick It?” aims to show the local community that hip-hop study has a place in college curricula.
“Hip-hop is very interdisciplinary, and there’s nothing from a pop culture perspective where you can’t talk about hip-hop, it goes in any context,” Johnson said. “The purpose is just to highlight that hip-hop studies is an actual breathing, moving, evolving thing that is taking place at Ohio State University.”
Rawls said the festival will host a panel of artists who will speak to attendees about DJing, producing and beat-making. He said the event will also include four workshops during which students can learn more about the four main aspects of hip-hop: DJing, break dancing, graffiti and emceeing.
”What we’re going to do is take everybody through a little round-robin of all of those, and give you a taste of what it means to use those elements and touch the culture,” Rawls said.
Johnson said this first “Can I Kick It?” festival serves as a major stepping stone for hip-hop communities and hip-hop studies programs in light of the challenges they face trying to establish themselves in academia.
“I think it’s just been challenging in that there’s a lot of DJs, there’s a lot of producers, a lot of engineers who have way more experience than myself and Dr. Rawls, but because they don’t have certain credentials, there’s a lot of pushback,” Johnson said. “For us, how do we hold ourselves up? How do we lock arms with each other to say, ‘Hey, we can’t allow another hip-hop studies program to not convey the essence of what hip-hop was created for’?”
For more information about the event, visit the Ohio State School of Music’s website.
