Hip hop collective: Building resilience in music education

Hip hop music exists on the fringes of the music education profession in the United States, while the integration and implementation of hip hop pedagogies are more commonplace globally. Limited research exists on the experiences, processes, or approaches that inform the integration of hip hop into United States–based public-school K–12 education curricula. This investigation involved a community engagement partnership between a public university located in the southeastern United States and a local public charter school. The researchers chronicled the process of integrating a 6-week hip hop music education program into a university-based K–8 laboratory school, where predominantly Black seventh- and eighth-grade students created original hip hop music and graffiti. The program was one of the first to combine graffiti, musicology, and hip hop culture into a formal music classroom using informal and learner-centered approaches. As a qualitative investigation, the experiences of the teaching artists, students, and laboratory educators formed the foundation for identifying seven major themes: (1) Agency and Identity, (2) Creativity, (3) Resilience, (4) Connectedness, (5) Motivation, (6) Transformation, and (7) Challenges. Implications for the field of music education are discussed in the conclusion.