Creating and Performing Rap Music

This course equips students with skills to create and perform rap music. The historical, social and political study of rap music will offer students the contexts in which to understand rap music and inform their creativity. Focus will be not only on its creation but also its performance, since often the compositional and performance process are rarely separated. Using American rap as the backdrop, students will explore ways of how they can adapt, recreate and reinvent rap. Students will be free to use any language and they are not limited in the themes of their creativity. For instance, student could create “gospel rap.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Objectives: 

• To trace the history of and understand the political and social contexts in which rap music has thrived
• To develop skills of creating and performing rap music
• To develop an appreciation of rap music as a reactive genre
• To expand students skills in composition and performance