Sep

272012

pAGe

6FEATURE

Strolling down Main Street and looking in the quaint boutiques of Walla Walla,

one would be surprised to find out that there are battles raging just a mile from Whitman College cam-pus. However, these are not bat-tles of blood and gore, but bat-tles of wit, speed and accura-cy. They are rap battles that take place every month at La Ramada.

Thus far, four shows have taken place on Friday nights at La Ramada, a Mexican restau-rant and cantina on Isaacs Ave. They have drawn a large audi-ence of hip-hop enthusiasts dur-ing the short time they have been running. Beginning at 9 p.m., the night includes a rap battle, break-dance performances, and hip-hop performances by local artists.

“It’s not anything that we’re profiting from; it’s just an op-portunity for people to get their art out there,” said Alber-to “Beto” Sanchez, organizer of the rap battles. “We just want to make music and be heard.”

According to Sanchez, hip-hop has four central elements: DJ, MC (rapping), breakdancing and graffiti. The MC and breakdance artists of Walla Walla have not been given a chance in the past to display their skills. Through this opportunity offered by La Ramada, they hope to find a way to shine.

“This is my main idea: to work with these people and give them

the opportunity to do something good,” said Gustavo Guerra, man-ager of La Ramada. “I like to work with the local people because you have to support your own people.”

One reason that the hip-hop culture is so unrecognized in Wal-la Walla is because of the neg-ative image that goes along-side hip-hop culture. Hip-hop is usually coupled with the stig-ma that accompanies gangs, vi-olence and drugs. Popular me-dia has manipulated the image of hip-hop into a seemingly aggres-sive and confrontational mode of expression, but according to lo-cal hip-hop artists, this gives the public a false view of the culture.

“It’s so easy to turn on the ra-dio and hear the saturated rap that’s out there,” said local hip-hop artist Joaquin Avalos. “If you really look for it, there are people out there, like me, that are doing something for the culture, and that means do-ing something that’s going to last.”

By creating this lasting mu-sic, the local artists are res-olute in their resolve to pro-mote positive messages.

“Hip-hop is seeing some-one else struggle and reach-ing out and making their life better,” said Avalos.

Avalos believes that this men-tality can be achieved through mu-sic or through any sort of activ-ism against poverty and suffer-ing. Avalos and Guerra both cite Tupac as a pivotal hip-hop art-ist who wrote about the truth and the “keep your head up” mindset.

“When someone speaks on a subject about something that you really went through, it’s a total-ly different connection with the music,” said Sanchez. “I think that that’s been taken out of hip-hop because now it’s mostly fo-cused on what makes money.”

Avalos cites his inspiration as the difficulties that he has en-countered in his life growing up in Walla Walla. Supported by his mother who rose five kids on her own, Avalos says he received in-spiration from his own strug-gles and he hopes to create mu-sic that can speak to other people.

In one of his songs that he recorded in his own stu-dio, “Celebration of Life,” Av-alos sings, “It’s a celebration of life, we’re staying alive/ If you’ve been through hard times then you know what it’s like.”

In this way, Avalos hopes to connect with people and speak to their struggles. At the same time, hip-hop is also a performance art with a main objective to entertain.

In a rap battle, each artist is given a random beat and one minute to freestyle against the op-ponent. The point is to extempo-raneously create lyrically clev-er lines while insulting your op-ponent. The battles at La Rama-da are judged by three breakdanc-ing artists, as they have the back-ground knowledge needed to is-sue an executive decision on the winner of a battle. The battles are conducted in a bracket style, with the winner ultimately rap-

ping against the champion from the last battle. Whoever wins this last battle receives half of the cover charges ($5 is paid at the door for each audience member).

This is followed by perfor-mances by the breakdance art-ists, who bring their own music and rehearsed dance. Then, the hip-hop artists are given an op-portunity to perform raps in front of the audience. The set-up of the show creates a diverse mix of tal-ents and performances to watch.

“Not all of the performances are the type of music that everyone is going to listen to, but there’s got to be a little part of the show that everyone is going to like, wheth-er it’s the freestyling, breakdanc-ing or rapping,” said Sanchez.

Avalos described hip-hop as a movement that arose out of the social activism that was present in the ‘60s. Whether it was through the struggles bred by the anti-war movement, civil rights or student protests, the ‘70s produced a gen-eration of oppressed artists who used hip-hop to get their message across. The media then took hold of this new form of music and popularized it on a global scale. With this newfound fame and at-

tention, hip-hop artists could force the world to pay attention to their struggles. These struggles includ-ed discrimination, police brutal-ity and other social injustices.

“There [are] different catego-ries within hip-hop, but the big-gest thing is that it’s the voice of the people. The voice to say that something is wrong and what can we do to fix it,” Avalos said.

