The Hip-hop culture in Aotearoa New Zealand

Aotearoa New Zealand Hip Hop Popular Music The Hip-hop culture in Aotearoa New Zealand is similar to other countries where reclamation of identity has been achieved using music. Is Hip-hop a backlash of the colonisation process? Discuss the Hip-hop culture as a medium for expressiveness and a way of defining identity. Eva Sullivan ANTHROPOLOGY 349 POPULAR MUSIC CULTURE Abstract Hip-hop has emerged as a significant musical genre in Aotearoa New Zealand creating an awareness of cultural diversity and ethnic identity and is similar to other countries where reclamation of identity has been achieved using music. Hip-hop has long been seen as the voice for the disenfranchised. The New Zealand Hip-hop scene began in the 1980’s when artists such as Upper Hutt Posse began recording and gained recognition for lyrics relating to tino rangatiratanga, Maori Sovereignty. Is the success of Hip-hop in New Zealand the backlash of the colonisation process? New Zealand has a colourful past in terms of race relations, which has contributed to Maori and Pacific Islanders, amongst other minority groups, sense of disenfranchisement. The Hip-hop culture has provided a medium for young people to channel their talents and have

There, talented teenagers with little cash but lots of imagination began a new musical style that was quite simply, the product of streetwise ingenuity. However, there are key aspects connected with Hip-hop, importance nationally is placed on fashion, language, the rappoetry linked with Hip-hop, and these key elements were seen as essential to the culture of Hip-hop. The creator becomes the musicians, the disc jockey, and the singers, the record producers and promoters. Like many countries where minority groups have been disenfranchised from their cultural backgrounds, Hip-hop arrived in New Zealand and emerged within the music scene as having a strong influence with local artists and the political message of persecution and racism spoke strongly with many Maori musicians. Many New Zealand Hip-hop artists including King Kapisi use Hip-hop in order to promote preserving ones culture and language. Students agreed that the lyrics used in Hip-hop both here in New Zealand and overseas spoke about messages that they felt were relevant to their personal lives and therefore identified with the musicians on a more personal level. Hip-hop is an area that is focused on, amongst many others. The strong emergence of a uniquely Tangata Pasifika Hip-hop provides an appropriate medium for exploring young peoples role within their immediate environment and the wider global environment. In a uniquely New Zealand style, Hip-hop artist have utilised the ideologies of American Hip-hop to speak out about the historical aspect of New Zealand"tms colonial past and the impact that this has had on the displacement of many generations of both Maori and Pacific Island New Zealanders. The lyrics, which were sung in both English and Maori, were very politically charged surrounding tino rangatiratanga, Maori sovereignty . Through Hip-hop, youth subcultures have been able to reclaim their identity, to view the local as a place to speak from and to reclaim their cultural roots. Artists such as King Kapisi, Che Fu, Nesian Mystik and Scribe have carried the ideas and themes of Hip-hop to new arenas. The receiver of the Hip-hop culture is the audience and the social world becomes related directly to how the audience identifies within the music itself . In 2004, Scribe became the first New Zealand artist to achieve the double honour of concurrently topping the New Zealand albums and singles charts . New Zealand has a colourful past when it comes to race relations, but is not unlike many other colonised countries where a dominant influence has assumed power over minority groups and the following song lyrics discusses a key historical event of the 1970"tms "Dawn Raids"tm in which Pacific "overstayers"tm were literally rounded up and shipped back to the Pacific.