Words Beats & (My) Life Part V: The Cipher
The concept of a cipher in hip-hop comes from the Arabic word, Sifrs, which is the number zero. It’s a circle in which competition usually takes place between either dancers or MC’s. We have worked to redefine this concept, as a sacred circle of interconnectedness, where what happens in the circle of observers is just as important as the observers themselves. The observers are the community responsible for protecting the participant in the circle. For Words Beats & Life, the cipher as a program was a way to build bridges among other non-profits, for profits, teaching artists, artists and activists to think about our work to transform communities in collaboration. This program has been important to the organization, but also important as we demonstrate that we do not need to be in competition to do good. We can be in cooperation.
One of the most important books I read in college was The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: A Historical Analysis of the Failure of Black Leadership by Harold Cruz. The crux of the book was that the greatest challenge to Black leadership especially during the civil rights movement was a perpetual fight for resources from benefactors and attention from the media. As a college student, this profoundly changed how I understood my responsibility when I became the president of the Black Student Union, and even how I thought about the creation of the Words Beats & Life Hip-Hop Conference. Though most people would describe hip-hop as Black culture, I understood that its roots were both Black and Latino, but its fans and participants looked like the whole human family. It was important that the host committee look like the human family and that the panels and workshops be appealing to students at UMD that were Latino/a, Asian American, Jewish, Muslim, African, Caribbean, etc. That experience of creating a conference for all students by a Black student organization made history at UMD. That experience informed the way we built the non profit, its programs and established partnerships with organizations that were supposed to be our competitors. They were our community. Our effort has been to learn from the mistakes of previous generations by always celebrating the success of our peers, lifting up the work of others, finding opportunities for collaboration and securing the funding to support our collaboration. We are all working to do good, or as we call it “do good better”, so why not work together to do it.
To that end we publish the world’s first peer-reviewed academic journal of hip-hop, in which we publish the essays, scholarship, poetry and academic articles of scholars, artists and activists from all over the world. In the 13-year history of the publication, we have never published the work of anyone affiliated with WBL. We host a quarterly consortium in Washington DC of museums, after school programs university courses, and funders to create collaborative projects, develop a legislative agenda, and build a hip-hop history month calendar. For the last 9 years we have hosted and curated an annual Teach-In and awards ceremony called the Remix Awards. All of these efforts are outward facing and never about the work of WBL, but rather about our peers. It is critical that our students know that they are a part of a community that is larger than WBL, and that artists can and should be advocates for the transformation of the institutions that directly impact our lives, families and communities. It is in the apprentice oath, “I promise work for my community | And use hip-hop to build peace and unity |Success isn’t new to me.” It is vital that even as an organization they see us doing what we ask them to work towards.
The importance of this approach can not be understated. It is a reflection of how we teach, and what we have seen work. At the heart of every decision we make are the following four questions. Why doesn’t this exist? If it did exist, how would the world be different? If we were successful, how would we sustain it? Who can be our partner? Nothing is ever for its own sake. We teach to transform the way young artists think about themselves and their power to make a difference in the world.
Being an organization based in the nations capital also means that we are able to engage artists from all over the world through federal institutions like the Smithsonian, and the State Department. As an international city we are able to host artist from all over the world that the State Department bring to America, and often their first stop in American is in Washington D.C. Six years ago one of those artists invited us to visit his home country of Uganda. We were able to secure funds from the D.C government through its Sister City Program to take a delegation of 4 people, three artists and one arts administrator.