Hip-hop still serves as a tool for artists to get their message across, which is what Avalos and Sanchez hope to do through their music. Sanchez is a member of the rap group ‘2 Sick’ in Wal-la Walla. 2 Sick has performed in 12 shows around the area but has only been given the ven-ue of La Ramada in Walla Wal-la. Avalos creates his own songs, and has also only been given the chance to perform at La Ramada.

The next show hosted by La Ramada will take place on Fri-day, Sept. 28. Local artists hope that through their proof of civili-ty in their form of artistic expres-sion at La Ramada, other restau-rants will open their doors to their music. In this way, hip-hop can both entertain the public and pro-ject the messages of local artists.

WALLA

Hip-hop drives individuals, fuels campus music culture

by HANNAH BARTMANStaff Reporter

Joaquin Avalos throws down a rap at La Ramada, Walla Walla’s sole venue for hip hop artists to perform. Photo by Bergman

Hidden under the haze of Mum-ford and Sons lyrics and Young the Giant vocals, the addictive pound-ing beats of the oft-forgotten rap gen-re are still audible. One example of rap’s pervasive nature is the pop-ular slam poetry team on campus.

Morales actually did an inde-pendent study project her senior year of high school focusing on the spo-ken word and slam poetry move-ment which grew out of the hip-hop/rap movement of the 1990s. Begin-ning in the South Bronx, minori-ty black and Latino youths used po-etry to talk about their feelings of oppression. The first slam poetry was performed in a bar where poets read their work while drunk patrons shouted and hurled bottles at them.

“The poets would get angry and before you knew it, the poems became real and were written in a way that got people’s attention,” said Morales.

Eventually, people began taking notice and the Nuyorican Poets Café in New York opened. The owner pre-served the concept, but gave the per-formances rules and standards and eliminated the belligerently drunk people. Thus, slam poetry was born.

In the end, Morales believes in the close ties between spoken word poetry and rap, although not all rappers can write slam poetry and vice versa.

“Spoken word is very close-ly linked to hip-hop and rap. They have a lot of the same goals, they

have a lot of the same rhythmic pat-terns to them where you have your words flow together, and a lot of it is presentation,” said Morales.

Slam poetry’s growing popu-larity may be one contributing fac-tor in rap music’s increased pres-ence on campus. Whitman Events Board also played a role in increas-ing rap exposure. On March 3, 2012, WEB brought the Seattle-based rap artist Macklemore to campus, where he performed for a sold-out crowd.

“I think ever since Macklemore came to Whitman, that kind of opened the eyes of a lot of students [about] rap and what it can be,” said Young.

Morales also pinpointed Whit-man’s move towards a more rap-open culture to Macklemore’s performance.

“A lot of people are from Seat-tle so they were really eager to iden-tify with him, so I think that it got a lot of attention and a lot of peo-ple came out for it,” said Morales. “I mean, when you go to frat par-ties and parties in general, you hear a lot of hip-hop and current music.”

DJ junior Cam Young knows from personal experience.

“When the night life comes around, you’re playing [hip-hop] songs and you can definitely tell that people know the lyrics so may-be there is a little bit of a stig-ma surrounding rap music on the Whitman campus,” said Young.

While students tend to avoid playing this genre during the day,

at weekend parties, Lil’ Wayne and Pretty Ricky make frequent appear-ances. Before a big party, Young and Moyes will make a general play-list, picking out points in the songs which will serve as transitions into the next song. However, some of the work is improvising on the spot.

“The best DJs are able to read a crowd and they’re able to mix differ-ent genres and subgenres of music to-gether, whether that be hip-hop and then going to more electronic mu-sic, or coming back and playing some song that nobody’s heard in a while from middle school,” said Moyes.

Most of the songs he plays are fa-miliar songs from the radio or top 40 hits—in short, mainstream hip-hop.

“People enjoy dancing to songs they’ve heard. For the most part, you can’t really play a bunch of songs in a row that people have never heard of, even if they’re good,” said Moy-es. “Especially at Whitman, people like singing and dancing, so in or-der for that to happen, they need to know the songs they’re singing.”

From the faint strains of rap wo-ven within a spoken word poem to the mass of bodies grinding/jumping/Gangnam style-ing to a hip-hop song at each frat party, it seems the hip-hop and rap genre is alive and well.

At Whitman College, we have awesome fountains, Missionar-ies, Styx, an abundance of Cha-cos and, yes, rap and hip-hop. You just have to know where to look.

Cam Young ‘14 (left) and Kyle Moyes ‘14 (right) enjoy their work providing the beats for campus parties, even if it means playing a lot of top 40 hits. Moyes started DJing his sophomore year, and introduced Young to it just this year. Photos by Bowersox

RAPS

Local performers get stage time at cantina

WALLA

from HIP-HOP, page 1

At first glance, hip-hop culture may seem

underrepresented at Whitman and in Walla

Walla. However, new op-portunities and personal stories prove just the con-

trary: hip-hop is everywhere.